Design System for Marketing
How I helped the B2B division of a major telecom company absorb twice as many campaigns without expanding its team.
Challenge
The project was developed for the digital services and B2B division of Spain's leading telecommunications multinational. The division manages a complex, fast-moving portfolio of advanced technology solutions, including cybersecurity, cloud, IoT, data, and artificial intelligence.
With a steady stream of product and service launches, the marketing department faced a growing workload that threatened to overwhelm the design team's capacity.
The challenge was therefore twofold:
Absorb twice as many campaigns without increasing budget or headcount.
Eliminate repetitive manual tasks to dramatically reduce time to market.
Solution
For the system to scale, it first needed solid foundations.
We turned the visual identity into a shared foundation where colour, typography, spacing, components, and themes were defined in one place. From then on, when a campaign changed or the brand evolved, the change was made once and propagated automatically across all materials.
We built a system that maintained consistency and removed much of the repetitive work.
COMING SOON
A brand that can grow without multiplying the work.
The team handled increased demand without expanding the team.
Scalability
Once the system foundation was in place, we identified the campaigns that recurred most often and the elements they shared.
From that analysis, we built a collection of templates for the team's standard formats. Each template included the structure, visual hierarchy, and composition rules needed to adapt to different content, formats, and themes without rebuilding the design from scratch.
A single campaign could then be deployed across dozens of assets while preserving consistency and drastically reducing production time.
COMMUNICATION MATERIALS
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
CORPORATE EVENTS
CAMPAIGNS AND LAUNCHES
Automation
COMING SOON
Data-driven design
The templates solved the design problem. The next challenge was production.
We connected Figma to data sources so information flowed directly into the templates. The system automatically updated copy, applied the defined styles, and left each asset ready for review and export.
What had taken weeks of manual work could now be completed in minutes.
Impact
Time to market
2–3 days
→
2–4 hours
About 10× faster
Outsourcing
Workload peaks required external support and caused frequent delays.
→
Production absorbed by the in-house team.
40–60% less
Production
Each variant required its own adaptation.
→
Variants are generated automatically.
About 10× more capacity
Consistency
Every asset required manual review before publishing.
→
Only exceptions need review.
About 50% fewer reviews
Updates
200–300 brochures updated over several weeks.
→
The complete catalogue updated in one day.
>90% less time
Metrics are approximate, indicative values based on the project's workflows. All data has been anonymized for confidentiality.
Adoption
The system stopped being mine and became the team's.
Building the system was only one part of the project. The real challenge was integrating it into the department's way of working.
Adoption happened gradually, introducing new templates, automations, and processes on live campaigns. The goal wasn't simply to learn a tool. It was to change how campaigns were produced.
By the end of the project, the team used the system independently, maintaining and extending it as part of their daily work.
- Training in design systems and modular production
- Progressive introduction of Figma as the central tool
- Adapting existing workflows
- Continuous evolution of the system within the department
What I learned building this system
01
Design is data
Every design decision that gets repeated has a cost. Turning those decisions into data made it possible to produce more campaigns with the same team without losing consistency.
02
Culture comes before the tool
Implementing Figma was the easy part. The real change came when the team integrated the system into the way it worked and stopped relying on manual processes.
03
Flexibility prevents abandonment
If a system is too rigid, the team looks for alternatives outside it. The key is to design a system that guides while leaving enough room for designers to continue adding aesthetic value.
04
Autonomy is the success metric
The best indicator that a design system works is its ability to operate invisibly. The team's complete independence in its day-to-day work is the only success metric that validates the project.