A design system is a shared toolkit—components, grids, principles, usage and accessibility guidelines—that lets teams ship consistent, on-brand experiences faster. You likely need one if you see inconsistency across touchpoints, poor cross-team collaboration, steep ramp-ups, duplicated work, slow delivery, or trouble scaling designs. Core pieces: clear docs, reusable UI components/patterns, visual foundations (color, type, spacing, icons), and design tokens to standardize styling. Best practices: plan for scalability, balance consistency with flexibility, center real user/team needs, educate and onboard widely, and secure org-wide buy-in.

VIEW ON FRONTIFY.COM