I got tired of having the same argument.
Which grey. Which radius. Where the sidebar goes. Nine years of the same four arguments on every new project — so I wrote the answers down once, and the answers became this.
How it actually went
Including the part where I built the wrong thing first, which is the part most of these pages leave out.
- 2015A design degree I did not finish using
Learned to make one beautiful page. Learned nothing about making the second one match it.
- 2019First engineering hire at Loop & Co
Built a component library nobody used, because I built it before anyone had felt the pain it solved.
- 2021The rebuild that taught me the lesson
Cut two thirds of a marketing site's CSS by deleting decisions rather than code.
- 2023Tokens before templates
Started writing the answers down instead of re-deciding them. That file became this system.
- NowTwelve collections on one contract
Eight of the twelve needed no new CSS. That was the whole test.
What came out of it
The things I would point at if you asked what nine years bought.
A system, not a stylesheet
Twelve collections, one vocabulary, 37 KB — and a rebrand that is one file.
132 lessons, 9.2k readers
Six courses and a newsletter, all built on the thing they teach.
Zero dependencies, nine years
Nothing here breaks because something else released a major version.
Fewer decisions, made better.
A design system is not a component library. It is the set of arguments you have already had, written down so nobody has to have them again — and every hour that buys back is an hour spent on the work itself.
How I work
Three rules, and the reasons rather than the slogans.