I wrote and designed a book about design systems, called Laying the Foundations

Project

I wrote a book about design systems. The book is packed full of experience and practical advice for creating, documenting, and maintaining design systems, and how to design websites systematically. Including advice for how design and engineering teams can work better together, an introduction to what design systems are, why they are valuable, and how to get stakeholder buy-in at your company to work on them. The book is available in paperback and eBook.

Scope

I've worked in digital my whole career, so every part of this project was new to me except for the marketing website. I viewed this as a personal project, to learn from, and create a physical object I could be proud of. If you're interested to learn more, I wrote about the whole self-publishing process here, including the writing and editing process, the design of the book and eBook, my research into print-on-demand services, and how we sold and shipped the book.

Link

https://designsystemfoundations.com

Involvement

Author
Creative director
Book design
Web design
Front-end build
Shopify integration

Purchase

Buy the book

Date

Nov 2018 - Aug 2019

Credits

Meagan Fisher — Editor

Branding and design

The brand features a simple yellow, black, and white colour scheme. Yellow because of its connections to the construction industry and building sites, which relates to the construction analogies used in the book relating to building design systems and 'laying the foundations'. The shapes are a mixed bag of construction analogies; be it building blocks or the shapes of construction signs. And the monospace typeface is a contemporary play on the font used in construction signage.

Experience

I included reviews of the book, a swipeable image gallery previewing the book, and a breakdown of the chapters and content. The gif shows a user navigating from the home page to buying options for the book.

Design system resources

I created a page on the website with useful links relating to design systems. The page isn't linked to in the website navigation, but it's an important companion to the paperback book, since it houses supporting links referenced in the book.

Design system resources

Buy the book

I created a range of ways to purchase the book. Three price points for buying the paperback or eBook, and a special offer of 50% off the eBook when you buy the paperback. There's also a 10% discount for design teams purchasing 5-8 books, and the offer of a bulk discount for educational institutes and bookstores.

Buy the book

Shopify Lite

I used Shopify's Buy Button and Checkout Links functionality to integrate the Shopify checkout experience and sell the book online, using their Shopify Lite service. You can test the experience (or buy the book!) here.

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