How to Make a Decent UI Kit? Examples, Tips, Insights from Pros

A UI kit is a resource with elements like templates and a logo collection that assist developers and designers in getting started on websites, applications, and software interfaces.

All items in this collection can be used as tools to create appealing and dependable designs while also being time-efficient. The benefits of UI kits include enhancing design quality, streamlining efficiency, maintaining consistency across interfaces, and supporting branding efforts.

UI kits also assist with simplified design methods by providing generic assets like buttons, form fields, icons, and sliders that automate a wide range of tasks. For designers, these kits help build frameworks and design elements that can be reused frequently, thus streamlining the process.

Source: behance.net

Apart from easing the process, UI kits are crucial for ensuring uniformity, reducing task duplication, providing better workflow management, and achieving easier scaling with product growth.

This article discusses the various complicated advantages of UI kits, how they simplify Design and development, and guides the selection of the perfect option. Whether you are a developer or designer, this article will make it much simpler to understand how to utilize the kits effectively.

What Is a UI Kit?

User interface kits (UI kits) are sets of pre-designed elements like buttons, icons, typography, and navigation components used to create consistent and efficient user interfaces. They speed up design workflows, ensure brand consistency, and reduce repetitive work.

UI Kits can range from basic templates to fully interactive design systems and are commonly used in tools like Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD. They help designers focus on user experience rather than building elements from scratch.

What Is a Design System?

A design system is a comprehensive kit and design system with UI elements, templates, and code structure. Its goal is to provide a consistent user experience across a brand’s digital products. The branding system typically encompasses the visual assets, user experience design, technical documentation, and brand identity, serving as the authoritative guide for teams.

Any design system modifications to styles, components, or processes are reflected in all associated platforms, such as websites, apps, and prototypes. These changes improve collaboration, accelerate development, and ensure design consistency across all platforms.

In contrast to UI kits that offer individual design elements, systems are more complex and adaptable, catering to rebranding, scaling, and transformative changes. They reduce wasteful efforts by enabling designers and developers to efficiently use components across multiple designs and projects.

UI Kit vs. Design System: Key Differences

A UI Kit is a collection of UI components, styles, and other assets that aid in rapid Design and essential functional consistency. UI kits typically consist of pre-designed elements that streamline the design process for websites and apps, allowing for customization to meet specific project requirements.

Source: mockflow.com

A design system encompasses infrastructure and system documentation, policies, procedures, guides, and code documentation to ensure proper team structure and collaboration.

Source: mockflow.com

Usability

UI kits help designers quickly create prototypes by providing a set of pre-designed components and templates. They are primarily a tool for designers to visualize ideas and test concepts.

In contrast, design systems are comprehensive resources designed for the entire product team, including designers, developers, and managers. These systems include strict guiding principles and frameworks to ensure consistency and scalability across a product’s lifecycle.

Project Scope

UI kits are ideal for short-term or smaller projects where speed and simplicity are key. They allow designers to efficiently build interfaces without needing to focus on extensive documentation or system-level consistency.

On the other hand, design systems are essential for large-scale or long-term projects that require a unified approach. They provide a foundation for maintaining a cohesive design and development process as the product evolves over time.

Updating Components

When changes are made in UI kits, they typically don’t require manual updates to all aspects of the design process, as they are often isolated to specific prototypes or projects.

However, making updates in a design system is more complex, as it involves revising not only the design itself but also the corresponding documentation and code. This ensures that changes are implemented consistently across all parts of the product, maintaining alignment between the design and development teams.

To sum everything up, a UI Kit contains design elements, and a Design System aims to foster collaboration, consistency, and scalability across different products.

Why Do You Need a UI Kit?

A UI Kit boosts efficiency, saves time, and ensures consistency. Designers can quickly create prototypes and apps using ready-made buttons, icons, and typography instead of starting from scratch.

Source: gapsystudio.com

It streamlines design, keeps projects organized, and maintains a brand’s identity for mobile and web apps. It also improves communication between designers and developers, leading to smoother workflows.

By cutting out repetitive tasks, a UI Kit lets designers focus on enhancing user experience rather than redoing standard components.

Let's look at the pros in a little more detail:

Accelerate the Design Process: Designers and developers can use ready-to-build components from the most popular UI kits to maximize the overall value of the software’s user experience.

Ensure Design Consistency: All kits contain defined standard modular components, making it easier to manage and improve the design’s aesthetic value across all interfaces.

Enhance Your Design Skills: Using professionally designed UI kits enables novice designers to understand viable design patterns and learn how to build sophisticated structures of complex components.

Refine the Details: The designer can now concentrate on more detailed aspects of the design to improve from better to best rather than debating on the basics

Adapt to Various Projects: UI kits are not limited to mobile app and website design but can also be used and adapted to create interactive prototypes.

Easily Make Updates: Once a master component is edited, all of its instances are changed at the same time, enabling effortless changes to be made throughout the design without much usability effort needed.

How to Create Your Own UI Kit

A UI kit is more than just a collection of buttons and icons — it's a foundational tool that helps you design faster, stay consistent, and scale your design work efficiently. Whether you're designing solo, collaborating in a startup, or building a product for others, a well-built UI kit will save you hours of work and bring professionalism to every project.

Here’s how to build a powerful and reusable UI kit from scratch, complete with expert advice and actionable steps.

1. Define Your Purpose

Before you begin designing, identify the purpose of your UI kit. Ask yourself:

• Who will use this kit — just you, your team, or external clients?
• Is it for mobile apps, websites, dashboards, or all of the above?
• Are you creating this to sell, or as a tool for personal or internal use?

Clarity from the start will help you determine the level of detail, complexity, and flexibility your kit needs.

2. Choose the Right Tool

The most popular choice for building modern UI kits is Figma. It offers powerful features like auto layout, variables, smart variants, and live collaboration, which make it ideal for creating scalable design systems. Other tools like Sketch or Adobe XD can also be used, but Figma remains the industry leader for collaborative UI design.

3. Establish a Solid Foundation

Before creating components, define the visual and structural rules of your UI system. This step will shape the consistency and usability of everything that follows.

Key elements include:

• A consistent color system (including semantic colors)
• A type scale and font hierarchy
• Spacing rules (using a 4pt or 8pt system)
• Grid layouts and breakpoints
• Shadows, borders, and elevation styles

These foundational styles should be defined clearly and stored in one dedicated page or section of your file.

4. Build Modular UI Components

Once your foundations are in place, start creating the core UI components your projects will need. Focus on reusability and responsiveness.

Examples of essential components:

• Buttons in various styles and sizes
• Input fields, dropdowns, checkboxes, toggles
• Navigation elements such as headers, footers, and sidebars
• Cards, badges, modals, and alerts

Use Figma’s auto layout and variants to make components adaptable to different content lengths and states.

Source: Tran Mau Tri Tam on Unsplash

5. Add Interactivity

To enhance the utility of your kit, build in interaction states. This can include hover effects, pressed states, disabled styles, and prototyping connections between screens.

This not only speeds up your workflow when prototyping but also provides a more realistic view of how the design will behave during user interaction.

6. Organize Your File Structure

Clear organization is critical, especially if your UI kit will be used by other designers or developers.

Consider this file structure:

• Foundations
• Components
• Layouts or Templates
• Documentation

Use clear naming conventions and separate frames or pages to keep your kit easy to navigate. Group elements logically so others can quickly find and reuse them.

7. Write Basic Documentation

Even if your kit is for personal use, document how components should be used. If you’re creating a team or client-facing kit, documentation becomes essential.

Include guidance on:

• Component usage
• Layout spacing rules
• States and interactions
• Accessibility notes

Clear documentation helps teams stay aligned and ensures design decisions are easy to understand and implement.

8. Test in Real-World Projects

Test your UI kit by using it in a real design project. This will help you uncover missing components, identify areas for improvement, and fine-tune your components for better usability.

Watch for:

• Gaps in the component library
• Inflexible layouts
• Inconsistencies in padding, font sizes, or color use

Use the feedback to improve the kit over time.

9. Update, Share, or Scale

A UI kit should evolve with your design needs. Make updates as new patterns or requirements emerge. If you're using the kit in a team, consider turning it into a shared library for seamless access and updates.

If your goal is to sell the kit, package it with documentation, file structure overviews, and usage licenses. Consider creating starter templates to show its flexibility and value.

Building your own UI kit is one of the most effective ways to improve your workflow and elevate the quality of your designs. It’s an investment that pays off every time you start a new project, prototype a feature, or collaborate with a team.

Start simple. Build strong foundations. Iterate with real use. The more thoughtfully your UI kit is designed, the more powerful and practical it becomes.

If you'd like help organizing your Figma file, naming components, or creating documentation templates, feel free to ask. I'm happy to help you refine your kit further.

Examples of Excellent UI Kits

It’s now time to look at some of the most famous UI kits. Unlike most UI kits, these UI Kits are a benchmark in the design industry because they are accompanied by incredible features and, more importantly, buildable frameworks to aid in developing accessible and effective digital interfaces.

Lulo Bank

Lulo Bank’s UI kit, combines a minimalist, user-friendly interface with customizable components and interactive elements. It prioritizes accessibility, with clear typography and color contrast, and features flexible layouts and data visualizations for easy financial tracking. Consistent with the brand’s identity, the UI kit creates a seamless and engaging digital banking experience.

Material Design

Material Design is known for its solid visual communication and its significant role in UI design, particularly in its ability to shift between platforms. Material Design focuses on uniformity, scalability, hierarchy, and user-friendly experiences.

It provides responsive designs, motion projects, and vibrant colors for creating sophisticated and aesthetic combinations. It taught the importance of a smooth guideline that communicates and allows users to interact with visual elements effectively.

Source: thinkingtwins.gumroad.com

Foundation

For responsive design, Foundation provides a mobile-first UI kit complete with pre-built components and templates, making it ideal for both websites and mobile apps.

Developed by Zurb, it also guarantees strong accessibility support. Due to its cross-device compatibility and adaptability to user requirements, Foundation is the go-to toolkit for user-friendly scalable projects.

Source: uxpin.com

Untitled UI

Untitled UI remains one of Figma’s most extensive and intricate UI kits and design systems, making it one of the most popular UI kits available. Its built-in Auto Layout, advanced variants, and the latest Figma features make the design system efficient and easy to use.

Untitled UI is acknowledged as the gold standard of Figma design systems and is one of the most-rated UI kits online.

As an out-of-the-box solution, it is compatible with everything from simple marketing landing pages to sophisticated dashboards and web applications, providing designers with all the necessary components without additional effort.

Source: untitledui.com

Read more:

• Difference Between Product Designer and UX Designer
• Data-driven Buyer Personas: What They Are and How to Build Them
• What Is UX Data-Driven Design Process? Effective UX Analysis

Conclusion

To design successful user interface designs with a UI kit, you must know your audience, prioritize consistency, and focus on cross-platform adaptability. If you want to dive deeper, check the links provided for design systems and UI kit best practices. What’s next in the pipeline? Do you want to start designing your kit, or have some queries? Tell us what you would like to discuss!