Design · December 10, 2025
Design Systems for Developers Who Hate Design Systems
How I think about component libraries, tokens, and documentation when building for scale.
I’ve built and inherited several design systems. Here’s what I’ve learned about making them actually work.
Start With Constraints, Not Components
The mistake is starting with a component library. Start with design tokens — color, typography, spacing, elevation. Once those are stable, components almost build themselves.
The Rule of Three
Don’t abstract until you have three instances of the same pattern. The first is a coincidence, the second is a coincidence, the third is a pattern. Build the abstraction then.
Documentation Is the Product
An undocumented component will be reimplemented. Write docs as you build, not after. The best documentation is a live example with the code visible.