Most companies don’t suffer from a design problem. They suffer from a duplication problem.

Teams across large organizations repeatedly reinvent the same digital elements such as buttons, forms, and cards, wasting hours and effort chasing consistency that should be baked into existing processes.

A well-crafted design system—a comprehensive set of creative standards, reusable components, and guidelines—can be massively beneficial to marketing teams' abilities for speed, scale, and alignment. But capturing these benefits requires a mindset shift.

Design Systems Don't Destroy Autonomy

Discussions about design systems often reveal tensions marketing teams face between centralization and autonomy and between consistency and creativity. But success happens when there’s a top-down mandate paired with bottom-up energy.

To implement a successful design system, you need to be able to show how it will contribute directly to business goals, cultural alignment, and brand integrity. The goal is not dictating a marketing team's every move—it’s about freeing teams up to focus on what matters.

Gain Acceleration and efficiency at Scale

When design systems work, velocity goes up, duplication goes down, and your organization stops solving the same problem 20 different ways. A shared snippet of code defines a button once. Updates cascade. Teams focus on real value. One client told me, "We used to spend weeks aligning on UI choices. Now we align on outcomes. That’s a big difference."

With proper design systems in place, design and engineering hours, QA costs, and code debt can be reduced simultaneously. A major U.S. airline used a shared system to refresh its entire app UI in weeks, not months. An international quick-service restaurant brand shipped an update in minutes, not quarters. And a financial services company rebranded across dozens of global markets without having to touch each product manually.

Treat Collaboration as a Feature, Not Friction

A shared design system offers disparate individuals and teams a reason to talk. Designers, developers, and strategists can converge around mutual goals. It’s not a repository for rules, it creates a campfire environment for discussion.

Through the sharing of design, you can get people in a room who might not have ever met before. It might feel like a bottleneck at first, but a shared dependency fosters collaboration, and this co-creation instills a sense of community. That’s something that can't exist alongside total autonomy.

Build the Capability, Not Just the System

It’s important to recognize that a design system isn’t just a Figma file. It requires a team and a governance model. It needs developers, designers, product owners, and—critically—people who understand the intersection of brand and business.

Treat your design system like a product you’re selling. Patch it, update it, and evolve it in response to the world around it. Don’t be precious about your design system or over-engineer it before it ships. Get its value into people’s hands fast.

Democratize access and recognize that the systematic thinkers who love connecting patterns exist within your organization. Tap them as part of the team you create to administer your design system.

Scale Smartly vs. Rigidly

Design systems provide a base blueprint that eliminates the need for constant reinvention. But avoid falling into the trap of rigidity and too many rules. Introduce guiding principles and adaptable assets. Let global teams localize where needed, while anchoring everyone to a consistent expression.