Design systems are not about consistency for its own sake. They exist to free designers and engineers from repetitive decisions so they can focus on the ones that matter.
The Misconception
Most teams think a design system is a component library. It is not. A component library is an artifact of a design system. The system itself is the set of principles, constraints, and decisions that guide how things look, feel, and behave.
Tokens Over Components
The real power is in design tokens — the named values for color, spacing, typography, and motion that encode your visual language. Get the tokens right and the components almost build themselves.
When to Start
Start a design system when you find yourself making the same decision twice. Not before — premature abstraction in design is just as dangerous as in code.