For over 100 years, Folha de S.Paulo has been among Brazil’s most influential newspapers, dedicated to independent journalism and “the defense of democracy.” Folha has endured by embracing digital technologies that engage readers of all ages, delivering up-to-the-minute news in easy-to-digest formats across platforms and devices.

“We always choose diverse voices, diverse perspectives, and diverse ideas to shine a light on important issues,” says Camila Marques, managing editor and a Folha newsroom veteran since 2004. “This made us effective 100 years ago and makes us effective now.” In recent years, the newspaper has worked to appeal to younger readers who prefer to get their news on the go, via their mobile phones.

To maximize user engagement in a mobile-first world, Folha’s legacy design system needed a complete overhaul. Their goals were ambitious and included increasing download speeds, upgrading security, and streamlining production.

Folha has been a long-time news partner of Google in Brazil. One ongoing collaboration is a massive project to digitize 2.5 million photos and 6,000 political cartoons, and archive identifying data to make the content searchable for readers. When Folha decided to create a new design framework to optimize product performance and improve user experience, they turned to Google for support and guidance.

Marques shared her vision: “The magic of design happens behind the scenes. We wanted to deliver the best experience for our readers while improving workflow and productivity in our newsroom.”

The work began in 2023 through a Google program. “We had a very manual workflow, not integrated,” says Patrícia Pimenta, Folha product manager. “In this design system project, we saw the opportunity to improve our operations and elevate our technical stack.” This meant expanding staff to include full-stack developers focused on products and DevOps specialists on operations.

In 2024, Folha began building the new design system framework and workflow, with integrated, reusable, and customizable components based on design tokens. Folha mapped out their strategy with milestones and goals, consulting with Google along the way. In November 2025, the newspaper rolled out the Guia Folha (The Folha Guide), “an up-to-date source of cultural and leisure suggestions in São Paulo,” and the first subdomain launched using the new design system.

Folha’s new design system can serve as inspiration for other newspapers seeking to simplify processes while better engaging consumers. It’s already delivering promising results, with LCP at 1.7 seconds on mobile (26 percent better since launch) and approximately 1 second on desktop, with main content visible in under 2 seconds. In addition, CLS was reduced by over 67 percent, eliminating the previous critical visual instability. “Mobile gains directly benefit 90 percent of our user base, including [resolving] unstable connections,” Pimenta says.

“Since launch, the new Guia site has been outperforming its pre-launch baseline, delivering a 20-percent increase in audience and a 28-percent uplift in subscriptions compared to the average of the previous six months,” Pimenta adds. “This growth was achieved while keeping editorial output essentially flat, with only a 4-percent increase in publishing volume.”

In addition, the new system offers lower maintenance load and reduced security exposure, with a more consistent, intuitive experience across products, and a measurable upside in UX, accessibility, and SEO ranking potential. They’ve also laid the foundation for the Folha Group’s next wave of features and products.

“We have to assure our board that technology is worth the investment, and Google gives us the guidelines,” Marques says. “We are always bigger and stronger through our partnerships with Google.”