Frappe is a multi-product company. We build ERPNext, CRM, Helpdesk, Gameplan, Insights, and a long list of others, all on top of Frappe Framework. For a long time, each of those products was making its own decisions about the basics. What a button looks like. How forms are spaced. Which typeface to use. Where the active state lives. Different teams, different calls, different answers to the same questions.

The products worked. People used them. But you could tell they came from different hands. And in a multi-product company, that adds up to a lot of inconsistency for users who move between them every day.

So in 2022, we decided to fix this mess. We started with Frappe UI, a Vue component library that gave developers a shared set of building blocks to build on. Then we built Espresso, the design system that sits underneath Frappe UI, in collaboration with Timeless. The idea was simple. If every team starts from the same foundation, the products that come out of it will feel consistent without anyone having to think too hard about it.

Today, Helpdesk, CRM, Insights, and all of our newer products are all built on Espresso.