January 5, 20255 min read

💵 How a Design System 10x my income as a designer · The Bunker #115

Hi friend 👋🏻!

A Newsletter in which we talk about UX Design and the Freelance Journey, dedicated to those who are starting out in both worlds and who feel identified.

From The Bunker, we accompany you on the way.

Have I ever told you why I created Koala UI?

The answer is simple: because I needed it.

For now, I only focus on products that genuinely solve something for me.

I founded Koala UI in January 2024, a year ago now, and since then, I’ve made updates religiously every day. But why?

Again, because I needed it for my clients and my templates.

I made it so I’d never have to start a project from scratch again. It is a tool I built for myself to solve an issue I had.

In 2024, I was juggling my 9-to-5 job, freelancing for clients, running my template business, creating products for my store, writing a newsletter, and producing content for social media.

Too many things 😓.

I needed a way to speed up all these processes.

That’s when I realized that while every project was unique, I always ended up using the same resources and components, each with a different style, but essentially following the same procedure.

So, I decided to create something simple that would allow me to store what I create, giving me a starting point for every project. Then, all I had to do was customize the styles.

And that’s how Koala UI was born, almost unintentionally.

I work with more clients than ever

It’s obvious why: instead of delivering a project in 6 weeks, I now take 15 days.

The client is super happy, and they quickly refer me to another client.

And I almost never have to say "no" because of time constraints, I always have time. After all, creating something great now only takes me 15 days.

What’s most interesting is the speed combined with quality.

I don’t have to sacrifice quality because the resources I use were already refined in the past. Now, I just tweak the styles and deliver.

This way, I can focus on what truly matters and avoid wasting time on repetitive design decisions.

For example, automating responsive design has been one of the best features I’ve incorporated into Koala UI.

Literally, with two clicks, I can transform a design across all breakpoints.

Something that would have otherwise taken me hours to reconsider and then apply consistently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx9IDRVmRsY

I’ve never learned so fast

When you want to learn design, people always say: practice as much as you can. And it’s true, but with purpose.

A Design System is essentially a document that captures almost all design fundamentals, best practices, and components.

Creating Koala UI has helped me grow immensely as a designer. Keep in mind, there are over 5,000 components, for both marketing and product, along with 3 customizable themes, colors, typography…

It’s a lot to dive into and master.

I’d say that creating a Design System has been the most challenging design exercise of my life.

What I did was analyze Design Systems from big corporations like Adobe. I researched how they worked. Seeing everything from the inside helped me understand the design decisions made by designers at companies like Adobe or Uber, for example.

In other words, buying a Design System doesn’t just make you faster, it also provides education.

It gives you access to all the components and configurations, already optimized with best practices.

Essentially, you see the secrets I’ve applied in design. All the headaches and bad practices? I’ve already dealt with them for you. You jump straight to what works.

Consistency taken to the next level

This was one of my favorite aspects: think about how we’re essentially using components everywhere.

We make design decisions only the first time, and then we just keep reusing things. The product ensures everything looks as consistent and clean as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGtm-Hmh5JE

So this is really all, if you want to take advantage of all these benefits, you just have to purchase Koala UI, and you will have access to everything we have mentioned.

Until next time,

Jordi Espinosa.

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