A Practical Guide To Design Principles — Smashing Magazine

Design principles are more than rigid rules — they align teams around shared values and guide decision-making without endless debate. This guide covers what makes good design principles (having a clear point of view, stating what you don't do), real-world examples from Dieter Rams, Anthropic, Linear, and others, and an 8-step workshop process for establishing principles with your team. The workshop includes pre-session research, product analogies, attribute extraction, linking to user research, writing value statements, and a reality check. Starter kit templates for Figma, FigJam, and Miro are also provided. The key takeaway: creating principles is only a small part of the work — embedding them into daily practice is where the real effort lies.