I’ve always been design systems
I know what you might be thinking, how is a print production artist from 2010 (I just aged myself) considered ‘a design system’ person?
Design systems are
“A comprehensive set of standards, guidelines, and reusable components that guide the design and development of a digital product or suite of products. It typically includes a collection of UI components, design patterns, typography, color schemes, and documentation that ensures consistency, efficiency, and scalability across different platforms and teams. Design systems help maintain a unified look and feel, streamline collaboration between designers and developers, and accelerate the product development process by providing a shared language and toolkit for creating user interfaces.”
We have read that for years now. Design systems have traditionally been marketed towards digital products, but at its core the methodologies of it are really applicable to more than just product design.
If I were to strip it down to bare bones, design systems is about
Efficiency and velocity
Consistency
Brand knowledge
You really can apply those principals to anything, even print design. Okay, it’s not as easy to apply to print design but hear me out.
When I was a young production designers in the print world, I was ALWAYS looking for faster ways to pump out work and streamline my own personal process. I didn’t want a taxing job to be even harder, who wants that?! Do you know how many paper cuts I’ve had? Or how many excel sheets I’ve had to comb through?
I started with creating myself Photoshop templates, InDesign templates that had dynamic tabling already in place, Excel sheets already configured to parse complex data mapping for hundreds of sku’s, color swatch imports in Photoshop/Illustrator and even down to presets for a PRINTER - yeah, a literal printer.
Jump forward into digital production, I created shortcuts even faster because, you know, digital. More templates in Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch and even AfterEffects, more resources for other designers, automation tools to import data faster.
Working with engineers and producers, I picked up on how some things were built which added another layer of my own optimization. Suddenly, my own knowledge base doubled giving me more information, which in turn informed processes I followed for speed and accuracy.
The longer I was in digital, I learned to share what I called my ‘tricks of the trade’, sound like guidelines to you? I started finding myself teaching and leading teams on how to build faster and more consistently, sounds a lot like scaling right?
Segway into product, all my years of production work, creating assets consistency and FAST turned me into an official design system nerd because in a way, I had been for years.
seeing a trend?
Since day 1 in print production to today in product design, I have always found ways to make my process fast, repeatable and accurate. Isn’t that what design systems are about? The biggest difference today is the ability to teach these systems and how to use them and becoming a service to the teams and people using the system.
Just like me sharing my “tricks of the trade” back when I was a production designer, now I get to do that at a larger scale. I like to think of it as helping my younger self, I get to build and share systems that will make everyones lives a little easier in this chaotic digital world, and that’s pretty awesome.