The Clearleft Podcast: Design Systems

An interesting observation from James which pits the idea of a “design system” as a completed, packaged object, against the idea of “systematic design” which is more of a mindset that transcends individual objects.

I prefer to talk about systematic design.

So what I mean by systematic design is designing only the things you need, but in a systematic way so that anything you need in future can build on the system you are building. So it's not a finished thing. I think a design system to me sounds like a product which is finished, and that you hand over to somebody for them to kind of take on.

I think a design system sounds like quite an intimidating product, whereas systematic design is something that anybody can get involved with at any point.