The Challenge
Jitaku had an initial logo, colour and font direction produced on a small budget. While happy with the starting point, they recognised it fell short of the luxury positioning they wanted, closer to aspirational brands like Aman and Azumi than functional competitors like Cheval Collection or Bob W.
The Outcome
The design system became the actual basis used to build Jitaku’s live website, verified directly via the Figma file (a substantial variable-driven token system: typography, colour variables, a full UI component library, logo lockups, custom illustrations) and via the live site itself, which clearly reflects the brand system’s palette, typography and illustration style. Final guidelines delivered as a polished, dated client-ready document. Not every detail was carried through as intended: the live site’s buttons use a fully rounded shape and bold, wide-tracked caps text, which reads as heavier and less discreet than the slick, restrained luxury feel the system was designed for, a useful reminder that a well-built design system doesn’t guarantee its craft intent survives implementation by another team. The system’s structural value, consistency, speed, and on-brand variation, held up regardless.
The Approach
Delivered structured, evidence-based feedback benchmarking Jitaku’s existing assets against both direct competitors and aspirational luxury brands, identifying specific issues (Montserrat’s overuse across the web undermining a luxury feel; weak serif and sans-serif pairing and hierarchy) and specific recommendations (typeface pairing alternatives, an expanded neutral palette, defined logo usage rules). Built a full, professional brand guidelines document and a token and variable-driven Figma design system: the style guide’s colour palette and typography were wired through as Figma variables feeding every component, so a section could be dropped into a layout and switched between palette variations while staying consistently on-brand. Deliberately did not produce web page layouts, a conscious professional judgement rather than a scope gap, since the web design work had already been separately arranged with the client and producing competing page designs risked reading as dictating a web project to another team. Instead, the component system was designed to save the delivery team the time-consuming work of baking style-guide fundamentals into usable components.
