BLACKSTONE

Screenshot of a laptop displaying a webpage about Blackstone Charitable Foundation's $5 million donation, with a cityscape background and multiple navigation links.
Mobile phone screen displaying a news website with a headline about a $3 million grant from the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, and a section titled 'Press Releases' with a date of January 10, 2023.

ROLE
UX Design Consultant

CLIENT
Blackstone
New York, NY

TIMELINE
September 2022 – March 2023

TEAM
Two UI/UX Designers + One
Data Visualization Engineer

SURFACES
Blackstone.com (Web) + Intranet portal

AUDIENCES
Institutional Investors, Prospective Investors,
Compliance Officers & Employees

SCOPE
Brought in alongside one other designer to build the design system that would unify it. I led on system architecture, competitive analysis, legacy content audit and lift, scalable component design, templates and documentation, UX strategy, UI auditing, and net-new component backlogging. Specialized workstream — partnered with a data visualization engineer on chart systems and financial report templating for investor decks and internal analytics.

THE PROBLEM
The system Blackstone had inherited was not scalable. It was outdated, fragmented, and reliant on one-off assets that had accumulated faster than they could be governed. Critically, evergreen design was not considered from an authorable or platform standpoint. Components weren't built to last beyond the page they shipped on. Patterns repeated across surfaces with no shared source of truth. Internal tools and the public site spoke different visual languages. Every new feature compounded the debt. For a firm whose brand promise is institutional rigor at scale, the digital infrastructure didn't match.

APPROACH

One foundation. Two surface contexts. No parallel systems. Foundations stayed audience-agnostic. Components carried context-appropriate density without forking. A button on Blackstone.com renders for an investor evaluating credibility — the same button on the employee portal renders for an analyst running a workflow at speed. Different stakes, same design language. Authorable from the start. Evergreen by construction. WCAG 2.1, ADA, and SEC accessibility validation ran during the audit, not as a retrofit.

OUTCOMES
A unified design system serving public investor-facing surfaces and internal employee tooling from one source of truth. Legacy one-offs rationalized or retired. Templates and documentation positioning downstream teams to ship without rebuilding foundations. Data visualization and financial reporting patterns designed for cross-surface reuse. Accessibility embedded at audit, not after launch.

A three-column infographic or report layout with black blocks and text, featuring sections like 'Build with Blackstone,' 'Tomorrow’s superior performance begins with Blackstone alternatives today,' and 'Product built for today’s environment.' Contains charts or graphics with black bars and a footer with related information.
Screenshot of a corporate presentation slide deck titled "Build with Blackstone" showcasing insights from the Blackstone CEO Conference, featuring financial data, product comparisons, and featured stories.

Blackstone | Responsive Grid Behavior

FLUID ACROSS ANYTHING

A screenshot of a corporate website featuring Blackstone's logo in the top left corner. The webpage has a headline "Build with Blackstone" with accompanying text about creating long-term value for investors. Below that, there is a section titled "Insights from Blackstone CEO Conference" with a paragraph explaining the event and programming. Further down, there are sections on investment types like Real Estate, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, and Credit & Insurance, each with placeholder text and dollar amounts.
A webpage layout with sections for financial products, results, featured stories, and newsletter sign-up, with multiple blacked-out images.
Multiple screenshots of a webpage with a title about building with Blackstone, showing sections of text, prices, icons, and blacked-out images.
A size chart for images, with categories from Minimum to Maximum, detailing pixel dimensions, color layers, gutter sizes, and container sizes for different image sizes.

Blackstone | UI Elements

Design Foundations

A style guide page showing different icons and buttons for subscription call-to-action designs. The icons include user symbols, X, arrows, plus and minus signs, and search symbols. The buttons feature variations in color (copper, white, and black) with labels such as 'SUBSCRIBE,' each with different hover states and styling details.
A webpage with a section titled 'Links' that contains various types of links and form input fields. The links include 'READ MORE,' 'Text Link,' 'Text Link - Hover,' and 'Inline Link' with different colors and styles. The form fields include text input for email address, radio buttons for options like 'Radio Default,' 'Radio Pressed,' 'Check Default,' and 'Check Pressed.' The webpage utilizes a clean layout with black, copper, and dark grey colors.
Screenshot of a webpage showing different types of table and accordion styles with dropdown and separator lines sections.
Diagram showing color-coded bar charts with spacing and grid rules for a layout guide, including sections labeled 'Extra Large', 'Small', and 'Example section' with varying breakpoints and spacing rules.
A chart displaying brand, charting, functional, and module palettes with color swatches, color names, Pantone numbers, and RGB color codes.

Blackstone | Components + Interaction

PRIORITIZED Masthead

BX Feature Masthead Mobile
Feature Masthead BX
Screenshot of a corporate financial webpage for Blackstone showing an overview with stock price, dividend information, and links to financial reports, set against a scenic background of a coastal road at sunset.

Blackstone | Components + Interaction

GLOBAL NAVIGATION

Screenshot of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust website homepage, showing navigation menu, resources links, a partial view of a parking lot, and a pop-up advertisement about UC Investments investing in BREIT.
Screenshots of a website's webpage sections including firm overview, business areas, impact, shareholders, news, careers, and insights.
A website footer with quick links, explore Breit, more from Blackstone, legal notices, and regulatory disclosures, on a black background with white text.

Blackstone | Components + Interaction

Feature Cards
& Articles

A website homepage for construction services with a black background, large white text, an aerial cityscape image inside a circle overlay, and a 'Tertiary Button' with an arrow icon.
A split-screen website section featuring a dark background with white text on the left, titled 'Construction Services,' and a photo of solar panels on a roof under a cloudy sky on the right.
Three news cards with images on top and text below, featuring a man's portrait, a residential complex, and a large warehouse building, each with a "READ NOW" button.
Three black tiles with white text labeled 'Fact Card', 'BREIT Marketing Presentation', and 'Property Book'. Each tile has a small brown download button with a downward arrow and the word 'DOWNLOAD' underneath.
Three sections with images and titles. The first section shows a modern building with glass and brick, titled 'Why Private Real Estate'. The second section shows a warehouse or industrial building with rolling hills in the background, titled 'Tax Advantages of REITs'. The third section shows a large warehouse interior with stacked boxes and a forklift, titled 'Prospectus'.
Three sections with titles: 'Leadership & Governance' over a cityscape at night, 'Why BREIT' over train cars in a train yard, and 'Performance' over a white residential building with a garden.
Side-by-side images for financial topics; left image shows a building with solar panels and trees, titled 'Tax Advantages of REITs'; right image shows a residential outdoor patio with chairs around a fire pit, titled 'Investing with BREIT'.
A webpage screenshot titled 'BEHIND THE DEAL: American Campus Communities' with a subtitle about a $12.8 billion acquisition. There is a photograph of a modern multi-story building with a red-brick exterior, glass windows, and a blue sky with scattered clouds. The page includes statistics about properties, beds, lease rate, average distance to campus, and a footer indicating the source as University of Arizona Honors College at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ.
Press Releases webpage showcasing three press release summaries with titles, dates, and brief descriptions, with a 'See All' link at the top right.
Two women having a meeting in an office, with a computer on the desk and a wall with photos and shelves in the background.
Quote about managing Blackstone with a photo of two smiling men in suits during a panel discussion, one with glasses and the other pointing, on a stage with grey background.

Blackstone | Components + Interaction

Case Study &
Insight REPORT Templating

A collection of ten business flyers for various industries, including aerospace, technology, healthcare, transportation, insurance, financial services, construction, and real estate, each displaying company logos, headlines, brief descriptions, and related images.
A collection of eight pages of a report on American campus communities, featuring maps, charts, and text.

OLD FORMAT

Redesigned Featured Case Study & Insights Templating ACC Case Study

United States map with certain states highlighted in various shades of green and black, each with a white circle in the center.

Blackstone | Components + Interaction

DATA VISUALIZATION

A bar chart showing the concentration of investments in different states, with the highest concentration around 15%, and a legend indicating percentages from 0% to 15%.
Comparison of portfolio market trends showing rising demand with increased enrollment from 2013-2020 and fall 2021, alongside low new supply percentages from 2013-2020 and under construction data.
A bar chart showing the distribution of all weather assets, with a title indicating the focus on enrollment growth during periods of economic softness. The chart features three distinct categories labeled Dot Com, GFC, and COVID-19, with bars representing percentages from 2001 to 2021, illustrating trends over time.
Aerial view of downtown Austin, Texas, with campus buildings and ACC assets marked in green, and a shaded area indicating the University of Texas at Austin campus boundary.
Map of Arizona State University campus in Tempe with highlighted areas, including ACC assets and surrounding streets.
Summary of investment categories with dollar amounts and key focus areas, including real estate, private equity, hedge fund solutions, and credit and insurance.
Map of the United States showing college football teams' logos in each state.