Rebranding a live banking portal through design system mapping
Roles
UI/UX Designer, Cross Teams Coordinator
About the client
A leading financial institution in Southeast Europe, offering a wide range of banking services to individuals, businesses, and corporate clients.
As part of its digital transformation and rebranding initiative, the organization aimed to modernize its public portal while maintaining stability, scalability, and alignment with existing enterprise systems.
Short problem statement
Going into the rebranding of the design system we found that only a subset of components was actively used in the live portal, which were inconsistently implemented. The timeline was tight and we had to redesign only the actively used components to form a new, more structured design system. Naming and structure differed between Sitecore CMS and Figma thus making it hard to locate and connect the components.
I took a step back to understand
Before redesigning anything, i needed clarity on what was live from the design system.
Our approach
Instead of starting from the design system, we began from the CMS.
The work was structured around identifying active components, mapping them to their design assets in Figma, and finally redesigning them in controlled weekly batches.
An evolving role across the project lifecycle
From coordination to hands-on design
Cross Teams Coordinator
aligning design, product, and technical teams around a shared scope
UI/UX Designer
designing responsive components under lead designer guidance
Establishing clarity and alignment
🎯 Responsible for coordinating between design, product, and development teams
🎯 Tracked active CMS components and their redesign status
🎯 Supported planning and prioritization of weekly component batches
🎯 Ensured CMS constraints and dependencies were surfaced early
🎯 Helped maintain shared documentation and alignment artifacts
Designing in batches
🎯 Responsible for redesigning components based on the new UI
🎯 Defined responsive behavior for web and mobile
🎯 Applied visual and usability refinements without introducing new features
🎯 Worked closely with the Lead Designer to iterate and validate designs
Design work
Consistency across web and mobile in all areas.
Digital banking dedicated sections
Clear, visually engaging presentation of user adoption and key app features.
Branch locator
Intuitive location-based services with easy navigation.
Mobile first navigation across the portal
Clean, mobile-optimized components that guide users efficiently.
Easy to scan product pages that convert
Informative layout highlighting benefits, pricing, and step-by-step application flow.
Step by step flows for personalised article exploration
Guided, intuitive steps that adapt content discovery to each user’s preferences and needs.
Outcome
This approach resulted in clearer alignment between CMS implementation and design assets, reduced friction between design and development, and established a realistic path for rebranding a complex, live portal. By grounding the work in active components and delivering changes incrementally, the team was able to improve consistency without introducing unnecessary risk.
Closing thoughts
In large-scale enterprise environments, effective rebranding starts from what is live, not from idealized systems. Aligning design ambition with technical reality, and delivering change incrementally, proved essential for creating sustainable and scalable outcomes.
