As a designer working independently, rather than a product company, I often feel like the design systems discussion (“Like we haven’t had enough of that already…”) is missing an important perspective: that of impromptu, short-living design tasks… which can nonetheless be tackled systematically.
In my independent practice, there are two fronting types of tasks: On the one hand, i do work on classic large-scale design systems for corporate clients, some continuously maintained and updated for years, spanning many dozens of meticulously documented components. But on the other hand, many of my freelance projects are strictly time-boxed to one or two months, often with only me or another designer working on the same project.
Usually, I define a design system as “a structured documentation of knowledge on practices of design within an organization”. This is of course a deliberately nebulous working definition and is continuously being refined and changed — don’t pin me down to that. I like the “structured” bit because it implies a formal and organized manner without defining a format. Structured knowledge can appear in many places… wikis and documentation tools, Figma and Sketch libraries, code, and more.
But even where there is no visible structure there may be a system. This is what i call “informal design systems”. You’re already using a system. even when there’s no Figma library, no documented components, nothing written down. Two buttons look similar because someone recognized a pattern. that’s a system. it exists in your head before it exists in your file.
Christopher Alexander knew this in 1979…
Every person has a pattern language in their mind. Your pattern language is the sum total of your knowledge of how to build. The pattern language in your mind is slightly different from the language in the next person’s mind; no two are exactly alike; yet many patterns, and fragments of pattern languages, are also shared. Christopher Alexander, “The Timeless Way of Building”, p. 203
why then do I still call it a design system?
Because when you design, you pull from whatever patterns you’ve accumulated up to that moment. this is true whether you’re building a button or a cathedral.
I call it “creating” a design system. what i mean is we finally wrote down what was already there. the informal system becomes formal. the invisible becomes visible.
Most design tooling ignores this. it wants you to start with structure. libraries first, components first, documentation first.
But experienced designers already have order. it’s latent in everything they make. the tools should recognize both things… the chaos of drafting and the patterns that emerge naturally.
structure isn’t something you impose. it’s something you discover.
This is of course also one of the central points made by the godfather of design systems (don’t tell him I called him that), Christopher Alexander, in his seminal book “The Timeless Way of Building”. Alexander writes:
When a person is faced with an act of design, what he does is governed entirely by the pattern language which he has in his mind at that moment. Of course, the pattern languages in each mind are evolving all the time, as each person’s experience grows. But at the particular moment he has to make a design, he relies entirely on the pattern language he happens to have accumulated up until that moment. His act of design, whether humble, or gigantically complex, is governed entirely by the patterns he has in his mind at that moment, and his ability to combine these patterns to form a new design. This is as true of any great creative artist, as of the humblest builder. Christopher Alexander, “The Timeless Way of Building”, p. 203
the truth we avoid
We love the story of building design systems because it makes us look organized. strategic. thoughtful. in control.
We built the library. we defined the tokens. we documented the patterns. we created order from chaos. except we didn’t create it. we noticed it.
The order was there. latent in the decisions we’d already made. implicit in the work that already existed. all we did was make it explicit. that’s still valuable. but it’s a different kind of value. recognition, not creation.
Every designer working on a six week project is doing system thinking. they’re just not calling it that. and maybe that’s fine,
maybe the system doesn’t need a name to do its work.