Design Systems
Make speed a multiplier,
not a risk.
The way products get built has changed, and design systems are more important than ever. They drive product consistency, and are the context your people and your agents need to deliver quality at pace. From Atlassian to the Australian Government, we’ve contributed to 15+ design systems. We're as strong on operating models and adoption as we are on tokens and components.
Need design systems help?
Proven at scale
Design Systems Experience
We helped scale Atlaskit into a shared design system, aligning design guidance, component infrastructure, and documentation across multiple product teams
We developed Reckon’s Balance design system across web and mobile, creating shared components, patterns, and guidance for a unified product platform
We developed Vocal’s first design system in React to support a fast-growing publishing platform across web and native products
We built a design system for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry with a focus on accessibility
We built a React Native mobile design system that improved consistency, accessibility, and delivery velocity across Brighte’s apps
We’re helping ELMO scale a design system that improves UX, accessibility, and developer efficiency across their product suite
We built a multi-brand design system that improved consistency, accessibility, developer experience, and product velocity across their platform
Cascade - Vapour DS
We led the development of Cascade’s brand new front-end platform and DS
Westfield Design System
We helped build the design system that powers Westfield’s ecommerce experience
ANZ Horizon DS
We helped the Horizon team at ANZ nail a range of design system OKRs
Westpac GEL
We’re supporting Westpac’s GEL team across a multi-brand landscape
There are very few teams you can hire with more real-world, at-scale Design System experience than Thinkmill.
Dominik Wilkowski
Engineering Lead, Shopify Polaris Design System
We can help with
AI enablement
We help teams connect their design systems to the AI tools they’re already using, so every generated interface has the right material to work from, and every prompt is anchored to the real thing.
System Architecture
We know how to piece foundations, tokens, component APIs, and documentation into a system that’s comprehensive, maintainable, and built to last. And how to untangle one when it wasn’t.
Design & Engineering
We fill capacity and capability gaps across design and engineering, and work on how the two practices collaborate: contribution workflows, handoff points, and the places where design and code tend to drift apart.
Adoption and operating models
We help teams make a design system part of how they actually ship, working through governance, contribution, and the friction points that stop people reaching for the system in the first place.
Self-documenting content
Good system content pulls its weight: usage guidance, component docs, accessibility notes, contribution rules. We can help you structure it so it’s easy to maintain and legible to the people and agents that read it.
Brand & Token Architecture
Multi-theme, multi-brand, and white-labelling. We’ve built design systems that support the needs of organisations with complex brand expressions.
Accessibility
We’ve built systems used across government, banking, and enterprise, applying accessibility principles from component design through to delivery
Design System Audit
We can review your existing design system and give you actionable recommendations across architecture, accessibility, workflows, content, and AI readiness.
Frequently Asked Questions
We think of a design system as the standardised expression of how an organisation’s products look, feel, and behave, and a lever for how teams make decisions about software.
Done well, it governs decisions that would otherwise get made inconsistently: which component to reach for, how spacing should work, what the right interaction pattern is. It makes those decisions once, at the system level, so your team doesn’t have to make them again every sprint. The real value is in the removal of low-level decision making from those building with the design system, so they can focus on solving larger problems.
To better understand how this might relate to your unique needs, contact us today.
Yes. And if we don’t think you do, we’ll say so.
Sometimes the right answer is an MVP first. Sometimes it’s a short research spike before committing to a full initiative. Sometimes it’s a small set of foundations now, with a clear path to more later. We’ll tell you which, based on where your team actually is.
Our advice will always be directly related to the unique factors you bring to our conversation.
AI tools can produce UI quickly. What they don’t do is decide whether that UI belongs in your product. Every colour choice, spacing value, and component selection an AI tool makes is either anchored to the system you own and control, or invented on the spot.
Teams with well-structured systems, clear token architecture, and good documentation find that AI-generated work stays coherent with what they’ve already shipped. Teams without those things find the gaps appear fast, and not always consistently.
The fundamentals of a good design system haven’t changed, in fact they are more important than ever. What has changed is the number and type of consumers, and ratio of decisions made without human review.
Most teams don’t need to start over.
We usually start with an audit to learn what’s working, what’s inconsistent, and what would make the most impact if addressed. Connecting a system to AI tooling tends to expose the same structural problems that were already causing friction for human contributors. Fixing one usually helps both.
Building the system is usually the easier half. Adoption happens when the system is easy to find, easy to trust, and easier to use than the alternatives.
This means making sure components solve real product needs, documentation is easy to navigate, contribution pathways are practical, and teams get the right support as they start using the system in live work. We look at those factors together, because adoption is not automatic once a system exists. It needs to be designed into the way teams work.
Adoption now includes AI consumers. If your team uses code generation tools, they’ll draw from your design system regardless of whether it has been optimised for them. Making your system legible to both humans and AI is now a key consideration for successful adoption.
It depends on where you are. Once we understand your team, goals, development culture, and how much design systems experience exists in-house, we can tailor a strategy that suits your needs.
That might mean augmenting your team with specialists, leading from within, or outsourcing your design system needs until it’s at a place where you can run it yourself. We’ve done all three, often in combination. We’re not attached to a particular model.
Design System Audits that unblock and align your team
Struggling to scale your system or keep Figma and code in sync? We help teams find the gaps, fix what matters, and turn their design system into a force multiplier across design, engineering, and AI-assisted workflows. Our audits deliver clear, system-aware recommendations your team can act on fast, whether you’re building from scratch, rebuilding, or resetting.
Our talks on design systems
Presentations on how we approach and deliver design system projects
We’re incredibly excited about how the ELMO Design System realises our goals to deliver on design consistency, accessibility, an overall great user experience and will save our implementation consultants hours of work.
Matthew Brown
Director of Product & Design, ELMO
Learn more about our design systems work
Deep dive into more articles and videos related to the craft of making design systems.
If you need help with design systems