What grid systems taught me about writing components

A print grid exists to make a hundred different pages feel like one publication. A component library exists to make a hundred different screens feel like one product. I didn't notice how similar the two disciplines were until I tried to explain a design system to someone who'd only ever worked in code.

Both are, at their core, a constrained vocabulary applied consistently. The grid says: content lives on these columns, with this gutter, at these breakpoints. The component library says: this button, this spacing scale, this type ramp — reused, not reinvented, on every screen.

Once I started treating my Figma files like a codebase — naming things the way I'd name a variable, versioning a type scale the way I'd version an API — both practices got faster, and more importantly, more consistent.