Design Systems vs. Style Guides vs. UI Kit
Navigating the dynamic world of design, three key terms frequently steal the spotlight: “Design System,” “Style Guide,” and the often-misunderstood “UI Kit”. While these terms might sound like part of the same design ensemble, each possesses distinct characteristics and contributes uniquely to the visual and functional facets of a product.
Let’s delve into these concepts, unraveling the meaning behind each, and draw comparisons to understand their distinctions.
What is a design system?
At its essence, a design system serves as the guardian of visual and functional harmony. It fosters a seamless unity across diverse sections of a product, instilling a sense of reliability and elegance. This commitment to consistency is not merely an aesthetic choice; it’s a strategic imperative that contributes to an unparalleled and memorable user journey.
In essence, the significance of design systems lies in their capacity to shape not only the visual appeal of a product but also the efficiency, collaboration, and adaptability within an organization.
Building your design system: practical advice
Here is some practical advice on what should be included into your design system:
1. Design Tokens
- Lay the foundation with design tokens — the atomic elements in a design system that store visual and functional attributes such as colors, typography, spacing, and more. They act as the building blocks, providing a systematic and consistent way to represent design properties.
- Ensure that these elements are consistent across platforms, creating a unified brand identity.
2. Component Library
- Craft a library of reusable components, from buttons and forms to cards and navigation bars.
- Make these components flexible to adapt to various design scenarios.
3. Patterns
- It serves as a collection of reusable component combinations. These patterns embody the best practices for organizing components to address common user needs.
4. Principles and Guidelines
- These are set of rules and best practices that advise how product teams should use components and visual styles. In contrast to the style guides, which we’ll delve into shortly, guidelines within a design system outline the functional behavior of components and describe how users are expected to interact with them.
5. Accessibility
- Set the stage for inclusivity by providing guidelines for accessibility, making your design system accessible to users of all abilities.
6. Collaboration is Key
- Involve your entire design and development team in the creation and maintenance of the design system.
- Foster open communication to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Why do we need a design system?
Consider constructing a house — it always kicks off with a strong foundation. Similarly, a design system ought to serve as the foundation for every product. It provides:
- Consistency: Keeps things looking the same across the board, so users don’t get confused.
- Efficiency: Speeds up the design and development process, making everyone’s life easier. Similar to designer, developers can speed up their workflows when they have ready-to-use components from the design systems.
- Scalability: Grows with your product, adapting to new features without losing its cool.
- Collaboration: Acts as a shared language for designers, developers, and everyone else involved.
- Brand Identity: Makes sure your product always looks and feels like your brand, building trust with users.
- User Experience: Enhances how users interact with your product, making it intuitive and friendly.
So, in a nutshell, design systems make our lives simpler, our products better, our users happier, and our development process faster.
8 great design system examples:
1. Material Design by Google
A comprehensive design system that spans across web, mobile, and more.
2. Ant Design by Ant Financial
A design system for enterprise-level products, offering a React-based framework.
3. Atlassian Design System by Atlassian
Providing design guidelines for products like Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket.
4. Carbon Design System by IBM
IBM’s open-source design system for building digital experiences.
5. Lightning Design System by Salesforce
A design system for building enterprise applications with a focus on consistency and usability.
6. Polaris by Shopify
Shopify’s design system, emphasizing clarity and simplicity for e-commerce experiences.
7. Primer by GitHub
GitHub’s design system, offering a collection of patterns, components, and guidelines.
8. Adobe Spectrum by Adobe
A design system by Adobe for creating cohesive user experiences.
What is a style guide?
A style guide is a detailed document that outlines the visual elements and design principles used in a product or brand. It’s a comprehensive guide to the visual identity, including specifications for colors, typography, imagery, spacing, and more. Essentially, a style guide ensures that there’s visual consistency in how a brand or product is presented across various touchpoints.
Connection between a style guide and a design system
The style guide and the design system share a close relationship, often working hand in hand.
While the design system provides the foundational structure and functional elements, the style guide focuses specifically on the aesthetic details. Think of it as the visual wardrobe that dresses up the components defined by the design system.
Can they live separately or are they one?
While they complement each other, style guides and design systems can exist independently. A style guide can serve as a standalone document, especially for smaller projects or organizations that may not need the extensive structure of a full-fledged design system.
However, in larger and more complex environments, the two often merge into a unified entity, where the design system embodies both functional and aesthetic guidelines.
Examples of style guides in big products:
1. Atlassian Style Guide
Atlassian’s style guide is a part of the Atlassian’s design system.
2. Mailchimp Content Style Guide
A focused style guide that provides guidance on content creation, ensuring a consistent and friendly tone in communication.
I hope things become more clear now when it comes to understanding the difference between a Design System and a Style Guide. Now, it’s time to shine a light on another term — the UI Kit. Let’s break it down!
What is a UI Kit?
Basically, the UI Kit is the practical sidekick. It’s a collection of pre-designed user interface elements, often including buttons, forms, icons, and other components. This toolkit expedites the design and development process by offering ready-made assets that adhere to the principles outlined in the design system and style guide.
Where is it used?
A UI Kit is a handy tool that can be useful in all sorts of projects, whether they’re small or big.
In many cases, especially in larger projects, a UI Kit is often considered an integral part of a Design System. The Design System provides the overarching structure, including principles, patterns, and reusable components. Within this system, the UI Kit acts as a practical toolkit that embodies the design principles and components, making it easier to apply them consistently across various elements of the project.
To summarise the comparison:
Design Systems, Style Guides, and UI Kits collaboratively set rules, refine aesthetics, and offer practical tools. Recognizing their flexibility, we understand that while the Design System leads, the Style Guide refines, and the UI Kit implements practically. This trio forms an essential compass, guiding designers and developers toward cohesive, efficient, and visually pleasing user experiences in the ever-evolving design landscape.
My journey: learning through mistakes
Reflecting on my initial days working at a startup, the concept of Design Systems, Style Guides, and UI Kits seemed like unknown territory. In my role as a product designer, I took on the challenge of redesigning the Stuff app, and this challenge also meant that it was necessary to change existing components in a design system that had not been updated and was not maintained well enough. Despite having access to a local design system (or, more precisely, as I see it now — a UI Kit), the absence of recent updates prompted me to independently create new components.
In the hustle of a fast-paced startup environment, dedicating time to delve into a design system wasn’t a luxury. I made mistakes — detaching instances, redoing components, and learning on the go.
It was only after completing an online course on Udemy (I personally recommend it to all Russian speakers since the course is in Russian), that I started figuring out how to build a design system and what it should include.
Key takeaway: learn from mistakes of others and use online resources
The takeaway from my experience is simple: learn from the mistakes of others. Numerous online tutorials, whether on Udemy, YouTube, or other platforms, offer invaluable insights into building and leveraging design systems. Even though a product designer’s main job isn’t building design systems, I believe that knowing and using these tools is not just important for making designs work well but also helps in collaborating smoothly with developers.
Unlocking resources: free UI kit download
To help fellow designers on their journey, I’m offering a free UI Kit I created in Figma. This kit, inclusive of design tokens and a components library, is customizable and reusable for various projects.
Link for a Free UI Kit is here. Happy designing!
