Setup checklist
As your organization grows, the way you structure your design system will impact how effectively your teams collaborate, contribute, and scale. This checklist will help you consolidate everything we’ve covered in the guide so far and confidently move forward with the right setup for your needs.
Before jumping into implementation, start by evaluating your organization’s structure, team dynamics, and product architecture. Based on your answers, you’ll be able to choose the setup that best aligns with your goals—and execute it successfully.
💭 Step 1: Choose the Right Setup
Start with a few key questions:
🛠️ Step 2: Set Up Your System
Depending on the setup you choose, follow the relevant implementation path:
🔹 Setup 1: Single Design System with Brand Layers
Best for: Unified teams managing multiple platforms, brands, or verticals under one documentation hub.
💫 Implementation Checklist:
Structure & Setup
☑️ Enable the Brand feature in your Design System Settings.
☑️ Create a Brand entry for each team, product, or platform (e.g., Web, iOS, Marketing).
☑️ Assign separate Figma Data Sources to each Brand for better separation and governance.
☑️ Map Figma collections and modes to the correct Brand and Themes using the Supernova
Variables Sync plugin.
☑️ Use blocks like Tabs, Token Swatches, and Component Health to show platform/brand-specific documentation.
Team Collaboration
☑️ Assign workspace-level roles for global governance and Editor roles to core team members.
☑️ Create contribution guidelines within your documentation (onboarding pages, templates).
☑️ Use approval workflows to manage contributions and updates across different brands.
🗒️Note: All contributors will have access to the entire design system—plan content ownership clearly.
Code Automation
☑️ Set up Brand-specific pipelines to export tokens and assets to separate folders or repos.
☑️ Define token naming conventions and formatting rules per Brand (e.g., camelCase for Web, SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE for Android).
☑️ Connect export pipelines to GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps.
☑️ Use Supernova’s Developer Playbook for advanced automation strategies.
🔸 Setup 2: Multiple Design Systems
Best for: Distributed organizations managing separate products, brands, or platforms with distinct teams and governance.
💫 Implementation Checklist:
Structure & Setup
☑️ Create a separate Design System for each brand, product line, or platform.
☑️ Enable Multi-Design System Navigation so users can switch between them from a single entry point.
☑️ Align shared tokens or foundations in a “Core” system, referenced by all others if applicable.
☑️ Use folders and groups in each system’s website information architecture to support focused documentation.
Team Collaboration
☑️ Assign Design System-specific roles—contributors, editors, or viewers depending on each team’s role.
☑️ Use Invite-Only settings to restrict access to early-stage or confidential systems.
☑️ Establish approval workflows independently in each system to manage updates safely.
☑️ Leverage comments and page statuses to streamline collaboration and maintain quality.
Code Automation
☑️ Set up dedicated pipelines for each Design System to match its framework, repo, and team needs.
☑️ Customize export formats per system: SCSS for web, XML for Android, JSON for APIs, etc.
☑️ Use CI/CD tools to schedule or trigger exports per system, depending on the team’s release cadence.
☑️ Refer to the Supernova Developer Playbook for CLI usage, exporter configuration, and SDK extensibility.
🚀 You’re Ready to Launch!
Whether you’re just getting started or scaling to support dozens of brands, products, and contributors—this guide and checklist are your north star. Use them to navigate decisions, implement your setup confidently, and evolve your system as your organization grows. Supernova gives you the flexibility to start simple and scale seamlessly—so you can focus on building, collaborating, and shipping with clarity.
Thanks for reading, and happy system-building! 🌟
