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Design systems

A design system is a product. Treat it like one or it dies.

Two systems built from nothing: the first company-wide system at PDF Solutions, and the governed component grammar behind Barnabus.

Industry
Design systems
Where
PDF Solutions · Barnabus Labs
When
2022 — now
Role
System owner, component grammar, governance
Tokens · illustrative
Lot 24-0817One change to a token, and every product moves with it.
Search lots
DispositionCompare
radius.md 10px · density 1.00 · surface light
Drag the tokens. Three values restyle every component at once, which is the whole argument for a system.

The screens.

Three designed screens · desktop · drag to explore →

Tokens
Component
Adoption

Sample screens designed for this portfolio to show the thinking. Not production UI, and no client branding.

The calls I made.

Tokens first, components second.

Colour, type, space, radius and density are decided once and named. Components are what falls out.

One grammar for dense tools.

Expert software needs tables, filters and panels that behave the same way everywhere, so learning one product teaches the next.

A contract with engineering.

Every component ships with its states, its accessibility rules and its acceptance criteria. Design and code version together.

Adoption is the metric.

A system nobody uses is a style guide. Coverage and time-to-first-screen are reviewed like product numbers.