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Why Teams Aren’t Using Your Design Guidelines (And How to Fix That)

Meet Vishal Kapoor: Brand Design Lead at Lloyds

Vishal Kapoor leads brand design operations at one of the UK's largest financial institutions, where maintaining brand distinctiveness across six different brands isn't just a creative challenge; it's a business imperative. When Lloyds underwent a major rebrand, the complexity became impossible to ignore.

The rebrand exposed every crack in their design infrastructure: inconsistent visual language across platforms, siloed teams working in parallel without alignment, and quality standards that varied wildly depending on which squad touched which touchpoint.

But instead of doubling down on more comprehensive guidelines, Vishal and his team took a different approach entirely. They built Cancara OS, not just a brand design system, but a distinct brand design operating system that functions as the central engine powering brand coherence at scale.

Here's what they learned about making brand design systems that teams actually use.

1. Treat design systems like products, not documentation

Key takeaway:Don’t just document your design system. Build it like a product, with users, roadmaps, and support baked in.

Every brand design team knows the pain. You spend months building the perfect guidelines, beautiful PDFs, and complete Figma libraries, and product and design teams still go rogue.

Vishal’s view is simple:

“Guidelines alone don’t change behavior. Documentation doesn’t drive consistency. And mandates definitely don’t build trust.”

So instead of issuing more rules, the Lloyds team rebuilt the system from the ground up, this time as infrastructure that designers, engineers, and marketers could actually use.

2. Start with people, not pixels

Key takeaway: System adoption is a people challenge before it’s a design one. Build systems with teams, not for them.

Before diving into components or tokens, Vishal started with culture.

“I’m also a yoga teacher,” he said. “There’s a lot I take from that into how I lead design: presence, patience, empathy.”

That philosophy shaped how Lloyds rebuilt its foundation. The new Brand OS wasn’t just about consistency; it was about collaboration. Product, brand, and marketing teams came together, literally in the same room, to design, systemize, and test in real time.

3. Start fresh, even when it hurts

Key takeaway: Consistency doesn’t come from shortcuts. Sometimes you have to stop, reset, and rebuild to move forward.

When the Lloyds rebrand hit, they had two options: One, push updates out to every team and hope for the best; two, centralize the work, rebuild everything, and hand back a single, aligned baseline.They chose option two.

“It was painful,” Vishal admits. “Some files didn’t exist anymore, so we had to screenshot old flows and rebuild from scratch. But it gave us one source of truth.”

The result? A clean, modern system that powered every digital experience across six brands, and actually worked.

4. Design language ≠ design system

Key takeaway: Separate definition from systemization; it’s the only way to scale creative freedom without chaos.

Most teams blur the lines between defining a distinct brand and scaling it. Lloyds split the two.

“Our design language team defines the visual decisions, the brand’s aesthetic. The systems team systemizes those decisions into components.”

That separation keeps creativity high and execution clean. Designers still explore. Systems still scale. Both move in sync.

5. Scale consistency with design tokens

Key takeaway: Design tokens aren’t technical fluff; they’re how distinctive brand assets stay consistent across platforms.

To manage six brands, Lloyds turned to design tokens, the connective tissue between design and code.

“If you want to change a value, you do it once, and it updates everywhere,” said Vishal.

This approach lets the team roll out color changes, contrast modes, or even entire typefaces across products in days, not months. This is the secret to building distinctive brand assets.

6. Build adoption through community, not compliance

Key takeaway: Don’t be the brand police. Be the creative partner. Support > enforcement.

When Cancara OS launched, the team expected instant love. It didn’t happen.

So they shifted tactics:

• Weekly design clinics for open feedback
• On-demand 1:1 support for product teams
• Creative community-building with playlists, yoga, and casual sessions

“You’re not just the team sending library updates. You’re part of their day. That’s how you build trust.”

7. Build for what’s next: AI-ready design systems

Key takeaway: Future-proof your brand system now. AI will be a consumer of your system, not your replacement for one.

Thinking about the future of brand systems, Superside’s Kae Neskovic asked:

“Is the future of distinct branding less about rebrands and more about living systems that evolve daily with AI?”

Vishal’s take:

“When your foundations are solid, you’re preparing your design system for AI. If you want to take a brand away, add one, or change its color—it’s no problem. That’s the dream: release once, deploy everywhere.”

Build a design system people actually use

The Lloyds story shows what happens when you stop treating design systems as documentation and start treating them like infrastructure.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta start over, even if it sucks. Clear up the messy language, turn things into systems, and probably tokenize more than you want to. But the real game-changer? Stop chasing compliance. Start building community.

That’s how you turn guidelines into a living, breathing brand OS that drives consistency, creativity, and distinctiveness at scale.

Watch the full webinar: Why Teams Aren’t Using Your Design Guidelines (And How to Fix That)

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