Week 1
What gets made weekly
An inventory of what your team actually produces and in what software. This decides the whole shape of the job.
Creative direction · Templates and design systems · Sydney
Templates and design systems
The point of a design system is not consistency for its own sake. It is that somebody in sales can build a deck at nine at night and it comes out looking like the company.
Grab the snowball. Give it a spin, and watch it grow as you scroll. Just like the workload.
5templates cover most of the work
1component changed, updates everywhere
No designerneeded for routine assets
Sydneydesign, build and rollout
The short answer
What is a design system, and what are templates?
A design system is a set of reusable components with rules for combining them: buttons, cards, headers, spacing, type styles. Templates are the finished files built from those components that a non-designer can fill in: a deck, a proposal, a social post, a report.
The system is the durable half and the templates are what people actually touch. A business with a system and no templates has done work nobody outside the design team can use, which is a common and expensive place to stop.
We build both, and size them to what a team genuinely produces rather than to what would make a complete system. It sits inside our wider creative direction service, and because our Snowball SEO platform automates the search heavy lifting other agencies bill by the hour, more of your budget goes into the building.
The difference
How much system do you need?
Almost certainly less than a full design system and more than the two templates you have. The right size is set by what your team makes weekly.
Build templates for
- The deck your sales team rebuilds every week
- The proposal or quote document that goes out most often
- Social posts, in the two or three shapes you actually publish
- The report or one-pager clients receive
Do not build
- Components nobody will assemble into anything
- Templates for things made twice a year
- A system that requires design software your team does not have
- Anything so locked down that people rebuild it from scratch to escape it
The system encodes decisions made elsewhere. If those are not settled, that is identity system work first.
The cost
What drives the price of a design system?
How many templates, in how many tools, and how locked down they need to be. Building in the software your team already uses is cheaper and gets used more.
Core templates
The essential few
The four or five files your team rebuilds most often, in the software they already have open.
System and templates
Both halves
Components and foundations, plus the templates built from them, so future files are assembly rather than design.
System with rollout
Applied
The same, plus the sessions that get people using it, which is what separates a system from a folder.
We quote by template and by system scope after a free consult and a look at what your team makes weekly. See visual identity systems for the layer underneath.
What moves the number, in order
- How many templates, which is the main lever
- How many tools they have to exist in, since each is a rebuild
- How locked down each one is, which is slow to do well
- Whether the foundations are settled or need deciding first
- Accessibility requirements on colour and type
- Whether rollout and training are included
Build where the work already happens
A beautiful template in software your team does not own is not a template, it is a picture of one. The most common failure here is building in a designer's tool for an audience who live in a presentation app and a document editor.
So we ask what your team actually opens, and build there, even when the tool is less capable. A slightly worse template that gets used beats a better one that gets worked around.
The second rule is not to lock them too hard. People who cannot make a needed change will rebuild the file from scratch, and you will have lost the whole benefit while paying for the system.
The scope
What you receive
Files in the software your team already uses, with the parts they will need to change left changeable.
The templates
The files your team opens most often, built to fill in rather than to redesign, in the tools they already have.
Components
The reusable parts underneath, so a change made once updates everywhere it is used rather than in forty files.
Foundations
Type scale, spacing and colour set as styles rather than as values people retype, which is what makes consistency automatic.
A short how-to
Two pages, not a manual, covering how to use the templates and what to do when something does not fit.
Sensible locking
Structure protected, content editable, so people can make the change they need without rebuilding the file to escape it.
A rollout session
A working hour where people rebuild something they made last week, which is what converts files into habits.
The return
What does a system actually save?
Design time, but that is not the biggest number. The bigger one is the time non-designers spend making things that then have to be fixed.
Count the round trips, not the hours
The case for a design system is usually made in designer hours saved, which understates it. The real cost of not having one is that every routine asset involves two people and a wait.
A salesperson who can produce a decent deck alone at nine at night is worth more than the design time saved, because the alternative was not a better deck. The alternative was no deck, or one built in a hurry from a competitor's.
So we measure adoption rather than output: how many assets are now made without the design queue, which is the only number that reflects what the system was bought for.
The process
How templates and systems get built
Four to eight weeks depending on breadth, with the tools decided before anything is designed.
Week 2
Foundations
Type scale, spacing and colour set as reusable styles rather than as values, which is what makes everything above it consistent by default.
Weeks 3 to 4
Components
The reusable parts, built so a change made once propagates rather than needing forty edits.
Week 5
Templates
The files people open, built to be filled in, locked where structure matters and open where it does not.
Week 6
Test with real users
Somebody who is not a designer rebuilds something they made last week. Whatever they struggle with is what gets fixed.
Week 7
Roll out
A working session and a two-page how-to, then a named owner for the cases the templates do not cover.
The brief
What to ask before you commission a design system
Design systems are bought by design teams and used by everybody else, which is where most of them fail.
What software will the templates be in?
The one your team already opens. A template in software they do not own is not a template, and this is the single most common failure.
Will a non-designer test them?
Before delivery, with something they actually made last week. If the first real user is after handover, you will find the problems by not using it.
How locked down are they?
Structure protected, content editable. Too loose and consistency goes; too tight and people rebuild from scratch to escape it, which loses everything.
What happens when something does not fit?
There should be a documented answer and a named person. Otherwise every unusual request becomes a rebuild and the system quietly stops being used.
We are happy to answer all four and to inventory what your team makes weekly before you commit. See visual identity systems for the layer beneath.
Start here
Ready to take yourself out of the loop?
Tell us the five things your team rebuilds most often. The free consult is a working session, not a sales call, and you leave with three things whether or not you book us.
- An inventory of what your team makes weekly, and which of it is worth templating
- An honest read on how much system you need, which is often less than expected
- A fixed price per template, with the tools named
Good questions
Design system and template FAQs
What is a design system?
A set of reusable components with rules for combining them: type styles, colour, spacing, buttons, cards, headers. Templates are the finished files built from those components that a non-designer can fill in, such as a deck, a proposal or a social post.
Do we need a full design system?
Most teams do not. What most need is settled foundations, a handful of components and five or six templates covering what they make weekly. Building components nobody assembles into a template is where design system budgets disappear.
How much does a design system cost?
We quote by template and by system scope. What moves it is how many templates, how many tools they must exist in since each is a rebuild, how locked down they need to be, and whether the foundations are settled already.
What software should templates be built in?
Whatever your team already opens, even when it is less capable than a designer would like. A slightly worse template that gets used beats a better one people work around, and this is the most common reason systems fail.
How locked down should templates be?
Structure protected, content editable. Too loose and consistency disappears. Too tight and people rebuild the file from scratch to get the change they need, which loses the entire benefit.
How do we know if it is working?
Count the assets made without going through the design queue. Designer hours saved understates it: the real cost of no system is that every routine asset involves two people and a wait.
What if something does not fit the template?
There should be a documented answer and a named person to ask. Without that, every unusual request becomes a rebuild and the system stops being used within a couple of months.
Who maintains it afterwards?
Somebody has to, and it should be named before handover. Components change as the business does, and an unmaintained system drifts out of date faster than guidelines do because people are using it daily.