Santorini and design systems
Santorini’s shared colors and materials offer a way to think about consistency in product design.
I remember Professor Yoo Hyun-joon using Santorini to explain the relationship between architecture and a city. Its buildings vary in shape, but share similar materials, textures, and a palette of white and blue. Those common elements make the city feel like a coherent whole, while the different forms give each building its own character.
In many modern cities, the opposite happens. Buildings share a similar shape, yet their exterior materials, textures, signs, and colors differ. Individual buildings lose some of their character, without creating a strong identity for the city as a whole. Repeating the same shape does not necessarily create a consistent experience.
That contrast made me think about how consistency takes shape in a digital product. Before making every button or card look the same, it may be more useful to define shared foundations: typography, color, icons, and corner radii. When those foundations carry across screens, a dashboard and an onboarding flow can feel like parts of the same product, even with different purposes and layouts. Each screen can still have the character its purpose calls for.