About NDS

The NIAID Design System (NDS) includes design guidance on everything from typography and colors to image use and accessibility to help NIAID websites and digital properties meet Federal, HHS, NIH, and NIAID policies. The visual style of NDS is programmatically built on the principle of Atomic Design, powered by a framework called Pattern Lab. For more information about the development side of NDS, visit the Development page.

The overall goal of a design system is to bring consistency to digital properties within an organization. Design systems achieve this by standardizing a visual style, such as fonts and colors, and by providing guidance for how this visual style should be applied to website and application design. Furthermore, design systems translate this visual style into functional code snippets, called components or patterns, that developers can use to build websites and applications. When developers leverage a standard set of design system components, they can be sure that they are complying with branding and other visual requirements.

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