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Design systems explained: What they are and why your DXP needs one

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Design systems explained: What they are and why your DXP needs one

by TJ Shaffer

8/11/25

Design once, deliver everywhere.

Many teams stop short after moving to the cloud. 

They upgrade their back end but keep building their front end the old way: manually, inconsistently, inefficiently.  

Here’s the thing… cloud platforms are modular by nature. They’re designed for speed, reuse, and omnichannel delivery. If your front end is still custom coded page by page, with one off designs and bloated CSS, you’re slowing everything down.  

A modern platform needs a modern front end to match. That’s what a design system can deliver.  

The back end may power your platform, but your design system powers your experience.  

It’s how you scale beautifully. It’s how you create efficiently. And it’s how you deliver smarter, more future-ready digital experiences every time.

What is a design system? 

If content is the foundation of your experience, your design system is the structure that brings it to life. 

A modern design system is more than a style guide. It’s a living library of components, patterns, and interactions that ensures consistency, speeds up development, and empowers marketers and designers alike. And one of the most powerful tools behind the scenes is something called a design token.  

Design tokens are basically the raw values for things like color, spacing, typography, and motion. They’re stored in a way that both design tools and code can use them consistently. So when you define your brand blue as a token, that same value can be reused everywhere—across platforms, across teams, even across brands—without anyone having to guess or duplicate.  

This is what makes a design system scalable. Because when you update a token, the change cascades wherever it’s used.  

That’s how teams move faster and stay aligned without losing control. 


What are the benefits of a design system?

When a design system is working well, its impact shows up everywhere.

  • Consistency

    The multiple touch points and interfaces you put out into the world (you know, the ones that represent your brand that you’ve worked hard to build and protect) are consistent. No matter the platform.

  • Team alignment

    Designers, developers, and brand marketers are speaking the same language. You’re not stuck chasing inconsistencies or redoing the same work over and over again.

  • Speed to market

    Things move faster. Handoffs are cleaner. Launches happen sooner. That “single source of truth” everyone talks about... it’s real. It means fewer surprises, less back and forth, and more time spent on the work that actually matters.

  • Greater creativity

    Here’s something people don’t always expect. Design systems don’t limit creativity; they make more of it possible. When your foundations are solid, your team can stop reinventing the basics and start pushing the experience forward. You get space to explore, to iterate, to scale with intention.

When a design system is working, you feel the difference. Not just in the output, but in the culture. 

Designers, developers, and marketers are finally speaking the same language. Instead of debating how something should look or behave, the team is aligned on the rules and patterns. Conversations shift from “What is this?” to “Is this solving the right problem?” 

That clarity builds trust. It massively cuts down on rework, reduces friction, and frees up energy for more creative, strategic thinking. 

And over time, it shapes a healthier culture—one that values alignment and shared momentum over guesswork. It’s not just more efficient. It’s more enjoyable.

Our UX and creative experts are here to help. Our UX and creative experts are here to help. Connect with us to get started building a design system to scale and speed up your digital operations.

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