Empowering teams for consistent CX: eBay’s playbook transformation.
To improve consistency and elevate the customer experience across all digital touchpoints, eBay partnered with forma&co to create the eBay Playbook—a centralised hub of brand guidelines, UX patterns, and ready-to-use templates.
This strategic design system empowered internal teams to move faster, stay aligned, and deliver a more cohesive experience for millions of users worldwide. The result? A streamlined brand presence, reduced design inconsistencies, and a significantly more intuitive experience for both customers and creator
Following eBay’s brand refresh in 2017, the company developed a wide array of guidelines to support its renewed identity. While these tools proved useful for marketing and design teams, non-creative teams struggled to apply the brand consistently, particularly when creating presentations and customer-facing materials. The existing Playbook offered too much flexibility and lacked the practical direction needed for day-to-day execution across the wider organisation.
This project set out to bridge that gap by expanding and enhancing the eBay Playbook. Working closely with eBay’s internal brand group, we re-evaluated and redefined the system to make it more accessible, actionable, and scalable. The result was a comprehensive suite of brand assets and templates, including strategic guidelines, usage tutorials, and modular building blocks, designed to empower all teams, creative and non-creative alike.
The updated Playbook not only reinforced brand consistency across departments and vendors, but also made it easier for everyone to bring the eBay brand to life with clarity and confidence.
‘Tools’ not ‘Rules’. Enhancing internal customer experience
As eBay’s brand system expanded, with 58 colours and countless layout options, it became harder for non-design teams to confidently create on-brand materials. The complexity led to inconsistent execution, delays, and a fragmented brand experience.
To improve the customer experience and reduce friction and errors, we shifted from rigid brand rules to a more intuitive, tool-based approach. We developed a robust library of production-ready templates and customisable assets that enabled all teams to quickly produce brand-compliant content without design expertise. These tools were designed for flexibility, allowing for easy mix-and-match use while maintaining visual consistency.
By applying UX strategy, design systems thinking, and template engineering, we built a scalable solution that simplified brand activation, reduced design bottlenecks, and significantly improved the experience for internal teams working with the brand every day.
Brand Building Blocks
At the heart of eBay’s brand system are its modular building blocks: the foundational components that bring the identity to life across channels. To support internal teams in building consistent and engaging content, we expanded the Playbook with a flexible library of brand-approved design elements tailored to real-world needs.
We developed a wide variety of customisable backgrounds, animated assets, and content blocks, each aligned with eBay’s visual language. These components were created in every color of the brand’s expansive palette, with variations optimised for different text lengths, content types, and communication formats, from sales decks to campaign visuals.
By combining motion design, content strategy, and visual system thinking, we gave teams a richer toolbox to work with, one that made it easier to create visually dynamic, on-brand content with minimal effort. The result: a consistent and expressive internal brand experience that supported storytelling, accelerated content creation, and elevated brand quality across all touchpoints.
The results: Empowered teams and brand consistency
The reimagined Playbook delivered a measurable improvement in eBay’s internal customer experience, making it easier for non-creative teams to create on-brand, compelling content at scale. By transforming brand rules into intuitive tools—complete with executional templates, simplified brand resources, and flexible sales assets—we eliminated guesswork and boosted confidence across departments.
From typography to layouts and photography, teams were empowered with mix-and-match assets and smart, adaptable systems. These improvements not only reinforced brand consistency, but also streamlined content creation and enabled more effective brand storytelling company-wide.
The results in numbers
8
simplified colour palettes
integrated across PowerPoint, Slides, and Keynote templates for effortless theme-switching and brand compliance.
+100
brand-approved templates
created to support internal, external, and partner communications.
x5
faster asset creation
reported by non-creative teams using the new Playbook resources.
1
single source of truth
for brand photography, messaging, and data tools significantly reduced duplicated work and design inconsistencies.
“Before the new Playbook, staying on brand felt like a constant challenge, especially for teams without design backgrounds. The updated system changed everything. The templates, tools, and clear guidelines made it incredibly easy for us to create professional, on-brand materials without second-guessing. It’s faster, more consistent, and honestly a game-changer for how we collaborate and communicate across the business.”
eBay
Internal Brand & Communications Manager