Creative / product studio
North & Co.
Repeatable case study layouts that don’t drift
North & Co. publishes often; occasional updates shouldn’t break vertical rhythm or turn case studies into accidental landing pages. This work codified patterns—spacing, media ratios, and section order—so speed doesn’t erode craft.
Context
Editors were talented, not technical; the CMS had to reward good defaults and resist broken combinations.
Video embeds and tall galleries were the main sources of layout bugs.
Constraints
No shutdown of publishing during rollout—migrations had to be incremental.
Accessibility couldn’t regress when new media types appeared.
Research
We audited published pages for inconsistent spacing tokens and orphan headings.
We watched editors build a case study and noted where they reached for workarounds (custom HTML, rogue breaks).
Approach
Pattern library ties components to design tokens; editors pick patterns, not raw spacing.
Media components enforce aspect ratios and captions so galleries stay coherent on mobile.
Delivery
Migration scripts normalized legacy pages into patterns where possible; edge cases got manual review.
Short video walkthrough replaced a forty-page manual.
Outcomes (directional)
New case studies looked ‘on brand’ without design review becoming a bottleneck.
Layout bugs reported by the team dropped after ratio-locked media components shipped.
Stack & integrations
- Design tokens
- CMS components
- A11y checks in preview