Relay UI

The design system I wish existed.

problem

Most design systems today prioritize governance and consistency, but often at the expense of flexibility and visual expression. They tend to feel overly enterprise-focused, difficult to customize, and disconnected from the aesthetic standards of modern digital products. I wanted to explore a different approach: a system that could provide the structure needed for scale while still feeling contemporary, expressive, and enjoyable to design with. The challenge was creating a foundation that could support multiple themes, reduce maintenance overhead, and remain intuitive for both designers and developers.

solution

Lab UI is a design system built on a layered token architecture. The system starts with Primitive tokens that define foundational values such as colors, spacing, typography, and radii. These are extended through Derivable tokens, where primitives are combined with modifiers to generate reusable values. Semantic tokens sit on top, defining interface intent through roles such as backgrounds, surfaces, text, and borders. This architecture creates a clear separation between design decisions and implementation, enabling scalable theming, consistent component behavior, and easier developer integration. Alongside the token foundation, Lab UI includes a growing library of reusable assets and components designed to accelerate product development.

Why I Built Lab UI

Most design systems are built to maximize consistency. While that solves one problem, it often creates another: systems that feel rigid, overly enterprise-focused, and difficult to evolve.

Lab UI started as a personal exploration of a different approach. I wanted to create a system that could provide structure without limiting creativity. A system that felt modern, expressive, and enjoyable to work with while still supporting the needs of scale.

Rather than beginning with components, I focused on creating a foundation that could adapt over time. The goal was to build a system where design decisions were predictable, themes were easy to manage, and new patterns could emerge without introducing chaos.

Designing the Foundation

At the core of Lab UI is a layered token architecture.

The system begins with Primitive tokens that define foundational values such as colors, typography, spacing, radii, and motion. These primitives act as the single source of truth for the entire system.

On top of primitives sit Derivable tokens. This layer combines foundational values with modifiers such as opacity and state variations, creating reusable design values without introducing duplication.

The final layer consists of Semantic tokens. Instead of defining appearance, semantic tokens define purpose through roles like background, surface, text, border, success, and warning.

This separation creates a clear relationship between design intent and implementation, making the system easier to scale, maintain, and evolve.

Built for Themes, Not Variants

One of the key goals of Lab UI was to make theming a first-class capability rather than an afterthought.

Instead of creating separate token sets for every visual mode, semantic tokens act as an abstraction layer between interface intent and visual output. This allows the same components to adapt across Light, Dark, and IC themes without requiring structural changes.

By keeping components independent from raw values, visual updates become significantly easier to manage while maintaining consistency across the entire product ecosystem.

The result is a system that can support multiple visual identities without increasing complexity for designers or developers.

More Than a Component Library

Lab UI also includes a growing collection of reusable assets and production-ready components. Every component is built directly on top of the token architecture, ensuring consistency across patterns while remaining flexible enough for future expansion.

This project reinforced a belief I continue to carry into product design: great systems aren’t defined by the number of components they contain. They’re defined by the quality of the relationships between foundations, patterns, and products.

Lab UI remains an ongoing project and a place to experiment with design tokens, component architecture, and modern system thinking.