Smart

One of my first projects at DEPT as a visual design intern was working on Smart, the electric car manufacturer. This was the largest client I had worked with up to that point, making it an exciting and rewarding challenge to begin my internship with such a high-profile project.

The website and initial designs were already in place, but there was plenty of room to explore new components. We focused on elements like scroll interactions, showreels, CTAs, cards, and more. My challenge was to design these new components while staying true to the existing branding, ensuring they related well to one another, and presenting my final design choices effectively to the team. It was a series of fun and engaging tasks.

One of my first major challenges was navigating the Figma design environment. The project had been ongoing for a long time, resulting in a large number of pages and screens. Through this process, I learned the importance of clearly naming and organizing elements within Figma to maintain a clean and efficient workflow.

Once I became more familiar with the Figma environment, I began experimenting with the existing components. During this process, I also learned a great deal about Figma’s auto-layout feature. Thanks to the thoughtful setup earlier in the project, I could manipulate the designs like LEGO, quickly discovering which components worked well and which didn’t fit or left too much space. I applied the same approach to mobile views, which are often easy to overlook.

The next step was creating new components using the existing styles and smaller elements within the Figma file. I researched similar blocks on other car brand websites, gathered my favorite examples, and incorporated those insights directly into the Figma project.

Next, I started designing the different variants of component blocks. The UX designer had already created wireframes as a reference, and it was my responsibility to bring them to life with color and style, using the established branding and design guidelines.

Afterward, I gained more creative freedom to explore my own layout and UI choices. I experimented with horizontal versus vertical layouts, text-over-image usage, and other design possibilities.

The same approach is applied to mobile views for all components. I organized the screens carefully, grouping elements closely to make them visually coherent. This not only improved their presentation but also made it easier to showcase my designs later.

I also documented the pros and cons of different component variants, noting which were more usable in certain scenarios. This documentation proved valuable later when presenting my design recommendations during the presentation.

After completing all the designs, I created a presentation deck to showcase my design choices, explaining how and why I made each decision. Following the presentation, I received feedback on which components and designs were a strong fit and guidance on how to improve others.

The entire project was both fun and challenging. Starting with such a major client and project during my first days was incredibly exciting, and I’m proud of all the designs I produced.