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EnglishWhat Are Digital Products and How Are They Built?
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Digital products are software-based experiences people use directly — apps, services, and platforms — as opposed to physical goods or static marketing pages. In a brand and design context, they're the interactive layer of a brand: the thing a user opens, taps, reads, or subscribes to. Upstatement, a global design and technology studio, describes its own output as "Digital products, apps, and services" alongside brand identity, design systems, and large-scale websites — a useful split for understanding where product work sits relative to other design disciplines.
Digital products vs. the things around them
Studios that build digital products usually also build the assets that support them. These are related but distinct kinds of work:
| Category | What it is | Example from the studio's own list |
|---|---|---|
| Brand identity and design systems | The visual and structural rules a brand runs on | Brand identity and design systems |
| Large-scale websites | Content-heavy, organization-wide web presences | Large-scale websites |
| Digital products, apps, and services | Interactive tools people use to do something | Digital products, apps, and services |
| Editorial tools and media platforms | Systems for producing, managing, and publishing content | Editorial tools and media platforms |
The distinction matters because a website redesign and a product build have different success criteria. A website is largely judged on communication and reach; a product is judged on whether it works repeatedly for its users. The same studio may do both, but the deliverables, timelines, and testing differ.
How an editorial mindset shapes product design
Upstatement describes itself as having "journalistic roots" and an "editorial mindset," and states that it believes "all brands are digital, and that systems can tell stories." That framing has practical consequences for how products get built:
- Story first, interface second. The team treats content and narrative as the spine of the product, not an afterthought filled in after the layout is done.
- Systems over one-off screens. The stated belief that "systems can tell stories" points toward design systems and reusable components rather than bespoke screens for every case.
- Editorial tools as first-class products. Media platforms and publishing tools appear in the studio's own list of what it builds, which means the people making the content are treated as users too.
This is a specific point of view, not a universal rule. A studio with an engineering-first or growth-first orientation would weight the same project differently — more emphasis on performance budgets or conversion experiments, less on narrative structure.
What the work looks like in practice
The studio's featured client list — Nike, Vogue, Etsy, MIT, Harvard, Microsoft, Walmart, PBS News, and ESPN — spans consumer brands, media organizations, and institutions. Two named projects illustrate the range:
- Nike: "A global digital brand reset" — brand-level work expressed through digital channels.
- Etsy: "The Universe of Special" — a campaign or brand expression rather than a utility product.
The MIT.edu redesign drew a notable piece of third-party feedback: Don Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group and author of The Design of Everyday Things, is quoted saying, "This is easy to use." For a product or platform, ease of use from a usability authority is a meaningful signal — it suggests the editorial ambition didn't come at the cost of basic function.
Client-side quotes point at the same tension between craft and outcome. Travis Daub, Director of Digital at PBS News, describes being "stunned by the perfect execution on every element," while Brené Brown's comment focuses on being listened to "deep enough and wide enough" that the result was emotionally moving. Read together, they describe a process where research and execution quality are both treated as deliverables.
How to judge whether a studio fits a digital product build
If you're evaluating a partner for product work, the studio's own framing gives you concrete things to check:
- Does their portfolio include products, or only websites? A studio that lists "digital products, apps, and services" separately from "large-scale websites" is signaling it treats them as different disciplines.
- Do they have a stated point of view? Upstatement publishes "Points of view" including "Community products are the future" and "All brands are digital." A clear position tells you how they'll make trade-offs when requirements conflict.
- Who are their clients, and what kind of work did they do? Institutional and media clients (MIT, PBS News, ESPN, Vogue) suggest strength in content-heavy, editorial-driven products. Consumer brand work (Nike, Etsy) suggests strength in brand expression.
- Is there evidence of usability, not just aesthetics? Third-party validation from a usability figure is a stronger signal than a visual portfolio alone.
None of this tells you cost or timeline — the studio's public materials don't state pricing, and no pricing signals are available. Treat scope, budget, and schedule as questions to raise directly rather than assumptions to infer.
The short version
Digital products are the interactive, software-based part of a brand's presence — apps, services, and platforms — and they're built differently from brand identities or marketing websites. A studio with an editorial mindset approaches them by starting from story and content, building reusable systems rather than one-off screens, and treating the people who publish content as users in their own right. When choosing a partner, look for a portfolio that separates product work from website work, a stated point of view, and evidence that the result is usable and not just well-designed.