Eight chapters on building a design system the way it actually gets built — foundations before components, tokens before themes, governance before headcount. Opinionated, practitioner-voiced, with links to the canonical examples instead of abstract theory.
The honest test for whether a design system is the right investment yet.
Why color, type, spacing, and motion ship before a single component.
The three-layer model and the W3C spec that lets it travel between Figma and code.
Most systems start with thirty. Most teams use eight. Build the right ten.
The layer above components — where systems actually differentiate.
Shipping the system to the teams that need to use it — the part nobody plans for.
The contribution model, the deprecation policy, and the funding question that keeps the system alive.
The numbers that move the funding conversation, and the ones that just look good in a dashboard.
The chapters are ordered for someone starting from zero. If you're already past foundations, jump to the chapter that matches where you are.
