Top 10 Free Design System Templates

A design system is a way of organizing and standardizing the visual and functional elements of a digital product, ensuring consistency and efficiency across the entire project. Having a design system in your life can greatly improve your workflow, making it easier to create and maintain high-quality digital experiences. A design system template can help streamline this process, providing a solid foundation for you to build upon.

Before diving into creating your own design system, it's a good idea to explore some existing options. Check out these Free Design System templates on Notion to help make the process even easier.

What Should Design System Templates Include?

Choosing the right Design System Template in Notion can streamline your design process and ensure consistency across projects. Here are key components to look for:

UI Components: A comprehensive template should include a variety of pre-designed UI elements such as buttons, inputs, and navigation bars, which are essential for rapid prototyping.
Style Guidelines: It should clearly define the style guidelines like typography, color schemes, and spacing. This ensures that the design remains consistent throughout the development.
Documentation: Good templates come with detailed documentation that explains how to use the components and customize them to fit your specific needs.
Integration Features: Look for templates that support integration with other tools and platforms, enhancing workflow efficiency and collaboration.

Selecting a template with these components will not only save time but also help maintain a high standard of design work.

What Should Design System Templates Avoid?

When selecting a Design System Template in Notion, it's essential to be aware of certain components that can hinder rather than help. Here are three key elements to steer clear of:

Overly Complex Structures: Templates with too many nested pages or intricate frameworks can be confusing and difficult to navigate, reducing efficiency.
Non-Scalable Elements: Avoid templates that do not allow easy adjustments or scaling. Flexibility is key for a design system to be useful as your project grows.
Generic UI Components: Choose templates that offer unique and specific components rather than generic ones that might not align well with your brand's identity.

Choosing the right template involves looking for simplicity, scalability, and specificity to ensure it complements your project's needs effectively.

1Design 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.

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.

4UX 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

5Headspace'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

6UI Design System

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

7Brand 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.

8Ideation 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

9Specify 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

10Brand 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://notion-proxy.senuto.com/) 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.

Closing Thoughts

Utilizing these templates streamlines your design process, ensuring consistency and efficiency. They serve as a robust foundation, allowing you to focus more on creativity and less on structure.

Start implementing these tools today to enhance your project workflow. By adopting a systematized approach, you'll notice significant improvements in both team collaboration and output quality.

What is an Atomic Design?

Atomic Design is a methodology for creating design systems with a hierarchy 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.