Design Systems
More design systems
experience thananyone most.
With real-world, at-scale experience that few teams can match, we’ve led, shaped, and contributed to over a dozen design systems. From startups and scale-ups, to Atlassian and the Australian Government. We can bring our experience to your design system efforts.
Need design systems help?
Get in touchWe’ve been there before
Design Systems Experience
Atlassian Design System
We were there at the start of Atlassian’s design system initiative
Reckon’s Balance DS
We led the development of Balance across web and mobile
Vocal Design System
We built a WCAG 2.0 AA compliant design system to support Vocal’s scaling needs
AgDS
We built a design system for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry with a focus on accessibility
Brighte Spark DS
We helped Brighte ship a new mobile app design system
ELMO Design System
We’re leading design and development of the ELMO design system
Westpac GEL
We’re supporting Westpac’s GEL team across a multi-brand landscape
Cascade - Vapour DS
We led the development of Cascade’s brand new front-end platform and DS
Westfield Design System
We helped build the DS that powers their Westfield ecommerce experience
ANZ Horizon DS
We helped the Horizon team at ANZ nail a range of design system OKRs
There are very few teams you can hire with more real-world, at-scale Design System experience than Thinkmill.
Dominik Wilkowski
Engineering Lead, Shopify Polaris Design System
We can help with
Design & Engineering
We can help you fill capacity and capability gaps and build better ways of collaborating across the two practices.
System Architecture
From foundations, to tokens, to component APIs and docs – we know how to piece the parts together into a comprehensive, effective, and maintainable whole.
Accessibility
We’ve built exemplary implementations of accessible React Design Systems for government, banks, and commercial products.
Design System Audit
We can review your existing design system and provide actionable recommendations for your team. From architecture, to accessibility, and workflows.
Brand & Token Architecture
Multi-theme, multi-brand, and white-labelling. We’ve built design systems that support the needs of organisations with complex brand expressions.
Design Workflow
Design systems often start in the design practice. We do a lot of talking, and iterating on the best way to run cross-functional collaboration, with no-handoffs.
Frequently Asked Questions
We describe Design Systems as both: the standardised manifestation of an organisation’s brand , and a lever for improvement in how it makes software and what it chooses to prioritise.
As a standard bearer, a design system describes how products look (design language), how they feel and behave (UI), and how they perform their function (UX). It also serves as guidance and inspiration for how teams develop, maintain, and evolve the system (via contribution & stewardship).
To better understand how this might relate to your unique needs, contact us today.
Yes.
Our approach is to build trust and deliver value in a transparent and incremental manner.
If we believe a design system is not in your best short term interests we won’t say otherwise. This could mean shipping an MVP, or conducting nimble research before embarking on a design system initiative. It could also mean helping establish just enough design system foundations to be productive in the short term, while leaving the door open to achieving greater maturity in your design system standards and governance culture down the track.
Our advice will always be directly relational to the unique factors you bring to our conversation.
Our first step is to discover where you are in your design system journey.
Once we know about your goals, team size, team composition, design systems experience, and development culture, we can make a better determination of next steps.
Depending on where you’re at, we can augment your team with design system specialists that are yours to direct, we can also lead your team from within, or you can outsource your design system needs to us and transition to in-house management over a longer period of time.
Our talks on design systems
Presentations on to how we build and think about design system projects.
We’re incredibly excited about how the ELMO Design System realises our goals to deliver on design consistency, accessibility, an overall great user experience and will save our implementation consultants hours of work.
Matthew Brown
Director of Product & Design, ELMO
Learn more about our design systems work
Deep dive into more articles and videos related to the craft of making design systems.
Get in touch about design systems
Have a chat with Boris, Thinkmill’s co-founder, about how we can help your journey in design systems - whether you’re starting out or enhancing a mature design system.
Contact us