Studio 53° helps teams get more value from their design systems by solving people, culture, and organisational challenges.
Design systems often struggle because of the environment around them, not the components within.
No component library will fix these problems. They live in the gaps between what leadership expects, what the team is building, and your organisation's culture.
Those gaps are where Studio 53° works.
“The hardest problems in design systems are rarely technical. They live in people, culture and how organisations work.”
Studio 53° is the consulting practice of Shaun Bent.
Shaun spent nine years leading design systems and accessibility at Spotify, where he founded Encore, Spotify's unified design system, and led its engineering as it grew across the company. Before that he led front-end architecture for BBC Sport, and helped build the first coded implementation of the BBC's GEL design system.
Two decades of that work sit behind the studio, and one lesson runs through all of it. Whether a design system succeeds is not decided in Figma or code.
The studio takes its name from the latitude it lives on.
53° north is Preston, where Shaun grew up, and Manchester, where he works.
Studio 53° works with design system teams and the people who lead them. The work sits upstream of components and tokens, with the team, its leadership, and the culture the system lives in.
Individual or team, an hour or two a week. Regular conversations about whatever is in front of you: a difficult situation, making the case to leadership, or how to mature the system. Sometimes something more specific, from handling breaking changes to working with AI.
Facilitated sessions for a team that needs to get somewhere together: agreeing principles, organising work and projects, or developing a plan for the next phase of the system. Half a day or a day, with something decided by the end of it.
A deeper engagement, spanning months rather than weeks, working inside the organisation alongside the design system team. Getting to know the team, the system, the culture, and the challenges, then moving them forward through a mix of strategic thinking, workshops, influencing, and individual and team coaching.
No two organisations, teams, or systems are the same, so none of this is fixed. If what you need doesn't fit one of these shapes, tell me what you're facing and I'll shape the work around it.
I write about the people and culture side of design systems, and about what nearly a decade at Spotify taught me.
Does this sound like your organisation? I'd love to hear from you. I offer a free 30-minute conversation to explore whether I can help.
Shaun BentStudio 53° · 53°N · Preston & Manchester
