Why you need a Content Design System

Foto credit Heavyweight on Dribble

Why you need a Content Design System

Do you recognise this? You open your website and see a dark blue button on the homepage, a green one on the service page, and suddenly a red one on the contact page. One heading is bold and in capital letters, the other italicised and smaller. You feel it: this is not right. It feels messy. And your visitors feel it too. What you are missing is a Design System.

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What is a Design System?

A Design System is a collection of visual and content agreements that provide guidance when designing and maintaining your website and other expressions. It includes:

• Your color palette
• Your fonts and heading sizes
• Your button style
• Your image usage
• And even your tone of voice

You can think of it as a practical guide for your brand – that you use over and over again in everything you create..

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Why do you need a Design System?

Time is precious. And radiating reliability is priceless.

A Design System gives you this:

• Time savings: you don’t have to think about color, style or layout every time.
• Professional appearance: a consistent visual style inspires trust.
• Efficiency: working together with a VA, web builder or designer.
• Strengthening your brand: recognizability = reliability.

And perhaps the most practical advantage:

💡 Setting up your WordPress theme is lightning fast.
If you have already set your colors, fonts, and style in a Design System, you can fill in all the theme settings correctly in one go. No trial and error, no doubt. Everything is neat and consistent right away.

A common mistake:

You create your website… and then you see another beautiful site somewhere else. “Oh, that blue is beautiful!” “They use a playful font, maybe I should do that too…” Before you know it, you are cutting and pasting from all kinds of styles, and your website turns into an incoherent whole.
Believe me, I know what I am talking about 😉

With a Design System, you avoid that distraction. You stick to your own style. And that not only gives you focus and peace during the build, but also a sustainable professional appearance with your customers..

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In 5 steps to your own Design System

Step 1: Determine your color palette
Choose a primary color, a secondary color and an accent color. Add background and text colors.

Step 2: Choose your fonts and styles
Determine which font you use for headings, paragraphs, buttons, etc. Think about size, thickness and spacing.

Step 3: Define your components
What kind of buttons do you use? What do links look like? Which icons do you use? What are your input fields?

Step 4: Choose your visual tone of voice
Do you use illustrations or photos? Round or sleek? Lots of white space or colorful? Keep it.

Step 5: Document it in a simple system
Use my Notion template to record everything clearly and easily share or apply.

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Download my free Notion-template

I have created a free Notion template for you in which you can set up your own Design System step by step. Including handy tables for colors, fonts and components.

👉 Download the free template → [Link invoegen]

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In summary:

A Design System prevents chaos, speeds up your WordPress setup and gives your website a professional and reliable look.
It is not a luxury, but a smart, practical basis, especially if you are on a tight budget but still want to appear professional.

PS

If you have a brandbook made by a professional designer, it is easy to implement those styling elements in your website. Follow the steps of the free template