ExpressiveBrand

ING needed a way to scale design consistency across thousands of components, multiple platforms, customer segments, and local extensions while introducing a new visual identity and ensuring accessibility by default.

ING operates across multiple markets, customer segments, and digital products. Local teams had evolved their own design system extensions to solve local specific needs, resulting in fragmented experiences and duplicated effort. The challenge was finding the balance between global consistency and local flexibility without forcing every market into the same solution.

The design system needed to support:

• Customer segments
• Light and dark modes
• Cross-platform experiences
• Accessibility requirements
• Future visual identity updates

Every new visual decision multiplied the number of combinations designers and engineers had to maintain. As the system scaled, manual management became increasingly difficult and error-prone.

Color was one of the most complex areas of the system. Designers needed ways to create emphasis, support storytelling, and express different brand personalities while remaining accessible and consistent.
Yet every new surface, theme, or mode dramatically increased the number of possible color combinations. The result was a growing dependency on manual decisions, reviews, and accessibility checks.

In practice, a relatively small set of surfaces, themes, modes, and foreground roles already produced more than 1,500 accessible combinations that needed validation.

We designed and launched OJv2, a unified design system built on design tokens, native Figma Variables, and a scalable architecture shared across Web, iOS, and Android. At the core of the system sits the Expressive Engine.

Rather than treating color as individual design decisions, Expressive transforms color into a system of relationships.
Designers no longer choose individual foreground and background colors. Instead, they choose intent. The system automatically generates accessible, on-brand color pairings based on:

• Surface context
• Customer segment themes
• Light and dark modes
• Semantic color roles

Expressive is an extension of the token architecture that brings personality, emphasis, and storytelling into the design system without sacrificing consistency. It enables components to automatically respond to:

• Surfaces - pairing background and foreground tokens
• Themes - Overall, Business, Private, Wholesale
• Modes - Light and Dark
• Accessibility rules - built directly into the combinations

Instead of manually selecting colors and validating contrast ratios, designers can focus on communication and hierarchy while the system handles the complexity behind the scenes. The result is a design system that feels expressive and flexible, yet remains predictable, scalable, and accessible by default.

• Unified component library across Web, iOS, and Android
• Fully tokenized architecture using Design Tokens and Figma Variables
• Built-in support for themes, modes, and future brand evolution
• Design-code parity through shared foundations
• Deprecation of fragmented local design systems
• Single workspace connecting global foundations and local extensions
• Accessible, scalable color combinations powered by the Expressive Engine

OJv2 powers over 24,000 design files, with more than 9 million components used across 32,000 files.

• Design System Strategy
• Token Architecture
• Expressive engine
• Documentation Strategy
• Component Governance
• Cross-functional collaboration with Design, Brand and Engineering

In large, global companies, it is crucial to recognize that change occurs incrementally and can be challenging to implement. Celebrating small victories is essential to maintain momentum and encourage ongoing progress.