Design Systems for startups

Part 2 What does a Design System look like for startups?

What does a Proto-Design System look like? For starters, it’s going to be lightweight. And when I say ‘lightweight’, I really mean it. If IBM’s Carbon is the Rolls Royce of Design Systems, startups are going to need something more akin to a bicycle. Gotta walk before you can fly, right? Plus, a Design System that works for a large organizations would absolutely crush a startup, who’s major advantage is speed and flexibility. So keep it simple, and don’t get hung up on perfection. 

For example, a Proto-Design System can be as simple as a collection of Design Tokens. This is the basic, atomic stuff like color, typography, spacing and grid. In the beginning, you can go a long way with very little.

The key here is that whatever you create in your Figma library, needs to align with what’s in the codebase. If you’ve created something beautiful and elegant, but it doesn’t align with what your engineer has available, you’ve missed the mark. The simplest way to accomplish this is to co-create the Design Tokens with engineers. Lacking that, design your tokens to match what already exists in the code. The point here is to align engineers and designers, not to create the Sistine Chapel. 

And whatever you do, don’t get hung up on the idea of perfection. A lot of folks get seduced by the idea of creating the perfect Design System. They use the opportunity of creating a Design System to have an identity crises and completely re-do their branding. This is totally fine if you’ve got loads of funding, resources and time. But for most startups, this isn’t the case. Remember that even if you establish the most hideous Design Tokens known to man, they’re still going to make it easier to re-brand later.

However, knowing what you want to make is only half the battle. The real challenge is figuring out how. Especially when you’re a startup working with limited resources. Check out Part 3 of this series as we talk about how the Design System sausage is actually made when you’re a startup.