Design Systems as a Process

When you think of Design Systems, chances are your mind jumps to components, UI kits, and neatly documented guidelines. You’re not alone, we picture them too. And often, those visuals come branded with names like Google, Airbnb, Atlassian, IBM, or Shopify.

That’s no accident. The narrative around Design Systems has been largely shaped by big product companies. They've set the benchmarks, and their frameworks often serve as the go-to examples.

But here’s the catch: not everyone crafting digital experiences works inside a product company. What about design agencies? Their contributions to the Design System space are less visible, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less significant. A lot is happening beyond the spotlight.

Design Systems: Your Secret Weapon

A Design System is often defined as “a library of design patterns, rules, and UX guidelines that helps companies deliver and maintain consistent products at scale.” In this view, the system itself becomes a product—an output with strategic value. Its biggest advantage? Serving as a single source of truth that aligns teams and streamlines decision-making as a product evolves.

At Binaryfold4, we don’t focus on just one product, we work across many. Our projects are dynamic, fast-paced, and vary in scope and team structure. Sometimes, clients come to us with the specific goal of building a Design System. More often, though, we’re asked to launch or relaunch a product from the ground up. That means everything from developing a brand-new design language to defining the product’s positioning, unique selling point, and offering. In these cases, the timelines and priorities often don’t allow for a fully developed Design System to emerge alongside.

The Problem with the Fix

At the start of a project, there’s often no existing design language or reusable components to lean on. That means we spend a lot of time aligning as a team to make sure everything stays consistent. While this communication is important, it can also be slow and inefficient, and time is one of our most valuable resources. Ironically, in our rush to move fast, we often skip documentation, only to lose time later fixing misalignments.

We realised we needed a better way to stay in sync — something faster than another meeting, and clearer than scattered conversations. We needed a smarter way to share and stick to our design decisions.

At its core, a design system is a collection of decisions made visible. Usually, those decisions show up as guidelines or components, think of the big pattern libraries we’ve all seen. But those aren’t the only way to document design logic.

We broke things down to their most basic form: design tokens. From there, we started rethinking our entire approach. Instead of treating the system as an outcome, we began treating it as a process.

That’s when things started to click.

From Ambiguity to Alignment, One Token at a Time

Design tokens represent concrete design decisions that teams can define once and reuse consistently. In simple terms, they evolve basic styles (like H1, red-500, or blue-300) into purposeful choices (like Page Headline, Error Message, or Primary Action). While styles give teams a range of options, tokens provide direction, making it clear how and when to use those options.

Tokens strike a balance between endless back-and-forth communication (when there’s no system) and overwhelming documentation (like a full component library). They allow designers to work in parallel, building on each other’s choices in real time. This reduces the need for constant alignment while boosting consistency across the board.

The trick is to treat tokens as an integral part of the design workflow, not just a final deliverable:

1. Start by defining a visual language—a set of basic building blocks like colours, typography, and spacing that form your design vocabulary.

2. Explore various design ideas, focusing on functionality and interaction rather than styles or tokens at this stage.

3. When your solution takes shape, identify any new tokens needed and create them, or apply existing tokens if they already fit the use case (for example, using the predefined token for a primary action colour when designing a link).

4. Keep everyone in the loop by documenting these decisions in a shared Design System overview—accessible to both designers and developers. This helps track the system as it grows.

5. Once the team and client approve the design, prepare detailed specs and hand them over to developers for implementation.

By embedding tokens throughout the process, teams work faster, stay aligned, and deliver more consistent experiences.

The Key Benefits of Using Design Systems as a Process

When it comes to Design Systems, approaching them as an ongoing process, not just a final product, brings three major advantages:

1. No More Guesswork Between Designers
Imagine two designers starting with just a few colours and fonts, tasked with creating a cohesive design. Without constant communication, it would be nearly impossible to stay aligned. Design tokens act like a shared source of truth, keeping everyone updated instantly. This means less back-and-forth and fewer misunderstandings. Plus, onboarding new team members becomes smoother since the design system itself clearly communicates the rules.

2. Bridging the Gap Between Designers and Developers
Design tokens do more than just unify designers, they create a common language with developers. Tokens are crafted by designers but implemented directly in code, allowing both teams to work from the same playbook. This shared vocabulary reduces confusion, helps non-technical designers understand coding constraints, and invites developers to contribute early to design decisions. It’s collaboration made seamless.

3. Building a Foundation for Future Growth
Anyone who’s ever inherited a messy, undocumented design file knows the frustration of retrofitting a system after the fact. By using tokens from the start, you’re essentially planting the seeds for a scalable design system. This makes evolving the system into a full-fledged product easier down the line, as everything is documented, organised, and consistent. In short, adopting design tokens today is a smart investment that saves time and headaches tomorrow.