Welcome to Design System Club. The weekly breakdown of how I’m building a complete, multi-platform design system from scratch.
No theory.
No generic UI kits.
Just the honest, practical work of designing, structuring and shipping a proper design system that could be used in a real team.
This newsletter follows the same journey I’m documenting in the podcast, but with more detail, diagrams, token files, naming conventions and all the things that don’t fit neatly into audio.
The gap Design System Club fills
There’s plenty of content explaining “what a design system is.”
There’s almost nothing showing how to build one that:
works across React, iOS and Android
stays consistent across teams
avoids token drift
scales over time
supports real product features
That’s the gap I’m filling.
Every issue shows the real, behind-the-scenes work of creating a system from the ground up.
What I’m building
Here’s the full scope of the system I’m creating:
a complete token architecture
colour, type, spacing and motion foundations
a full component library
React implementation
SwiftUI implementation
Jetpack Compose implementation
detailed documentation
usage rules and patterns
governance and contribution model
naming conventions
plus a real feature shipped with the system
This is a full, production-grade system, not a Figma-only concept.
The approach
I’m treating this like a product.
Because a design system is a product.
It needs to be engineered, governed, documented and maintained like one.
So in Design System Club, I’ll break down:
the decisions I make and why
how tokens tie the system together
how to write specs devs will actually use
how to align React with native
how to stop duplication across teams
how to govern changes without slowing delivery
how to measure real ROI
and the pitfalls that kill most systems
This isn’t the shiny highlight reel, it’s the real process.
What you’ll get each week
Every issue includes:
token files and naming conventions
diagrams and architectural notes
component rules and reasoning
examples of divergence and how to fix it
implementation details
the trade-offs behind every decision
Think of this newsletter as the written companion to the podcast, where all the deeper details live.
What’s next
Next week, we start where every real design system truly begins:
Token architecture.
I’ll break down:
how I’m structuring the tokens
the naming conventions I’m using
how the tokens will sync across React, iOS and Android
and why token decisions make or break the entire system
This is the foundation everything else depends on.
Thanks for joining Design System Club at the beginning.
Let’s build a proper design system.
Talk soon,
Max
If you want to explore more of my work or follow the full system build, everything lives at https://designsystem.club