Georgia Gateway Adopts Orchard
August 26, 2025
Why Orchard? The Case for Georgia’s Official Design System
Digital services are the front door to the government. Whether it’s renewing a license, applying for benefits, or accessing important health information, Georgians expect fast, clear, and accessible online experiences. Yet across agencies, applications often look and behave differently — leading to user confusion, higher development costs, and accessibility gaps.
That’s why we created Orchard, Georgia’s official design system. Orchard offers a shared foundation for building consistent, accessible, and trustworthy digital services. In this post, we’ll explore the five biggest benefits of using Orchard in your applications — whether you’re building in-house or with a third-party vendor.
1. Consistent, Trustworthy User Experiences
Orchard provides a unified set of components and design patterns that make every service feel like it’s part of the same digital ecosystem. Users shouldn’t have to re-learn how to navigate each agency’s site or app. Orchard ensures:
- Familiar navigation and layout across services
- Clear and consistent typography, spacing, and color usage
- Unified tone and content guidelines
This consistency builds trust with the public and reinforces Georgia’s digital identity.
2. Faster Development and Lower Costs
Every button, form, and alert you create from scratch adds time — and risk — to your development cycle. Orchard offers a growing library of pre-built, tested, and accessible UI components. That means:
- Designers spend less time reinventing patterns
- Developers ship features faster using ready-made code
- Teams avoid duplicating effort across agencies
3. Accessibility by Default
Accessibility isn’t optional — it’s a legal requirement. Orchard bakes accessibility into every component from the start:
- WCAG 2.1 AA-compliant components
- Semantic markup and screen reader support
- Inclusive design principles baked into layouts and color contrast
Using Orchard helps your team build accessible services by default, reducing the risk of compliance issues and expanding reach to all Georgians.
4. Flexible, Vendor-Friendly Integration
Orchard was built to integrate seamlessly with a wide range of tools and workflows:
- Compatible with modern frameworks like React and Vue
- Designed with theming and customization in mind
- Easy for vendors and contractors to adopt on new or existing projects
Whether you're building a simple form or a complex application, Orchard provides the scaffolding to get started quickly — and build responsibly.
5. Supported by a Growing Community
You’re not adopting Orchard alone. Our design system team provides:
- Robust documentation and onboarding guides
- Office hours and support channels for developers and designers
- A growing community of early adopters who share feedback and improvements
By using Orchard, you’re joining a network of teams across Georgia working to raise the bar for public service design.
Ready to Get Started?
Orchard isn’t just a toolkit — it’s a step toward better, faster, and more inclusive public services. By adopting it now, you’ll deliver services that are easier for Georgians to use; reduce cost and complexity for your team; ensure your applications meet accessibility standards; and align with Georgia’s digital strategy for the future
This post was created with a little help from AI for brainstorming and drafting, but every word was reviewed and refined by the author.
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