Carl Fairclough
The redesigned ethereum.org homepage
The redesigned homepage gave individuals, developers and businesses distinct routes into Ethereum rather than mirroring the organisation’s internal structure.

Could a design system make open-source contribution safer?

The delivery plan connected principles, visual standards, reusable components, and content authoring instead of treating them as separate projects.

Principle lenses
3

Aspirational · functional · ecosystem

Design-to-code target
1:1

Parity between visual styles and implementation

Authoring model
MDX

Reusable components inside contributor-authored pages

  1. 1Design principles
  2. 2Visual audit
  3. 3Component library
  4. 4MDX contribution model

Delivery scope, November 2019. The visual audit included WCAG accessibility checks; the component library was designed for use across both Figma and the ethereum.org codebase.

The original delivery plan connected principles, visual standards, reusable components and MDX contribution into one system.

Ethereum.org information for individuals

Ethereum.org information for developers

Individual and developer journeys used the same underlying content model while presenting different starting points, language and next actions.

Ethereum.org styleguide by Carl Fairclough

Ethereum.org styleguide by Carl Fairclough

The component vocabulary was intentionally small so GitHub contributors could compose credible MDX pages without central design support.

Ethereum.org styleguide by Carl Fairclough

Ethereum.org styleguide by Carl Fairclough

Navigation, search and colour guidance linked visual consistency to the practical contribution workflow rather than treating the system as a static library.

Ethereum.org styleguide by Carl Fairclough

Illustration and icon direction gave the site a recognisable public voice while remaining usable across a growing body of community-authored content.

How far did the new structure travel?

Overall monthly pageviews rose sharply from late 2019, peaked in May 2021, and remained well above the original baseline through September 2022.

Monthly peak
~4.8m

May 2021

Reporting window
36

Monthly observations

Period
3 years

Oct 2019–Sep 2022

Redrawn from the chart shown in Sam Richards’s Devcon Bogotá presentation. Values are approximate because the underlying analytics export was not available.

Sam Richards later reported the programme’s overall pageview growth at Devcon Bogotá and explicitly credited the early foundation of this work.

Did the contribution model support global reach?

Translated-content pageviews grew tenfold during 2020, while the localisation programme expanded into a distributed contributor network.

Translated pageviews
10×

Growth during 2020

Languages
30

Supported by the programme

Volunteers
467

Across 52 language groups

Redrawn from the chart shown in Sam Richards’s Devcon Bogotá presentation. Values are approximate because the underlying analytics export was not available.

Translated-content pageviews grew tenfold during 2020 as the localisation programme reached 30 languages, 467 volunteers and 52 language groups after my engagement.