Design System Glossary

Design principles

Design principles are the short, opinionated statements — usually four to eight — that a team agrees on to guide every design decision. The good ones close arguments rather than start them: GOV.UK's "Start with user needs", "Do less", "Design with data" are textbook examples. They sit above tokens and components, and inform all of them.

A design system without principles becomes a catalogue. With them, you have a tiebreaker for component specs, a north star for new joiners, and a way to resolve trade-offs between flexibility and consistency. They aren't brand guidelines (those say what the brand stands for; principles say how the team designs) and they aren't forever — they evolve as the team scales. We cover writing them in how to create a design system.