Designing in the browser , not the mockup

The tension in any web project is that the deliverable is code, but the review artifact is a picture. Every round of feedback on a static comp is feedback on something that will never exist, and every round is a delay.

Static comps are lying to you

A comp shows one viewport, one state, one theme. The real site has three breakpoints, five states per component, dark mode, keyboard focus, and reduced motion. You can not sign off on those in Figma. So you sign off on the picture, ship the site, and rediscover half of the design language in the browser under a deadline.

What we do instead

We build the design system as code in week one (colors, type, spacing, primitives) and prototype pages in the browser from week two. Clients see a real URL, on a real device, in every state. Feedback becomes concrete.

• Design tokens live in CSS variables from day one
• Every component ships with its states before it ships anywhere else
• Reviews happen on a preview URL, not a shared Figma file

The best design tool is the medium your users will actually see.

Where Figma still wins

Exploration. Moodboards. Alignment on direction before you write CSS. We still start there. We just move on faster.