FRONTEND DESIGN SYSTEMS: BUILDING SCALABLE AND USABLE SYSTEMS

Introduction

Building a simple frontend product is simple. Scaling it is... "a bit less simple" 😅.

I’ve decided to start a series on scalable frontend systems based on my experience and the things I’ve had to do to make my work a lot easier.

The truth is, you cannot fully predict what the end result of any product will look like. We mostly start with an idea of what we think it will become. Along the way, revisions will be made, features will be added (or removed), and many new ideas will come to light.

If you're at the MVP stage, you might be thinking:

“We don’t need a design system for an MVP, right?”

But what happens after MVP?

What happens when you realize you need to overhaul your company’s color palette, font sizes, or button designs?

Will you change each instance manually or do the good ol’ Cmd + Shift + F to find and replace all occurrences? 😩

That sounds painful just thinking about it. But what if our frontend is made up of small particles — each functioning as an independent unit?

That’s the core idea behind atomic design — and it’s part of what a design system is all about.

What Goes Into a Design System?

A solid frontend design system typically includes:

  1. Style Guide
    Your documentation of how things should look and behave.

  2. Colors
    A consistent color palette that scales with light/dark themes.

  3. Fonts
    Chosen fonts, font stacks, weights, and pairings.

  4. Font Sizes
    A typographic scale, usually tokenized and responsive.

  5. Reusable Components
    Buttons, cards, modals, inputs — all with well-defined props and variants.

  6. State Management
    Both UI state (e.g., modal visibility) and server state (e.g., async data). Libraries like Zustand, Redux, or React Query often help here.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the next articles, we’ll dive into each of these categories — starting with how to structure and build your first atomic components.

Stay tuned 🚀