Create your first scalable Design System with Figma and Tailwind CSS

Why create a Design System?

Creating a Design System allows you to standardize the user interface, improve visual consistency, and accelerate the product development process. With the combination of Figma and Tailwind CSS, you can unite design and implementation in a fluid and scalable way.

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What is a Design System?

A Design System is a set of rules, constraints, and principles that combine visual design and functionality. It consists of:

• Style guide (colors, typography, spacing)
• Reusable components (buttons, inputs, cards, etc.)
• Design tokens (standardized values for spacing, sizes, and colors)
• Documentation for designers and developers

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Tools we'll use

To create a functional Design System, you'll need:

• Figma: To create and organize visual elements
• Tailwind CSS: To transform these elements into reusable components
• Storybook (optional): To visually document UI components

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Step by step to create your Design System

1. Structuring in Figma

Start by creating a new file in Figma with the following pages:

• Fundamentals: color palette, fonts, grid, spacing
• Base components: buttons, inputs, modals, alerts
• Layouts: page templates with combinations of components

Use the "Styles" functionality to define colors and texts. This facilitates maintenance and replication between projects.

2. Extracting design tokens

Tokens are small reusable values, such as:

{
  primaryColor: '#FACC15',
  spacingSm: '8px',
  fontBase: '16px'
}

You can use Figma plugins like Design Tokens or Figma Tokens to automatically export to JSON.

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3. Configuring Tailwind CSS with tokens

In tailwind.config.js, insert your custom tokens:

module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      colors: {
        primary: '#FACC15',
        secondary: '#1E293B',
      },
      spacing: {
        sm: '8px',
        md: '16px',
      },
    },
  },
}

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4. Creating reusable components

Build your components based on Figma styles. Button example:

<button className="bg-primary text-white py-2 px-4 rounded hover:bg-yellow-500">
  Click here
</button>

Organize components in clear folders like /components/ui/Button.jsx and use Storybook to display each one.

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5. Documentation and maintenance

A good Design System is alive and needs to be documented. Use tools like:

Tool	Function
Storybook	Visual catalog of components
Figma Tokens	Export tokens to Tailwind
Zeroheight	Design System documentation

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Quick case study: SaaS Project

For a SaaS client, we created a complete Design System with Figma + Tailwind + Storybook. The interface development time decreased by 40% and consistency between pages was guaranteed with zero design rework.

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Conclusion

Creating a scalable Design System with Figma and Tailwind CSS is an investment that improves productivity, visual consistency, and facilitates the growth of your digital product. It unites design and development teams with a common and solid language.

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Ready to build your professional Design System?

Get in touch with our team and start transforming your project with high-level UI.

Request a quote