Best Design System Templates for Designers

Design Systems offer a unified reference for all design and branding decisions, ensuring consistency and efficiency across projects. For designers, a well-structured Design System serves as a central repository of all the essential elements—colors, typography, components—that make up a brand's visual identity. Utilizing a Design System template in Notion can significantly streamline the process of creating and managing these systems by providing an organized framework that can be customized to a team's specific needs.

Before you start drafting your own Design System template, consider exploring these Design System Notion templates to simplify the process.

What Should Design System Templates Include?

Choosing the right Design System Template can streamline your workflow and enhance your design consistency. Here are key components to look for when selecting a template:

Comprehensive UI Components: Ensure the template includes a wide range of pre-designed elements like buttons, icons, and input fields that are customizable.
Style Guidelines: It should provide clear guidelines on styles such as typography, colors, and spacing to maintain brand consistency across projects.
Accessibility Features: Good templates incorporate accessibility standards to make designs usable for everyone, including people with disabilities.
Documentation: Look for templates that come with detailed documentation to help you understand and utilize the system effectively.

Selecting a template with these components will ensure it meets all your design needs, making your projects both beautiful and functional.

What Should Design System Templates Avoid?

Choosing the right Design System Template is crucial for streamlining your design workflow. However, not all components are beneficial. Here are a few you might consider avoiding:

Overly Customized Widgets: Templates with widgets that are too specific can limit flexibility and creativity, making it hard to adapt the design for different projects.
Non-Responsive Elements: Avoid templates that include non-responsive design elements. These can create significant issues in maintaining a seamless user experience across various devices.
Complicated Code Blocks: Steer clear of templates that use overly complex code snippets. These can be difficult to maintain and could slow down your design process.

Selecting a template that avoids these pitfalls will ensure a more versatile and user-friendly design system that can evolve with your projects.

1Brand Assets System

Who is this for?

This template is highly recommended for:

- Graphic Designers
- Brand Managers
- Digital Marketers
- Startups
- Ad Agencies
- Entrepreneurs
- Strategists and relevant

If you are not one of them but still want to use it; well that's great! I would appreciate it.

What does it include?

It is formulated with 6 essential pages & sub-pages, and Inside there are 'Free Resource Links' too.

- 1. Logo Formats
- PNG
- JPG
- SVG
- PDF
- OPEN FILE
- 2. Color system
- Primary Colors
- Resources
- 3. Stationary
- Business Card
- Letterhead

4. Typeface System

5. Imagery

6. Stylescapes

7. Collateral

How to use it?

- The editor (you) needs a [NOTION](https://www.notion.so/) account. Don't worry *It's Free*.
- The editor can duplicate the template and use it in the future. (Please don't sell or share it as your template. I hope you will appreciate my hard work.)
- Once you get access you are *free to explore*.

Where to save all the data?

- Notion is the best place to save and streamline all your data.
- You can [Watch video Tutorials](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoSvlWS5XcwaSzIcbuJ-Ysg) to learn.

When will the template expire?

Never. Congrats! you have lifetime access.

2Ultimate Color Guide

Selecting the best color for your project is important. With this template, you can increase the productivity of your project. Your satisfaction with the project will also increase.

A template preview for Ultimate Color Guide

3Brand Style Guide

A comprehensive branding guide. This template includes your brand's purpose, positioning statement, personality traits, logos, color palette, typography, and tone of voice to create a consistent brand identity, which is crucial for connecting with your target audience.

4Specify Design System Documentation

Documenting the design decisions is an essential step in the design process. It helps to ensure consistency across all products and platforms, improves communication and collaboration among design and development teams, and reduces the time and resources needed for design and development.

This template helps companies start their documentation by supplying a structure, useful resources, and tools.

A template preview for Specify Design System Documentation

5Ideation Board & Library For Graphic Designer

What’s inside this template?

✅ Brainstorms Ideas & Concepts: Crucial for generating ideas & concept. It allows the designers note down their initial thoughts

✅ Sketches: A space for rough sketches and initial design concepts. This helps the designer visualize ideas before refining them.

✅ Mood Board Library: A library of mood boards, you can create and save to establish the visual direction by compiling images, colors, and textures that evoke the desired mood or style.

✅ Color Palettes Library: A library of color, you can create and save color palettes that align with the project's theme or client's preferences.

✅ Typography Library: A library of typography, you can create and save font choices and pairings, ensuring consistency in typography across the project.

✅ Images Library: A library of images, you can create and save graphics, and visual assets for reference and inspiration.

✅ Includes Tutorial Videos!

A template preview for Ideation Board & Library For Graphic Designer

6Brand Foundations Framework

You can use this visual framework is a tool to help you structure your brand foundations and map out the hierarchy of your brand narrative and supporting messaging. Use it as a reference for a more robust messaging guide, or use it as a template and fill in each block with your actual mission statement, vision statement, and so on.

7UX Project Structure

This template provides the perfect starting point for a New UX Project. Use the structure proposed in it to start documenting your project and slowly unpack the design problem space you're solving for.

A template preview for UX Project Structure

8Design System

A design system is a great way to keep everyone aligned. Use this template to document design patterns, assets, and brand. Make assets downloadable for anyone on your team.

9UI Design System

A collection of your assets and components essential for UI design and front-end development.

10Headspace's design system

Headspace's design system helps their team store and stay up to date on shared design resources. Use their template to maintain a single source of truth for your team, stay consistent, and reduce duplicative work.

A template preview for Headspace's design system

Closing Thoughts

Utilizing these templates can significantly streamline your design process, ensuring consistency and efficiency across projects. They serve as a robust foundation, allowing you to focus more on creativity and innovation.

Start integrating these tools into your workflow today to experience enhanced productivity and improved design quality. Embrace the ease of use and adaptability they offer to elevate your projects.

What is an Atomic Design?

Atomic Design is a methodology for creating design systems with a hierarchical structure that includes atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages.

What is a Design Token?

Design Tokens are the visual design atoms of the design system — specifically, they are named entities that store visual design attributes.

What is a Component Library?

A Component Library is a collection of reusable components guided by clear standards that can be assembled together to build any number of applications.