Design Systems at Scale

A design system is more than a Figma file; it's a product that serves other products. When you have dozens of teams shipping code simultaneously, visual drift is inevitable without strict governance.

Design Tokens: The Single Source of Truth

We moved away from hardcoded hex values to Design Tokens. By defining distinct semantic layers (e.g., color-bg-primary instead of #000000), we decoupled the design decisions from the implementation. This allows us to rebrand or introduce Dark Mode without touching a single component file.

Component Governance

We established a 'contribution model' where product teams can propose changes. If a team needs a variation of a button, they build it locally first. If three other teams need the same variation, it gets promoted to the core system. This prevents the library from becoming bloated with one-off edge cases.