Dell Design System & CMS
- Client Dell
After several acquisitions and repositionings, the Dell brand was feeling very disconnected over its three main sites, Dell.com, DellTechnologies.com and DellEMC.com. Each site had been designed and developed separately and though Dell’s internal brand team had established brand guidelines, their UI/UX and development teams we overwhelmed with standard authoring and site maintenance.
Rebellion Design Company was tasked with developing the Design System that would unify the now merged DellTechnologies.com and DellEMC.com. I had the privilege of leading this creative effort.
Design Systems are equal parts brand design, site design, and pure mathematics. Your font choices are as important as your breakpoints and your color choices better be inline with the most up to date accessibility standards.
My mission was straightforward:
- Audit several hundred webpages
- Identify the most used content configurations
- Optimize that list into concise use cases
- Meet with key stakeholders and gather requirements
- Architect configurable components to meet those requirements
- Design elegant visual solutions for those components
- Create guidelines for the development teams
- Design the author workflow for the content management system
- Oversee development
- Q/A Test author flow and front end display
I oversaw our team of two user experience designers, two user interface designers and consulted with a dozen front and backend developers to take the “Delta” Design System and CMS from concept to launch.
The updated UI/UX design created instant cohesion to sister sites while the vast improvements to the author flow reduced lead time by approximately 25% requiring less involvement from designers and developers. Additionally, improved component versatility gave authors nearly double the amount of content configurations and improved site accessibility drastically while ensuring responsive displays for any mobile device.
Want to see more?
The images below barely scratch the surface. Guidelines, extensive design templates, author dialog flows, and more can be supplied on request.
But if seeing the current working Design System Template is of interest:
- Starter Template
- Components Library
- Foundation Library
After several acquisitions and repositionings, the Dell brand was feeling very disconnected over its three main sites, Dell.com, DellTechnologies.com and DellEMC.com. Each site had been designed and developed separately and though Dell’s internal brand team had established brand guidelines, their UI/UX and development teams we overwhelmed with standard authoring and site maintenance. Rebellion Design Company was tasked with developing the Design System that would unify the now merged DellTechnologies.com and DellEMC.com. I had the privilege of leading this creative effort.
Design Systems are equal parts brand design, site design, and pure mathematics. Your font choices are as important as your breakpoints and your color choices better be inline with the most up to date accessibility standards.
My mission was straightforward:
- Audit several hundred webpages
- Identify the most used content configurations
- Optimize that list into concise use cases
- Meet with key stakeholders and gather requirements
- Architect configurable components to meet those requirements
- Design elegant visual solutions for those components
- Create guidelines for the development teams
- Design the author workflow for the content management system
- Oversee development
- Q/A Test author flow and front end display
I oversaw our team of two user experience designers, two user interface designers and consulted with a dozen front and backend developers to take the “Delta” Design System and CMS from concept to launch.
The updated UI/UX design created instant cohesion to sister sites while the vast improvements to the author flow reduced lead time by approximately 25% requiring less involvement from designers and developers. Additionally, improved component versatility gave authors nearly double the amount of content configurations and improved site accessibility drastically while ensuring responsive displays for any mobile device.
After several acquisitions and repositionings, the Dell brand was feeling very disconnected over its three main sites, Dell.com, DellTechnologies.com and DellEMC.com. Each site had been designed and developed separately and though Dell’s internal brand team had established brand guidelines, their UI/UX and development teams we overwhelmed with standard authoring and site maintenance. Rebellion Design Company was tasked with developing the Design System that would unify the now merged DellTechnologies.com and DellEMC.com. I had the privilege of leading this creative effort.
Design Systems are equal parts brand design, site design, and pure mathematics. Your font choices are as important as your breakpoints and your color choices better be inline with the most up to date accessibility standards.
My mission was straightforward:
- Audit several hundred webpages
- Identify the most used content configurations
- Optimize that list into concise use cases
- Meet with key stakeholders and gather requirements
- Architect configurable components to meet those requirements
- Design elegant visual solutions for those components
- Create guidelines for the development teams
- Design the author workflow for the content management system
- Oversee development
- Q/A Test author flow and front end display
I oversaw our team of two user experience designers, two user interface designers and consulted with a dozen front and backend developers to take the “Delta” Design System and CMS from concept to launch.
The updated UI/UX design created instant cohesion to sister sites while the vast improvements to the author flow reduced lead time by approximately 25% requiring less involvement from designers and developers. Additionally, improved component versatility gave authors nearly double the amount of content configurations and improved site accessibility drastically while ensuring responsive displays for any mobile device.
Want to see more?
The images below barely scratch the surface. Guidelines, extensive design templates, author dialog flows, and more can be supplied on request.
But if seeing the current working Design System Template is of interest:

Just a fraction of the scope of the Dell Design System designed and developed to align the Dell.com site design with the updated brand guidelines.

The brand font ramp sets the base sizes for all site text which is then mapped to content types, container widths and breakpoint specifications. Though an easily overlooked facet of site design, the font ramp is the corner stone for all site components and responsive structuring.

Calls to Action need to be displayed on various surface colors.

A design system is only as good as its usability. Every component is delivered with a thorough pattern guideline that documents every view, option and configuration to empower designers, developers and authors.

The best part of designing an effective design system and content management system is seeing the engaging and on brand webpages that it has the potential to produce.

Another stunningly authored webpage.