Malt — Joy Design System
Malt
01 — Context
Malt connects companies with top freelancers across Europe. The Joy design system brought consistency to their product suite, reducing design-to-dev handoff time by 40% and enabling faster feature shipping across their marketplace.
Malt had expanded rapidly across European markets. Their product suite — marketplace, project management, billing — each had its own visual identity and component set, creating inconsistencies for users navigating between tools.
The lack of shared components meant every team was reinventing the wheel.
02 — Process
Component Inventory
Catalogued every UI component across all products to identify overlap, gaps, and inconsistencies.
Design Foundations
Established shared design tokens, grid system, and typography scale across the Malt brand.
Library Development
Built the Joy Figma library and React component library in parallel, with weekly syncs between design and engineering.
Adoption & Training
Onboarded all product teams, set up contribution workflows, and created interactive documentation.
03 — Solution
We built Joy, a centralized design system with a shared Figma library and React component library. The system includes brand tokens, layout patterns, and a documentation site that serves as the single source of truth for all product teams.
Centralized Figma library with auto-layout components. React component library with full TypeScript support. Theming system for multi-market brand variations. Interactive documentation & usage guidelines. Automated visual regression testing.
04 — Results
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