Championing Design Culture and Scale at Sage
Client
Sage
Agency
In-House
My Role
Senior Director, Global Senior Creative Director of Experience Design
(Product, Brand, Experience)
Skills Used
Executive sponsorship and budget leadership
Cross-functional team building
Strategy, creative and design direction
UX and UI design
Design system development
Photo and video direction
Prototyping and user testing
Executive presentation and stakeholder alignment
The Challenge
Sage’s design capability had plateaued. Teams were fragmented across brand, product and marketing, with heavy reliance on agencies to deliver creative work. This resulted in inconsistent execution, static experiences and little sense of a shared culture. Design was viewed as a service rather than a strategic driver of transformation.
The Solution
I championed the creation of an in-house design culture, scaling the team from 3 → 40+ in 3 years and aligning global functions under a single operating model. By embedding design into strategy and delivery, we introduced the first design language system, a unified colour palette and consistent approaches to photography, illustration and product logos. Weekly global stand-ups, new governance and a cross-functional framework gave every discipline a voice and built momentum around collaboration.
The Impact
Design became a strategic capability at Sage. We delivered 33 country sites with a +20% uplift in e-commerce transactions, created a reusable design and asset library and saved £4m+ by reducing agency reliance by 60%. Most importantly, the perception of design shifted from a tactical service to a culture of creativity and innovation embedded across Brand, Product and UX.
Team Growth
I grew the team from 3 → 40+ in 3 years, building a multi-disciplinary group of designers, creatives, technologists, copywriters and researchers. This was the first time Sage’s global design functions had been aligned under one operating model. Weekly global design stand-ups and new governance frameworks created a culture of collaboration, scale and performance.
Ways Of Working
I introduced a step-by-step framework that aligned brand, product and .com from the start. The process gave every function a voice, increased transparency, removed duplication and lifted quality while positioning design as a strategic partner to the business.
Global Design Language System
I led the creation of a single design language used across advertising, product, marketing and customer experience from scratch. The system balanced global consistency with local flexibility, giving teams a common toolkit that accelerated delivery and improved brand recognition.
Brand & Product Colour Palette
I replaced fragmented colour usage with a unified palette based on colour theory and psychology. Tones and tints became a coherent system across product and marketing which improved accessibility, consistency and impact across channels.
Business Size
Marketing Theme
UI Theme
Cloud Products
Value
Digital Transformation
We delivered 33 country sites from a single master design system. The programme hit every deadline and budget target and produced a +20% uplift in e-commerce transactions with standardised journeys and faster time to market.
Connected Cloud
The Connected Cloud encapsulated the Sage product ecosystem unifying seamlessly. The colours forming the cloud were drawn from each individual product. It became a symbol of connection and transparency that helped employees and customers understand how products worked together as a family. It supported the strategic shift to a unified cloud portfolio.
Better Customer Photography
Sage’s photography needed to serve as compelling narratives, capturing our customers' stories and sparking inspiration among our audience. The previous photography suffered from a lack of clarity, characterised by dark and cluttered spaces that left little room for text or inspiration.
A New Direction
In addition to improving more traditional customer photography, I sought to inject new life into our imagery by leveraging our new colour palette. Accents of our product colours were used as highlights, creating a technological glow and adding a modern touch to our visuals.
Product Logos
Sage had previously relied only on typography to distinguish products, which made navigation confusing. Testing showed customers often struggled to locate their product quickly.
I led the design of 200+ unique logos, each built on a consistent grid and informed by simple metaphors, such as the “A” for Accounting inspired by an abacus. Colour coding by business size reinforced clarity across the portfolio. Customers were able to identify products instantly, improving usability and giving Sage a distinctive product identity for the first time.
Illustration Style, Library & Department
Illustration at Sage was inconsistent and outsourced, creating delays and extra cost. There was no defined style and no library for teams to reuse.
I established the first in-house illustration department and created a clear style guide and asset library. This gave teams the ability to produce brand-aligned illustrations quickly and at scale, reducing spend while ensuring visual consistency across campaigns, products and communications.
Creative Experience Design
Sage’s creative concepts had plateaued and teams relied on agencies for the heavy lifting, limiting originality and impact. I motivated global teams to think more broadly and explore new approaches. One example was a pitch for outdoor experiences that showed how Sage could turn complex problems into simple solutions. The mindset shift raised the creative benchmark and inspired more ambitious, engaging work.
Creative Web Experiences
Previously Sage’s digital concepts were static and under-developed. I introduced interactive product tours and rich web content produced entirely in house, which created more engaging experiences at lower cost.
The impact was significant. The tour became Sage UK’s top performing marketing asset, driving £49.5m pipeline, 80% MQL→SQL conversion and a +40% increase in engagement. In house production reduced costs by 60%, saving £4m+ across 50 products, while seeding a reusable asset library that now powers the design system and a new operating model across Brand, Product and UX.
