Design System Services
Your product moves faster when designers and engineers share the same language. We build the component infrastructure your team needs to ship consistently, at scale.
Since 2006
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$125M+ client revenue supported
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4+ year avg. client relationship
A design system is the single source of truth for how your product looks, feels, and behaves. When it's built well, designers stop recreating components from scratch, engineers stop translating vague specs into code, and the entire product team moves faster. We build design systems that are actually used: grounded in your existing product, documented for your team, and structured to grow with your codebase.
A design system is infrastructure - it either accelerates everything or it blocks everything
Most teams feel the absence of a design system before they can articulate what's missing. Designers rebuild the same button in five different files. Engineers make implementation decisions that should have been design decisions. The product looks slightly different across every surface it touches. None of it is anyone's fault - it's a systems problem. A well-built design system eliminates the class of decisions that shouldn't require decision-making, freeing your team to focus on the problems that actually require judgment.
Your design and engineering teams are solving the same problems independently.
When designers and engineers don't share a component library, both sides end up making the same decisions - separately, inconsistently, and repeatedly. A designer creates a dropdown for one feature. An engineer implements a similar dropdown for another. They look different, behave differently, and no one owns either of them. A design system collapses this duplicated effort into a single source of truth that both sides reference, not maintain independently.
Your product is visually inconsistent across surfaces.
Inconsistency isn't just an aesthetic problem - it erodes user trust. When buttons are different sizes on different pages, when spacing is slightly off in the mobile app but fine on web, when the same UI pattern has three different visual treatments, users register the friction even when they can't name it. A design system enforces consistency at the source, so every new feature inherits the same visual language automatically instead of approximating it from memory.
Your system is designed for today's codebase, not tomorrow's AI-assisted development.
AI-assisted development changes what a design system needs to do. When engineers are using AI tools to generate code, a well-structured component library and clear token architecture becomes the spec those tools work from. Design systems built on a clear token layer - spacing, color, typography, elevation - give AI coding tools the structured context they need to generate consistent output. A system built today without that architecture will need to be rebuilt when your team adopts AI development workflows.
Services
Design System Audit
A structured evaluation of your existing component library, token architecture, documentation, and adoption patterns - identifying what's working, what's inconsistent, what's missing, and where the highest-leverage improvements are. Audit findings become the foundation for a focused build or refactor plan
Component Library Build
A production-ready component library built in Figma, your front-end framework of choice (React, Vue, Svelte, Web Components), or both - covering the core UI patterns your product uses most, with documented variants, states, and usage guidelines
Design Token Architecture
A structured token system for color, typography, spacing, elevation, and motion - built as the foundation beneath your component library so visual decisions can be updated globally rather than component-by-component. Token architecture is what makes a design system scalable and AI-development-compatible
Documentation & Adoption
A design system is only as useful as its documentation. We build usage guidelines, contribution workflows, and decision frameworks that make adoption the path of least resistance - so your team reaches for the system first instead of building around it
Design System Maintenance Retainer
Design systems drift without active stewardship. We offer ongoing maintenance retainers that keep your component library and token architecture in sync with your evolving product - adding new patterns, deprecating outdated components, and ensuring documentation stays current as your team grows
Figma-to-Code Handoff Optimization
Close the gap between design and engineering with structured handoff workflows, auto-layout conventions, and component naming systems that reduce implementation ambiguity and give engineers the context they need to build accurately without a synchronous review meeting for every component
Process
1. Audit & Discovery
We start by understanding what you already have. We audit your existing components, tokens, documentation, and adoption patterns - talking to the designers and engineers who use the system day-to-day to understand where it's working and where it's breaking down. If you're starting from scratch, we inventory your product's UI patterns to understand the scope of what needs to be systematized. The audit gives us a baseline and a prioritized build plan before we write a line of code or create a single component.
2. Architecture & Planning
We define the token architecture, component hierarchy, naming conventions, and tooling decisions that will govern the system. This includes decisions about how the design system connects to your codebase, how tokens are structured across platforms, and how the Figma library maps to code components. These decisions are harder to change later than the components themselves - we take the time to get them right before building begins.
3. Foundation Build
We build the foundational layer: design tokens, base styles, and the core components that appear most frequently across your product. We work iteratively, shipping components for team review before moving forward, and we build in Figma and code in parallel so handoff friction is eliminated by design rather than resolved after the fact.
4. Expansion & Refinement
With the foundation in place, we expand the system to cover the full range of UI patterns your product uses - complex components, responsive variants, interaction states, and edge cases. We refine based on feedback from the designers and engineers using the system in active feature work, not just reviewing components in isolation.
5. Documentation & Handoff
We document every component with usage guidelines, do's and don'ts, code snippets, and accessibility notes - structured for the team that will maintain it, not just the team that will read it once. We run a handoff session with your design and engineering leads to walk through contribution workflows, version control conventions, and the governance model for how the system evolves over time.
Recent Case Studies
They're strategic and critical thinkers with a lot of experience, insights, and knowledge. They took their responsibilities beyond the scope of web development in everything they did.
Liza Streiff
CEO, Knopman Marks
FAQ
What's the difference between a design system and a component library?
A component library is part of a design system - it's the collection of reusable UI components (buttons, inputs, cards, modals) that designers and engineers build from. A design system is the broader system that governs how those components are built, including the design token layer (color, typography, spacing values), documentation and usage guidelines, contribution workflows, and the governance model that keeps it maintained over time. A component library without the surrounding system tends to drift and fragment. A design system without a well-built component library is documentation with nothing to document.
Do you build design systems in Figma, code, or both?
Both, built in parallel. A design system that lives only in Figma creates handoff friction - engineers are still translating design decisions into code independently. A system that lives only in code gives designers nothing to work from. We build in Figma and your front-end framework simultaneously, so the component library and the code implementation are aligned from day one rather than synchronized after the fact.
How long does a design system build take?
A foundational design system - core tokens, base component library, and documentation - typically takes 8-12 weeks. Complex systems for large products or multi-platform applications run longer. We scope the engagement based on the size of your UI pattern inventory, the state of your existing codebase, and how many surfaces the system needs to cover. We also offer a phased approach: build the foundation first, expand iteratively as the system is adopted.
Can you work with our existing design system instead of starting from scratch?
Yes - and often that's the right approach. We start with an audit of what exists: what's being used, what's drifted from spec, what's missing, and what's causing the most friction for your team. In many cases, a focused refactor of an existing system is faster and less disruptive than a ground-up rebuild. We recommend starting fresh only when the existing system's architecture is fundamentally misaligned with where the product is heading.
How does a design system connect to AI-assisted development?
AI coding tools generate better output when they have structured context to work from. A design system with a well-defined token architecture - named color scales, spacing units, typography styles - gives AI tools the vocabulary to generate consistent UI code without requiring constant correction. Component documentation with usage guidelines and variant specifications gives AI tools the constraints they need to produce accurate implementations. Design systems built without this structure will need to be retrofitted when your team adopts AI development workflows.
Who maintains the design system after you hand it off?
That depends on your team's capacity and how actively the system needs to evolve. For teams with an in-house designer or front-end engineer who can own it, we structure the handoff to set them up for success - with contribution workflows, versioning conventions, and documentation that makes maintenance tractable. For teams without that capacity, we offer ongoing maintenance retainers that keep the system current as the product evolves. We're explicit about what a system needs to stay healthy so you can make an informed decision about which path fits your team.
Do design systems work for small teams?
Yes - and often they matter more for small teams than large ones. A five-person product team can't afford the overhead of resolving design-engineering ambiguity on every feature. A well-scoped design system eliminates the class of decisions that don't need to be made repeatedly, which compounds quickly when your team is small and every sprint hour matters. We scope design systems to team size and product complexity - a small team doesn't need a system built for a 50-person org.
Stop rebuilding the same components every sprint
Start with a design system audit. We'll assess what you have, identify what's causing friction, and give you a clear build plan - in two weeks.