These core principles guide how we make and evolve our design system:

User-friendly

We make sure components are clear, consistent and easy to understand, ensuring the system is user-friendly and useful to all users, from novice to expert.

Modular

We embrace the concept of Atomic Design and focus on creating small modular components, that combine harmoniously to form a set of repeatable patterns.

Reusable

We provide reusable components, that can be adopted quickly and consistently across multiple UAL digital services and platforms, always encouraging reuse over starting from scratch.

Responsive

We design and build components to adapt seamlessly, resizing and adjusting to different devices based on user preferences and screen size, ensuring a consistent experience across platforms.

On-brand

Everything is designed to champion and represent the UAL brand, whose visual identity is about being bold, simple and direct, whilst letting the work of students, staff and graduates’ shine.

Accessible

We design and test our components with accessibility in mind from the start and are committed to continuously improving to meet and exceed WCAG 2.2 standards. (Find out more)