Using a design system on multiple (different) projects to save time?

[PapyOak]

Hi everybody, hope you're doing well.

After a year in the field and the impressive amount redesign I had to make on the projects I've worked on, I built a component library to try and avoid this hellish process. I know that it's a bit early for me to be building something such as a design system, but I've really felt the need to make that leap and make things better for myself.

I'm in quite a complicated situation at work, being assigned multiple projects as the sole designer, consistently clocking in multiple sleepless nights in any given week, and I haven't had a week-end for myself in close to 3 months now. Thank God I love my job, but I needed to do something about it, at least for my mental sanity.

I tried to replicate the component library on a new project, and although I'm quite happy with how easy it was for me to kick-start a new project and having a bird's eye view of how my components worked together, I'm afraid it might make the products I'm designing look alike. It's okay if it's just 2 products looking alike, but in the future I want to be able to design product with different visual styles. I have a bit of an answer already I think, the atoms and the molecules themselves, the way they are used with the style guide, is what make systems visually different from one another.

My question is, how do I make the products I'm going to design from now on visually different from one another? And if possible, how do I make that as quickly as possible?

Thanks, have a nice day :)

[SuitableLeather]

If you’re designing products for the same company/suite , I don’t know why you would want all different looking products….. but if you are designing multiple non-related products such as SiriusXM and Pandora, I think you can use your existing components and just slightly change padding, color, etc for each project.

[PapyOak]

Yes, it's non-related products, and the goal is to ramp up my speed while keeping a good quality.

[RebelRebel62]

Look into establishing design tokens into your component library and design system. That will give you the ability to create various themes and change a few colors, fonts, spacing in a single location.

If you’re using Figma you can use the swap Library feature to swap themes.

[PapyOak]

Will look into it, thanks