Setup 1: Single Design System

Supernova’s first setup type is ideal for teams or organizations managing multiple brands, platforms, or product areas within a single documentation website under centralized governance. 

As shown in the Supernova terms table, you can leverage the Brand feature to create clear separations within your data source imports from Figma. In a multi-brand setup, if your design system serves multiple teams and is structured for different audiences, this approach enables seamless collaboration, improved documentation, and efficient management.

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💡 The example above illustrates how Vision Design System (VMware) successfully implements this setup by structuring their documentation website to serve different platform teams. They organize their top navigation into dedicated sections for Web, iOS, and Android, using groups to ensure each platform has tailored guidelines, assets, and documentation—making it easier for developers and designers to find what’s relevant to their specific tech stack.

A single Design System in Supernova acts as the central hub for managing multiple brands, platforms, or product areas within a unified structure. This setup allows teams to consolidate design system data while still maintaining separation where needed. The Brand feature plays a key role in this setup, enabling teams to better manage design data, structure documentation, and automate code exports efficiently.

• Brand Feature – Organizes and separates data sources (e.g., different Figma files, Tokens Studio sets) to streamline documentation and design management.
• Themes – Overrides token values (e.g., colors, typography) for brand differentiation while reusing core components.
• Unified Documentation – All brands are documented within a single site, allowing teams to navigate between brands without managing multiple documentation websites.
• Code Automation Pipelines – Supports platform, or brand-specific token exports while maintaining a centralized design system structure.

Collaboration and Team Management

In this setup, all contributors—designers, developers, and other teams—work within the same design system for documentation and code export. Supernova provides a flexible role-based access control model at both the workspace and design system levels, allowing teams to manage permissions for editors within the system.

However, it’s important to note that in this setup, all editors will have access to the entire design system, meaning it is not possible to restrict certain areas to specific editors. We will explore role configurations and access management in more depth in Chapter 3 when covering setup implementation.

➡ What’s Next?

Now that we understand how Setup 1 is structured, let’s explore Setup 2.