Product-design foundation · Le Figaro
Saphir: One Design System, Different Products
I helped Le Figaro’s design team create shared rules and reusable interface parts, while keeping each product’s own identity.
At a glance
My work, shared rules, and limits.
- My responsibility
- Reviewed existing screens, helped define shared rules, and contributed to documentation and workshops.
- Key decision
- Separate common design rules and behaviour from each product’s own visual style.
- Trade-off
- Reduce repeated interface decisions without forcing distinct products, platforms, and brands into one uniform interface.
- Result or status
- The studio established shared foundations, reusable component rules, documentation, and platform libraries; implementation and later adoption remained collaborative team outcomes.
A shared system for distinct editorial products.
Le Figaro’s web and mobile products used different layouts, colours, fonts, and interface parts.
We needed common rules without making every product look alike.
Find the shared decisions.
We reviewed existing screens to find inconsistent patterns and scattered design decisions. This gave us a starting point, not a measured improvement.
We agreed on spacing, fonts, colours, and behaviour, then used those rules for reusable interface parts.
Each product kept its own visual style and specific features.
Document the decision, not only the screen.
We documented colour meanings, icon sizes, and button states. Workshops helped the team agree on rules.
Colour foundations
Figaro
Figaro Premium
Icon construction
Button behaviour
A more explicit reference for recurring decisions.
The team created shared rules, documentation, and design libraries for iOS and Android.
These were shared team outputs. I do not claim that my work alone caused later adoption or business results.
Public context 2019 Saphir review ↗ Le Figaro’s 2022 design-system retrospective ↗
What I would keep—and change.
I would again look for decisions that several products share before designing each screen separately. Shared rules aimed to reduce repeated work while leaving room for each product’s identity.
I would connect those rules to working examples sooner, track where teams needed exceptions, and record who could decide when a shared rule no longer fit. That would make reuse easier to maintain as products changed.
A shared system is useful when it reduces repeated decisions without erasing the differences that matter.