Airbnb — Building a Visual Language [Reflection]

As an assignment for my Design Fundamentals class in NYU Tisch (IMA), I give my thoughts on Airbnb Design’s blog post ‘Building a Visual Language — Behind the scenes of our new design system.’

I find it amazing how Airbnb cares so much about design and I really love how this article demonstrates that companies can get a big return out of investing in their design teams (and design systems). Though the creation of their design system sounded difficult and time-consuming, it very quickly paid off by drastically improving productivity and saving their designers a lot of time. I really liked their conclusion that these systems would help them ‘focus more on actual user experiences and concepts we want to create in the future.’ My initial thoughts on their design system were that it could hurt creativity, but I now feel like it could actually enhance it since good design thrives under constraints, and the design system allows them to be creative where it matters the most — the user experience.

I also think really like how Airbnb’s design team understands the importance of consistency in the brand. Like they said, ‘a cohesive experience is more easily understood by our users.’ Maintaining strong consistency with your brand can increase the brand’s value alone because it makes it easier to recognize and understand. Looking at their design components as a ‘living organism’ allows them to be creative and think in terms of the bigger picture (the brand) rather than just for an individual design.