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Design systems for small teams: start with tokens, not components
Arjun Desai, Head of Design ·
Teams of three to ten people do not need a component library on day one. They need twenty decisions written down so that nobody makes them twice.
The twenty decisions
- Six colours: primary, secondary, accent, ink, two neutrals.
- Two typefaces and a type scale of eight sizes.
- A spacing scale on an 8px grid.
- Three radii and two shadows.
Put them in code as design tokens and in Figma as variables. From then on, every screen is assembled from the same vocabulary, and components emerge naturally from the patterns that repeat.
When to graduate to components
When the same pattern is rebuilt a third time, or when two people build it differently in the same week. Not before. Components built in anticipation of reuse are the most common dead code we find in audits.
Tokens encode taste. Components encode habits. Fix the taste first.