Name: Expressive Design Systems
Author: Yesenia Perez-Cruz
ISBN: 978-1-952616-08-2

foreword by Alla Kholmatova

Learn to build purposeful design systems that support and strengthen your team’s creativity.

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Good design systems can help you create digital products with efficiency and consistency. But great design systems will support and strengthen your team’s creativity at the same time. In Expressive Design Systems, Yesenia Perez-Cruz shows you how to build useful, dependable systems that not only maintain harmony across your products, but also flex to accommodate inspiration and experimentation. Learn to communicate your brand, collaborate across teams—and do so much more than standardize components.

This book explores:

Purpose and Principles
The Process Behind the System
Communicating Your Brand
Making Room for Variation
Managing Design Systems

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Throughout her career, Yesenia Perez-Cruz has helped countless teams plan, design, and integrate truly impressive—and expressive—design systems into their products. It’s no surprise that her book is a delightfully comprehensive guide, helping ensure you and your team can do the same.

Ethan Marcotte

Author of Responsive Web Design

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This a must-read for anyone starting a design system or already working on an established system. From principles to process, this book will strengthen the ways in which teams build products, resulting in harmonious, branded experiences that users love.

Alex Skougarevskaya

Design leader at Atlassian

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I found myself instinctively nodding my head as I read through Expressive Design Systems. Yesenia Perez-Cruz has unlocked new ways of thinking about systems that have resonated deeply with me. Don’t be mistaken; this book is not just theory. It is loaded with practical examples and best practices that will help guide your team toward a cohesive system.

Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain

Principal designer at Shopify

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About the Author

Yesenia Perez-Cruz is a design leader, public speaker, and writer based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Throughout her career, she’s helped countless teams strategize, design, and implement their brand identity and design systems. Currently, she leads a cross-functional team on the Polaris design system team at Shopify. Previously, as Senior Director of Product Design at Vox Media, she led the design system for Vox Media properties, including The Verge, Vox, and Eater.

Yesenia has been a featured speaker at conferences around the world like An Event Apart, Design Matters, and SXSW Interactive on topics like web performance, responsive design, and design systems.