The Platform Visual System has been my baby at Workiva. I’ve designed and created this system for the design team & freelancers to utilize.
We represent the functions, capabilities, and features of our platform through these graphics on our website, collateral, and much more.
It was important to create more structure and a more thorough guideline to how we go about creating these visuals.
Thus, the Platform Visual System was born!
Toggle through the “About,” section above, to see some more granular details/guidelines of this project!
Document Structure
The platform system structure is divided up into the categories captured in the photo to the left. The general description of the categories are:
About
Documenting the purpose of the visuals and the initial steps you need for creation
Components
Houses the frequently used components within the system, and documenting how to create if needed.
Work Zone
Space to play around with designs.
Linking/Data Source/Misc. Features/Comments/Etc.
The rest of the categories are organized into their feature type, the solution they belong to, or where their final location is.
The Component Library
The goal with this component library was to define out the visuals we reuse on repeat throughout
our platform visuals and to help maintain more consistency among them. These 4 categories are a starting point to begin
to define out a more elaborate visual system. The lowest fidelity versions are the components in their
simplest form. When the design calls for more detail, we move up in fidelity within each item.
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Auto Layout
When each component is detached from the original instance, there is auto layout that has been pre-set and will help designers save some time when needing to adjust. This will help maintain specs and keep them consistent, but still give designers some freedom to create & explore. To the right is a quick preview on how auto layout has been applied to the spreadsheet components!