A design system can come in varying shapes and kinds. At it’s heart a design system provides a single source of truth that aligns teams, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and quality across digital products. It accelerates delivery by reducing duplication and enabling designers and developers to focus on user needs rather than rebuilding components.

By scaling consistently across platforms and eco-systems, design systems strengthen brand recognition, usability, and long-term product sustainability.

And they don’t have to mean a lack of creativity or variance across an eco-system… they can grow, flex, morph into living things.

I’ve had the privilege of creating many types of design systems — and have to say am ‘a bit of a fan’ in the right context. Check out a sampler of ones I’ve created below: