In a Design System, Semiotic Constructs 02.2018

Design systems have been one of the most popular topics of the design discourse of the past year. This type of systems have existed for decades, and the industry has shown a renewed interest towards incorporating design systems as part of product foundation.

Systematic design is just one of the many attempts that have been made at organizing and streamlining complexity. If we think of a design system as part of a broader set of communication systems, it’s easy to understand that there are many examples which are not only much greater in scope than any modern design language, but also date back thousands of year-end.

Any type of system is composed by three complementary parts: a systematic component (a set of rules any instance of the system abides to functionally — and visually, in the case of a design system), a semiotic component (which instead focuses on the logical relationship between objects in the system and their significance) and a guidance component, which provides a key to interpret both.

The majority of the conversation on systematic design has revolved so far around processes and tooling, but very little time has been spent on understanding the semiotic implications that transverse any system. In this essay, I will attempt to expose the underlying semantic structures of systematic design and the mechanisms that contribute to its adoption and success at scale.

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