Elevate Your Brand with a Design System

Nicole D'Amico | ABM Lead, Growth Manager

September 9, 2022

I’ve been passionate about design systems since I started at Phase2 seven years ago. With many champions across the company, including Jake Strawn, our Principal Engineer, Frontend, I continue to learn more and more about the benefits. Marketers, in particular, will find value in how a design system preserves and protects their brand, enables easier brand expansion, and facilitates accessibility.

What is a Design System?

A design system is a set of standards using reusable components that accompany a collection of UI and visual design assets. Clear documentation is used to create design systems. Frontend developers and designers configure design systems to build websites, applications, and digital experiences. Design systems help to unite segmented capabilities and teams across a company to move in lockstep on collaboration and decision-making.

Additionally, a design system:

Acts a single source of truth
Houses all design elements like typography, brand colors, icons, etc.
Provides a framework for projects to ensure that all components meet brand standards, thus maintaining brand integrity
Outlines project frameworks
Accelerates implementation

What it takes to make an effective design system and things to consider:

You need the input and expertise of UX, design, and engineers
Your teams need to be up to speed on brand guidelines

Many organizations have already invested in design systems, including HubSpot, Capital One, Dropbox, Mastercard Data & Services, Human Rights Watch, and more. Design systems can be beneficial to companies of all sizes.

How a Design System Helps Business

You will save time and money.

Research indicates there are three specific internal motivators for having a design system. Design systems:

Are efficient
Great for onboarding
Scale well

Design systems allow for rapid prototyping of existing, production-ready components. Teams can reuse design and code. This is huge for productivity.

You can also onboard team members more efficiently. Once your design system is in place, you will have made standardization decisions across products. This will accelerate the onboarding of employees since you already have clearly defined, well-documented tools. UXPin states, “Scaling design through hiring, without putting standards in place, is a myth. With every new hire, new ideas for color palettes, typography and patterns appear in the product, growing the inconsistency and increasing the maintenance cost. Every new hire increases the design entropy.”

Your digital experience will be accessible.

According to the CDC, 61 million Americans have a disability. That is one in every four U.S. adults. Imagine struggling with common, everyday activities like completing an online purchase or navigating a website. This would be frustrating for anyone. Design systems enable an accessible-first mindset.

Accessibility is built into design language and component libraries. Accessibility is considered from both UI/UX and the code repository. Make sure that you integrate good accessibility practices into your system. Designing for accessibility helps everyone, sustains the business, and ensures web compliance.

Your brand will be protected, and you’ll get a jump on future mergers and acquisitions.

Your brand is more than your logo. No matter the industry or product, a brand is its most important asset. It’s your connection and how you interact with the world. Your brand exemplifies your why and connects on an emotional level. Everything that you do should ultimately, protect and grow your brand.

Having a design system establishes brand recognition and builds trust. A well-defined design system will guide implementation and acceptance across all levels of your organization—adhering to brand guidelines protects you from brand drift. Design systems also help with mergers and acquisitions (M&As) since you already have a starter kit of your brand’s guidelines and components to build new digital properties in your digital experience platform (DXP).