Design system: a series of components that can be reused in different combinations, allowing companies to manage design at scale.

Every company — big and small — is building or planning on building a design system for its SaaS offerings. It makes sense. Having a design system in place is an important step for scaling your organization.

The benefits of implementing a design system include:

Efficiency for your team. Design systems save time and money. Instead of creating components from scratch, designers and developers can re-use existing pieces and create new pages with more efficiency and speed.

Design systems save time and money. Instead of creating components from scratch, designers and developers can re-use existing pieces and create new pages with more efficiency and speed. Consistency for your users. Design systems enable your team to create familiar experiences for your audience, eliminating inconsistencies and making sure that every time someone interacts with your company, their experience will always look and feel the same.

Design systems enable your team to create familiar experiences for your audience, eliminating inconsistencies and making sure that every time someone interacts with your company, their experience will always look and feel the same. Scale for your company. With efficiency comes the ability to scale. Design systems allow for automation in the design process — which means companies have the ability to build more with less resources.

But building a design system isn’t simple at all. So here are a few links, articles, examples, tutorials and talks about design systems that can help you in the process of creating a design system in your company.

Hurry up, though! The cool name options for design systems (Plasma, Fluent, Harmony, Solid, Polaris) are almost all gone.

Design Systems — References

Mailchimp UX: Design System

IBM Design Language: a shared vocabulary for design

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines

Microsoft’s Fluent Design System

Atlassian’s End-to-End Design Language

Airbnb’s Design Language System

BBC’s Global Experience Language

Intuit’s Harmony Design System

Salesforce’s Lightning Design System

Buzzfeed’s Solid Style Guide

Shopify’s Polaris Design System

Google’s Material Design

Fitbit’s Components Guide

Zendesk’s Garden Design Library

USA Web Design Standards

WeWork’s Plasma Design System

Design Systems — Articles

Selling a Design System at your company

Atomic design: how to design systems of components

Selling a Design System before asking for buy-in

How to get a head start on Design Systems

Designing Design Systems for complex products

Creating a product Design System in Sketch

Setting up a design system

Why Design Systems Fail

The most exciting design systems are boring

On Design Systems: sell the output, not the workflow

Design Systems — Videos

Design Systems — Specialists to follow

Shahrzad Samadzadeh

Allison Shaw

Magera Moon

Caitlin Osbahr

Diana Mounter

Audrey Hacq

Nick Stamas

Wen Wang

James Mulholland

Additional Resources

Design Systems, the book

Design System coalition

Brad Frost’s “Designing Systems”

DesignSystems.com