Design system

Design systems save time, reduce duplication, and help teams move faster with fewer design or development errors. They’re essential in UI/UX design, especially for large teams or products that need to scale across platforms and languages.

They are often built using tools like Figma, which facilitate creating design systems for products and services.

Having a good design system ensures consistency across screens and teams, speeds up workflows thanks to the reusable design components, and improves collaboration between design, dev, and localization teams. It is also beneficial to handle multi-language content more easily and accurately.

🌍 What’s the role of design systems in localization? #️⃣

In localization, design systems help account for language expansion, text directionality (like RTL for Arabic or Hebrew), and content formatting. When designed with localization in mind, UI components can adapt easily to different regions without breaking the layout.

Design systems are especially helpful when building multilingual products. They’re essential in making sure that layouts can adapt to different languages, accounting for things like longer translated text, right-to-left (RTL) scripts, and cultural differences in interface expectations. When localization is built into the design system from the start, teams avoid last-minute redesigns or content overflow issues.

For instance, components in a Figma design system can be built to handle variable-length text or language-specific formatting, making localization much more efficient. Using tools like Figma Variables and design tokens, components can adjust automatically, making global design more efficient, consistent, and scalable.