What is Astrum? 💫

Astrum is a Design System created for the purpose of Scaling Design Systems course curated and lead by industry All Star - Dan Mall.

Dive deeper to enjoy the full story, which starts in a truly Hitchcockian style.

It all started with a Big Bang 💥

In the beginning there was only a logo, which is somewhat curious (and biblical), when we consider the literal meaning of this ancient greek word, which is “word”.

Our first task was to create something out of almost nothing using only Interplanetary Travel Syndicate’s logo and a few references from real world digital products as our starting points. The rest was up to us.

Reaching the stars is never easy ⭐

Inspiration hit us hard and after browsing vast resources of internet we came upon a proper color pallette, look and feel we were aiming for in our project. That’s the story of how ipts.org, travel.ipts.org and rail.ipts.org came to be.

They all turned out to be sci-fi oriented - dark, cold but also full of vibrant neon colors just like space.

The rest was just a formality

When we established our style all the final touches came in naturally. That’s when Astrum finally came to be. Building digital products using established rulebook is pure pleasure, especially when we are able to create our rulebook at the same time. It speeds up the process more and more as we go further.

Chaos emerges and gets organised

The one thing that is always constant in our universe is chaos. Everything, everywhere is seemingly randomly trying to change it’s state in a furious dance of exchanging energy with surroundings. To what end? We really cannot tell. But we fought and conquered. For the moment.

IPTS became Shuddle

A pivotal moment arrived in the last week of our work as we were presented with a task of updating typography styles, color pallette, imagery and finally implementing new brand logos into our designs. All new assets and guidelines were supplied by Megabrand, agency specializing in brands’ visual language.

World, Visit and Ride were introduced

As we mentioned before, when you have a handy rulebook by your side and prepared it properly, miracles are just a few clicks away.

The rest was just a formality, again

Redesigning or more accurately, updating rest of the portals became a trivial process, that required much less work than if we wouldn’t be prepared. Design Systems are truly an ultimate tool, for scaling and maintaining products.

Astrum 2.0

Final touches, minor tweaks here and there, updating content and tone of voice allowed us to arrive with the final version of Shuddle’s design system.

Conclusion

Building a wide set of products from the ground up and creating design system they were powered by, was fun and challenging process that left us happier than ever.

We definitely learned a lot during the course and we are super proud with the results. Scaling and maintaining big, varied projects became easier thanks to spot on mentoring, group sessions and exchanging knowledge with industry’s top designers and developers.

Credits & resources

Design work & case study: Matt Biały

Vector assets: https://www.vecteezy.com/

Bitmap assets: https://unsplash.com/