One Unified Design for Two Brands and Languages
Hitta.se and Fonecta are Sweden's and Finland's respective leading people and business directory. As interim design lead during Hitta.se and Fonecta's merger, I shaped the product design for their B2B suite of tools that help business owners manage customer reviews and social posting in one place.
Problem Description
When Fonecta acquired Hitta.se, Sweden’s leading people and business directory, the goal was to unify their shared B2B product across two brands and languages.
In both markets, business owners struggled to manage reviews across platforms and maintain a consistent social media presence. I was brought in to bring these workflows together in one cohesive platform.
Hitta.se
Sweden's leading business directory, helping SMBs manage their online presence and get found by local customers.
Fonecta
Finland's leading digital media and directory company. Acquired Hitta.se to expand into the Swedish market.
Design
Modernizing the Visual Language
Over the years, the product had accumulated visual debt. The new editor cleans it up: clearer type, more breathing room, lighter surfaces and more information about where their business information are shared to.
Before
After
See where your info shows up
Beyond a UI facelift, the new editor shows where the business information is shared: on Hitta, Google, ChatGPT and 35+ other platforms.
1 Design, 1 Product, 2 Brands
One major goal of the project was to create a scalable experience that unified both products around the same core UX, while preserving the local brand characteristics that users in Finland and Sweden were already familiar with.
The design was built on a robust shared design system, with each components and tokens corresponding to two brands as two themes. This reduces duplicated design and development work and allows future improvement to be shipped faster to users.
Different tiers, one component
Hitta.se and Fonecta each have their own subscription tiers, with different names and colours. The tier badge is one shared component that adapts to each brand's lineup.
Same meaning, longer words
Sharing one design comes with challenges, like language differences. Finnish tends to run longer than Swedish for the same sentence, so every component had to stretch without breaking the layout.
Design once, ship twice
A robust shared design system meant each screen was designed one time. Adapting it for the other market took minimal work: brand colours, tier names and copy changed, the layout stayed the same.
Afterthoughts
Bringing two products, two brands and two languages into one design taught me where to share and where to adapt:
Unify the core, localise the surface. Business owners in Sweden and Finland kept the brand they already knew, while the experience underneath became one product.
Design for the longest language. Finnish often needs more room than Swedish to say the same thing, so components had to handle the longer copy from the start instead of being patched for one market later.
A robust design system is what makes “design once” real.
Special thanks to Dalite Bagner Jensmar (Digital Designer), Emilia Niklasson (Project Manager), and the Hitta.se and Fonecta teams for your work and collaboration on this project.
