A design system is a product, not a project. Treating it that way is the difference between one that scales and one that gathers dust.
Start small and real
Don't try to design every component up front. Extract patterns from real screens you're already shipping, and grow the system from genuine need.
Tokens are the foundation
Design tokens for color, spacing, and type let you change the system once and propagate everywhere. They're the single most important investment in scalability.
Treat adoption as a feature
Documentation, examples, and developer ergonomics drive adoption. A beautiful system nobody uses has no value.
Hannah Schmidt
Head of Design
Hannah writes about building and scaling great software teams at Ofstech.
