The Myth of Universal Design: Why your System needs to speak in tongues
Ah, Christopher Alexander. In the 1970s, before we cluttered our Figma files with auto-layout and bent our brains around component properties, he noticed something beautifully simple: good design patterns emerge like desire paths in a garden —worn into existence by repeated human use. Fast forward through decades of designers discovering and rediscovering this insight, and his ideas have spawned our modern Design Systems, the latest in humanity's relentless (and somewhat questionable) obsession with creating universal languages.
Like Esperanto aiming for a universal grammar, Univers dreaming of systematic typography, and Helvetica trying to wrangle New York's subway chaos into neat, navigable patterns (thanks, Vignelli), Design Systems represent our stubborn attempt to systematize chaos into ordered, reusable patterns, each of which is supposed to spark joy. The Bauhaus walked this path —all geometric shapes and primary colors, dreaming of a universal visual language (until the Nazis decided they preferred their own brutally systematic, fascist version of order). Yet every such system eventually crashes into the same wall: you can't paint the world in #greb, because everybody wants to speak their own way, using the slang that best conveys their intent —with an accent.
This irony hits home in my Turkish language learning lessons, where perfectly logical vowel harmony rules meet the spectacular chaos of real time conversation. Like me conjugating Turkish verbs flawlessly in exercises but creating entirely new (very creative but often unintelligible) grammatical structures in actual speech, sometimes Design Systems shine in documentation but spectacularly faceplant in implementation. We've seen this story before —Esperanto's logical grammar losing to natural languages' messy, human evolution, Univers's sophisticated system overshadowed by Helvetica's commercial appeal. Every perfect system eventually learns the same lesson: success isn't about theoretical brilliance but about finding balance between principle and adaptation, about maintaining systematic order while embracing human chaos. Maybe that's why my Turkish teacher grins when I nail the grammar in my workbook exercises —she knows my pyrrhic victory over conjugation rules is about to meet its Waterloo in actual conversation.
But how do successful Design Systems pull this off, this tension between standardization and customization? (And no, the answer isn't another Medium article about Atomic Design!). They win through principled flexibility, not by enforcing pixel-perfect conformity or drowning teams in documentation debt. Like the Prince of Denmark's calculated performance —'Though this be madness, yet there is method in't', a successful Design System's flexibility is precisely orchestrated. Those seemingly loose boundaries aren't breaks in the pattern, but patterns of their own, carefully choreographed moments of controlled chaos. This is where governance becomes crucial —not as bureaucratic oversight but as strategic direction. A Design System isn't just a glorified component library; it is a business asset that drives efficiency and maintains brand integrity at scale, a strategic tool for change management. Like any critical infrastructure, it requires clear contribution frameworks, established quality control processes, and most importantly, a governance model that balances innovation with consistency. It requires that delicate art of speaking in tongues —the language of systematic order and the dialect of local needs. Something always gets lost (or found) in translation, but that's precisely where the richness lies. It needs governance that understands both the source and target languages, knowing when to preserve meaning through strict translation and when to allow for cultural adaptation. If this is achieved, teams move faster, code ships cleaner, and products maintain quality while adapting to market needs.
The best Design Systems separate non-negotiables (like accessibility standards) from the negotiables (like visual expression), making it crystal clear not just what can bend, but what absolutely shouldn't and why. This isn't about perfect consistency across every product; success shows up in adoption and contribution rates, implementation speed, and most tellingly, in how teams create experiences that feel both systematic, predictable while being authentic, organic and delightful. The trick is to build your system like good parents —with firm principles but flexible boundaries. Core error handling and form validation behaviors? Non-negotiable. Layout compositions and interaction patterns? That's where teams can flex their creative muscles. Instead of trying to predict every possible use case (you can't) or control every pixel (you shouldn't), create smart defaults with clear escape hatches. Document the paths for customization, but don't turn it into a bureaucratic nightmare that requires three JIRA tickets and a blood sacrifice to the Design System gods to update a primary button. Let teams showcase their adaptations, turning system governance into a community effort rather than a dictatorship. The goal isn't perfection —it's resilience, and more ambitiously, it’s antifragility. A Design System should get stronger from every challenge to its boundaries, learning from each customization attempt and edge case, much like a living language that doesn't just survive change but evolves to be more expressive through active use, not a fossil preserved in documentation amber gathering dust in some forgotten Confluence page.
It’s the start of a brand new month. So excuse me while I resolve yet again to practice what I preach. Let's see if this time it is Design Systems or Turkish verbs that better teach me about bending without breaking.
Further reading, somewhat tangentially related:
Type nerds and septuagenarians like myself might recall the excellent Emigre magazine. Katherine McCoy has a brilliant essay, ‘Hybridity happens’ in Issue #67 about globalism versus nationalism when it comes to type, language and communication in general. These are no longer in print (I own a few physical copies, which according to my will will be buried with me, so cannot share sorry!), but you can enjoy free downloads from the catalogue here.
This is a bit dense but a super interesting literary critique of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. The article examines what makes this movie so captivating: its willful disavowal of perfect understanding, and the delicious possibilities that emerge from embracing the absences, both in love and in language. Systems galore!
