Ellipsis 2: From Legacy Tool to Scalable System
About the project
Date:
Mar 9, 2025
Client:
The Washington Post
Why the newsroom needed a CMS upgrade
The Washington Post’s legacy CMS, Ellipsis, had reached its limits. Built years ago, it wasn’t designed for the speed, scale, or complexity of a modern newsroom. Editors couldn’t collaborate in real time, only one person could make changes at a time, and version tracking relied on Slack messages and memory.
This made content creation feel chaotic, not empowering.
[IMAGE]
Setting the foundation for scalable change
As the lead senior designer on this project, I was tasked with helping reimagine the entire authoring and publishing experience, while also scaling our design system to support future innovation. This wasn’t just a visual refresh. It was a total shift in how journalism gets made, reviewed, and delivered.
The task: Build a collaborative, efficient CMS platform—and make it adaptable enough to support every desk and format at The Post.
[IMAGE: Team alignment session, sketches, or roadmap milestone]
Caption: "Laying out what success could look like across teams."
“From day one, Meelo was incredibly organized and intuitive. She helped us translate a pretty complex product into a website that feels light, fast, and incredibly user-friendly.”
Jonas Erikkson
Head of Product, Snowlake Agency
Laying the groundwork with the Washington Post design system at the core
I knew we couldn’t achieve newsroom-wide change without a strong foundation. I focused first on redesigning and expanding our design system, from typography and layout to component logic and documentation.
WPDS Design System
[Make a note about the existing design system and why we expanded it to include a sister system for the tools]
We developed a central pattern library that supports media-rich content, adaptable storytelling formats, and responsive tools for both desktop and mobile editors.
[IMAGE: Figma component library or usage examples]
Caption: "Reusable patterns helped us move faster and stay aligned across teams."
Laying the groundwork with the Washington Post design system at the core
I knew we couldn’t achieve newsroom-wide change without a strong foundation. I focused first on redesigning and expanding our design system, from typography and layout to component logic and documentation.
WPDS Design System
[Make a note about the existing design system and why we expanded it to include a sister system for the tools]
We developed a central pattern library that supports media-rich content, adaptable storytelling formats, and responsive tools for both desktop and mobile editors.
[IMAGE: Figma component library or usage examples]
Caption: "Reusable patterns helped us move faster and stay aligned across teams."
