Pierre Fabre - One Design system to rule them all

Our role has been to conceive and design the omnichannel pathways of all the group's brands while taking into account the dictates of rationalization to ensure costs and time-to-market are optimized and that the Core Model of the pilot brands is implemented.

Objectives:

• Develop the online presence of the group's brands
• Strengthen the brand's territory, participation, and conversion
• Develop client awareness

We built a Design System enabling us to deploy a consistent, efficient client experience across all digital touch points of the group's various brands.
By integrating the Design System into a factory site, we made it possible to immediately and easily use all of the group's brand assets.

Construction:
To put together the initial basis of the Design System, we focused on two emblematic pilot brands: Eau Thermale Avène and René Furterer.
We devised a logic based on a Design System Master that we refer to as the Core Model, which would then be adapted for each of our brands.
We established a ratio of 80% generic elements common to all brands versus 20% of brand-specific elements including in particular the graphical identity and certain specific functional requirements.

Our Core Model consists of a library of components and templates together with usage guidelines, integrated into a platform specifically for Design Systems: Frontify.
We applied the Atomic Design principles for structuring the various elements of the Core Model.

Key steps in building the Core Model:

• Definition of the experience strategy and the broad principles that guide our design work
• Five design sprints to create all the required templates addressing each of the user experiences based on the two pilot brands
• Each block or component is identified and subsequently rationalized in a Core Model approach
• The templates and blocks are then converted into Mobile and Desktop graphics for each of the brands

All the Core Model elements were naturally conceived in Responsive Design. They include an SEO optimization layer as well as customization capabilities enabling the easy integration of different brand identities.

The tool employed:
 We opted to go with the Frontify solution as it perfectly met our needs.