Figma Design Systems and Components: A Comprehensive Guide

Figma Design Systems and Components: A Comprehensive Guide

Design systems are the backbone of modern product design, ensuring consistency by standardizing guidelines and reusable components. Figma, a powerful tool suite, has become a favorite among designers for creating and managing these systems. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into how to set up your design system in Figma, covering everything from the basics of setting up your component library to the latest advanced features available in Figma.

If you are new to design systems and tokens, read our series overview post here.

Understanding the Importance of a Design System

Before diving into the setup process, it’s crucial to understand why a design system is essential for a successful UX practice. A well-constructed design system:

• Ensures Consistency: Across different platforms, products, and teams, a design system ensures that all UI components adhere to a unified design language.

• Enhances Collaboration: With a shared library of assets and components, teams can collaborate more effectively, reducing the risk of inconsistencies.

• Increases Efficiency: Designers and developers can work faster by reusing components and tokens, rather than creating new ones from scratch each time.

• Facilitates Scalability: As your product or brand grows, a design system allows you to scale your design language across new touchpoints without reinventing the wheel.

Figma provides a robust environment to build, manage, and scale your design system. In future installments, we’ll go into detail about how to create tokens using the plugin Tokens Studio for Figma. For right now, let’s explore how to set up a design system in Figma step by step.

Setting Up Styles in Figma

Styles in Figma can define colors, text styles, and effects, which can then be applied to any component within your design.

• Creating Color Styles: Navigate to the Styles panel, create a new color style, and name it appropriately (e.g., Primary-Color). This style can now be reused across your design components.

• Creating Text Styles: Define text styles for different text elements like headings, body text, and captions. Name these styles clearly (e.g., Heading-1, Body-Text), so they can be easily identified and applied.

• Margins and Padding: Figma variables support the creation of components or frames with predefined margins and padding. Decide on the spacing values you’ll use consistently, such as 8px, 16px, 24px, etc.

Building and Organizing Components

Components are the building blocks of a design system. These are reusable UI elements that can be used across various designs, ensuring consistency and reducing repetitive work.

Creating Components in Figma

To create a component in Figma:

• Design the UI element (e.g., a button, card, or input field) as you normally would.

• Select the element and click on Create Component from the toolbar or use the shortcut Ctrl + Alt + K (Windows) / Cmd + Alt + K (Mac). Name your component descriptively (e.g., Primary-Button, Card-Component) to make it easy to find and use later.

Organizing Components into a Library

Figma allows you to organize your components into libraries, which can be shared across different projects and teams.

• Create a Component Library: Once you have created your components, you can publish them to a team library. This makes them accessible to everyone on your team, ensuring that all designers are using the same components.

• Group Components Logically: Group similar components together (e.g., buttons, forms, navigation elements) to keep your library organized. Use Figma’s naming conventions and folder structures to categorize components, making them easier to find.

• Use Variants: Figma’s Variants feature allows you to group related components (e.g., different states of a button) under a single component with multiple properties. This simplifies your library and makes it more intuitive to use.

Ensuring Flexibility with Auto Layout

Figma’s auto layout feature is crucial for creating flexible, responsive components that adapt to different screen sizes and content changes.

• Applying Auto Layout: Select a frame or component and enable auto layout from the properties panel. This feature allows you to define padding, spacing, and alignment, ensuring that your components are adaptable and maintain consistency.

• Creating Responsive Components: Use auto layout to create components that resize automatically based on content or screen size. This is especially useful for buttons, cards, and navigation bars that need to look good on both desktop and mobile interfaces.

Setting Up Typography and Color Systems

Typography and color are two of the most critical aspects of any design system. They define the visual identity and brand consistency across all digital products.

Typography in Figma

Typography should be systematized in a way that covers all use cases, from large headings to small captions.

• Define Text Styles: Start by defining text styles for headings, subheadings, body text, captions, and any other text elements. Assign appropriate font sizes, weights, line heights, and letter spacing to each style.

• Create a Hierarchy: Establish a clear typographic hierarchy that guides users through your content. For example, Heading-1 should be the largest and boldest text style, while Body-Text should be smaller and more readable.

• Use Consistent Naming Conventions: Name your text styles clearly (e.g., H1-Primary, H2-Secondary, Body-Text) so that they can be easily identified and applied.

Color System in Figma

A well-defined color system is essential for brand consistency and accessibility.

• Create a Color Palette: Start by defining your primary, secondary, and accent colors, as well as neutral shades like grays and whites. Ensure that these colors align with your brand’s visual identity.

• Set Up Color Styles: In Figma, create color styles for each color in your palette. These can be named descriptively (e.g., Primary-Blue, Secondary-Green, Neutral-Gray) and applied across your components.

• Consider Accessibility: Ensure that your color palette meets accessibility standards, particularly in terms of contrast ratios. Figma provides plugins like Stark that can help you check color contrast and ensure your designs are accessible to all users.

Creating and Managing Icons

Icons are a crucial part of any design system, providing visual cues that enhance usability and communication.

Building an Icon Library

Create a consistent set of icons that align with your brand’s visual language. Each icon should be designed with similar stroke widths, corner radii, and proportions to maintain a cohesive look. You can also leverage ready-to-go icon libraries like Font Awesome to get started quickly.

• Designing Icons: Use Figma’s vector tools to design icons directly within the platform. Maintain consistency by setting rules for grid sizes, padding, and stroke width.

• Organizing Icons: Group icons by categories (e.g., actions, navigation, social media) and name them clearly. This makes it easy for designers to find and use the right icon for their needs.

Converting Icons into Components

Once your icons are designed, convert them into components so they can be reused across your designs.

• Create Components: Select the icon and use Create Component to make it reusable. Organize these components in your library for easy access.

• Using Variants for Icons: If your icons have different states or versions (e.g., filled vs. outlined), use Figma’s Variants feature to group them under a single icon component. This keeps your library tidy and easy to navigate.

Leveraging Figma’s Advanced Component and Token Features

Figma offers several advanced features that are essential for UX designers working with complex design systems. One of the key functionalities is component properties, which allow you to define and control the changeable aspects of a component. By tying specific design properties to components, you can dictate what other team members can modify, ensuring consistent usage and reducing errors. These properties are managed through a consolidated set of controls in the Design tab, streamlining the process of editing instances without diving into individual layers.

Figma provides various types of component properties:

• Boolean Properties: These control layer visibility, enabling true/false toggles for specific attributes. For instance, you can apply a Boolean property to toggle an icon’s visibility within a button component, reducing the need for multiple variants and simplifying the design system.

• Instance Swap Properties: These allow you to specify which instances within a component can be swapped, providing flexibility while keeping the design system manageable. Designers can select from predefined instances, streamlining the process of adjusting components like icon buttons without creating numerous variants.

• Text Properties: Text properties make it easy to edit text strings within a component while preserving the component’s structure. This ensures that updates are consistent across the design, although rich text features must still be managed separately.

Most importantly, Figma also offers the ability to expose nested instances within components, making it easier to adjust deeply nested elements from the top level without extensive layer navigation. These salient features, combined with the component playground in Dev Mode, provide a robust framework for managing and scaling design systems effectively.

Scaling Your Design System

As your product grows, so should your design system. Scaling involves adding new components, adapting to different platforms, and ensuring consistency across all touchpoints. Think of it as a living document, which when set up correctly reduces maintenance costs and improves the sustainability to your design decisions. As we’ll discuss in later installments, tokens are particularly valuable in helping to scale efficiently and consistently.

Expanding Your Component Library

As new features are added to your product, new components may be needed as well. Follow the same principles of consistency, reusability, and scalability when adding these components to your library.

• Continuous Integration: Regularly update your component library with new designs and improvements. Ensure that all team members are using the latest versions of components.

• Cross-Platform Consistency: If your product is available on multiple platforms (e.g., web, iOS, Android), ensure that your design system covers all necessary variations and adheres to platform-specific guidelines.

Maintaining and Evolving the System

A design system is never truly “finished”; it evolves as your products and brand grow.

• Governance: Establish governance rules for how new components are added, how updates are made, and who is responsible for maintaining the system. This ensures consistency and quality as the system evolves.

• Feedback and Iteration: Encourage feedback from all users of the design system, from designers to developers. Use this feedback to make continuous improvements to the system.

The Power of a Strong Design System

Setting up a robust design system in Figma is the foundation for creating consistent, scalable, and efficient digital products. As we’ve discussed, components are the building blocks that ensure your visual language is consistently applied across all products and platforms. However, establishing the initial design system is just the beginning.

The real value of a design system lies in its ability to evolve and grow alongside your product. As your brand expands and your digital presence becomes more complex, your design system must be able to adapt without compromising on consistency or quality. But what happens once your design system is set up?

How do you take this system and effectively bridge the gap between design and development? This is where the true potential of a design system comes to life—transforming static design files into dynamic, coded components that developers can use to build the final product.

In the subsequent parts of this series, we will guide you through the next crucial steps in standing up your design-to-dev pipeline:

• Building Your Design Tokens in Tokens Studio: We’ll explore how to create and manage design tokens within Tokens Studio, including setting up tokens, organizing them into sets, and creating themes that can be easily switched based on different requirements.

• Exporting Your Tokens into Figma Variables: Once your tokens are established in Tokens Studio, the next step is to export them into Figma variables. This integration ensures that your design tokens are not just theoretical concepts but are actively used in your design files, making updates and iterations a seamless process.

• Connecting Tokens to Development: Finally, we’ll discuss how to effectively communicate your design tokens to developers, ensuring that your design system is faithfully translated into code. We’ll cover best practices for collaboration, tools that facilitate this process, and how to maintain alignment between your design and development teams as your product evolves.

What’s Up Next In The Series

By the end of this series, you’ll have a comprehensive understanding of how to create a fully integrated design-to-development pipeline using Figma and Tokens Studio. This pipeline will not only enhance collaboration between designers and developers but also increase the efficiency and consistency of your entire software development process.

Stay tuned for the next installment, where we’ll dive into the specifics of building your design tokens in Tokens Studio. If you haven’t already, subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss out on any of the valuable insights and practical tips that we’ll be sharing. Whether you’re a designer looking to streamline your workflow or a developer aiming to improve your collaboration with design teams, this series will provide you with the tools and knowledge you need to succeed.

If you’re interested in learning more now, check out our upcoming workshop on design system tokenization, coming to a city near you!