KS← BACKWORK / PROJECT 02
08, OCT 2024
PROJECT 02 · DESIGN SYSTEM · CONSUMER

Asian Paints Header

6 brands, one global header

ROLE
UX Designer · Design System
CLIENT
Asian Paints
WHEN
Jul–Nov 2024
IMPACT
6 brands unified
The unified global header — brand switcher (Asian Paints / Beautiful Homes / The White Teak Company) above a single primary nav and utility actions, live across all consumer traffic
The unified global header — brand switcher (Asian Paints / Beautiful Homes / The White Teak Company) above a single primary nav and utility actions, live across all consumer traffic
THE PROBLEM
↳ what wasn't working

Asian Paints isn't one brand. The group runs a portfolio — the flagship paint business, Beautiful Homes (interior design), The White Teak Company (lighting + decor), and a long tail of sub-brands and product lines. Each ran its own consumer surface with its own header, search, account model, and visual register. A customer who started on Asian Paints couldn't smoothly walk into Beautiful Homes. Brand recognition fragmented at the moment it should have compounded.

The brief: unify the entry point. One global header, one brand switcher, one navigation logic, served across every consumer surface in the group — without making the body of any individual brand site feel less like itself.

THE APPROACH
↳ how I tackled it

Before any pixels, the team and I printed every existing screen across the three brands and taped them to a wall — full app flows, all decision branches, the lot. Sticky notes called out gaps, duplications, and "why does this exist?" moments. Standing in front of that wall is what made the unified header obvious as the wedge: every brand had reinvented the same five components in slightly different ways, and the only way through was to see all of them together at once.

I led the header unification on asianpaints.com — designing the brand switcher row, the primary nav, the search affordance, and the utility cluster (account, location, cart, primary CTA) so the same component carries across the group while letting body content stay brand-native below it.

Beyond the surface header, I drove a cross-brand design system: advanced interactive component sets that compressed prototyping time across the design org, and a shared system for navigation / search / accounts that six brands could plug into rather than rebuild. The header you see live is the visible tip of that system.

In parallel I designed AMP HTML emailers for the marketing team — interactive, on-brand emails that became some of the highest-performing lead-gen campaigns the company ran that year.

  • CONTRIBUTIONS
  • Drove cross-brand design system for consistent navigation, search, accounts
  • Built advanced interactive component sets — compressed prototyping time
  • Designed AMP HTML emailers — among highest-performing lead-gen campaigns
Wall-mapping the cross-brand app — every existing screen printed and taped up, sticky notes calling out gaps and duplications. Standing in front of the whole thing at once is what made the unified header surface as the wedge.
Wall-mapping the cross-brand app — every existing screen printed and taped up, sticky notes calling out gaps and duplications. Standing in front of the whole thing at once is what made the unified header surface as the wedge.
Products megamenu — five top-level groups (For Interior Walls / For Exterior Walls / Waterproofing / Other Surface / Shop) organise 20+ destinations into a scannable taxonomy, so a customer can find what they came for without drilling
Products megamenu — five top-level groups (For Interior Walls / For Exterior Walls / Waterproofing / Other Surface / Shop) organise 20+ destinations into a scannable taxonomy, so a customer can find what they came for without drilling
THE OUTCOME
↳ what shipped

The unified header is live across asianpaints.com and the broader portfolio surfaces. Six brands now share a consistent navigation contract — a customer learns one mental model and can move between properties without re-learning where things live.

Note on this case study: most of the deeper artefacts (the component sets, the brand switcher dropdown states, the AMP emailers) aren't in my hands right now. What you see here is the live consumer header on asianpaints.com — the most public, most-trafficked piece of the work.

6brands unified
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