Design
7 min read
Where Design Systems Break
A system that lives in Figma and nowhere else is a style guide with extra steps. What it takes to make one survive contact with production.
The handoff is where most design systems quietly die. Not because the components are wrong, but because the version in the browser and the version in the file start drifting on day one and nobody owns the gap.
Two Sources Of Truth Is Zero
If a colour exists as a Figma style and as a hardcoded hex in a stylesheet, you do not have a system — you have a coincidence that will end. Tokens must be generated from one place and consumed everywhere else, even if that place is a plain JSON file someone updates by hand.
Name Things For What They Do
Naming a token grey-400 guarantees a rename the first time the palette shifts. Naming it text-secondary survives a rebrand. The same applies to components: a card is not a card, it is a summary of a linked thing.
The Test
A system is real when a developer who has never seen the file can build a new page without asking a designer a single question. Anything short of that is documentation.
