How creating a Design System in Sketch massively improved my Workflow

Design Systems, Design Systems everywhere! Yup the talk, and usage of design systems in recent times has gone stratospheric, and for very good reason.

Now, as you may or may not know I’ve been in this design game for quite some time now (cue wobbly screen fade) and a Photoshop user for umpteen years (loved it, honed my skills with it, broke up), and in the past few years, Sketch. No surprises in this Dojo I’m afraid.

But even though I had used Sketch for over 3 years (does that class me as a semi-veteran of sorts?), and yes I’d put Symbols, Text Styles and the like to good use, I’d still always started a freelance project (at least) working from a blank slate/Artboard every time.

I think it’s maybe remnants of working with PS for so many years in that that is what you pretty much did. Fired up PS, stared at the screen, checked the clients assets and then got to work.

“I can do this. I must do this. The blank screen has no power over me”

You weren’t graced with the convenience of an adaptable design system that could be easily changed on the fly, and something that enabled you to get the basic design elements down on the screen so quick.

I’d been mightily impressed by some of the Sketch Design Systems already out there. Jon and Christian at UXPowerTools and Dmitry Bunin at Frames have done an amazing job at bringing such systems to the attention of Sketch users.

It was only after dabbling with a few of them and coming to realise that they bring something so valuable to the design process when working inside of Sketch that I thought ‘Hey let’s go out and create one myself’. Let me knock out one of these systems over the weekend. Yeah I’ve got this. Piece of cake.

Little did I know it wasn’t that simple. But after nearly 8 weeks (trying to find moments of peace in between projects, and countless cups of tea. I’m British) I was able to build something that I knew, going forward, I could easily call upon time and time again when starting a new project.

Alert: Biased opinion is now en route…

I’ve now used the system I built (I christened it ‘Cabana’) personally on a couple of small projects, and wow with sprinkles on, it has increased the speed in which I can work through a project in Sketch, ten-fold.

“That Design System is a go boys! Now sit down and behave”

Initially, I didn’t realise the work that went into building such a design system, the many intricacies involved when you’re working with countless nested symbols and the overrides that then come into play.

And yes it took longer to build than I had initially anticipated, but now I have it by my side (like a faithful St Bernard bringing you Whiskey in the snow) I now have a system in place that can rid me of the blank screen syndrome. It stops me from veering from the path to much, and allows me to be much more focused on a project. The time-saving is incredible and I ask myself why I’d never created something like Cabana before.

Before I go I’d love to show you a little of my design system in practice.

Fire up the Vimeo machine…

Here’s a little preview of my Design System, Cabana in action. Shaking its design doo-wop thang…

…and you can pick up a copy of Cabana here.

Use the offer code MEDIUM25 to receive 25% OFF.

Thanks for reading the article,

Marc