About Civic Design

The Civic Design System is a customizable design system built on the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS). It provides comprehensive documentation, practical examples, and a modular Sass architecture that makes it easy to customize USWDS for your organization.

Who is this for?

The Civic Design System is designed for:

Government agencies building accessible, mobile-friendly websites
Designers learning USWDS components and design tokens
Developers setting up customized USWDS implementations

What does it include?

The documentation site is organized into three sections:

Style Guide — Typography, colors, layout utilities, and visual styles
Component Library — All USWDS components with live examples and code snippets
Guidelines — Design principles, accessibility standards, and development guidance

What is USWDS?

The U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) is a design system created by the U.S. General Services Administration. It provides a library of open-source UI components, design tokens, and guidelines to help government agencies build accessible, mobile-friendly websites.

USWDS offers a set of design tokens (colors, typography, spacing) that can be customized through Sass settings. The Civic Design System builds on top of USWDS, providing a ready-to-use customization layer and comprehensive documentation.

Background

The Civic Design System was forked from the Design System which was created for product teams in (Farm Production and Conservation, a USDA Mission Area) who want to create consistent, accessible online experiences. It supports the requirements of OMB Memorandum M-16-21, "Federal Source Code Policy: Achieving Efficiency, Transparency, and Innovation through Reusable and Open Source Software," which requires agencies to release at least 20 percent of new custom-developed source code as Open Source Software (OSS).

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please feel free to submit issues and pull requests on GitHub.

License

This project is released under CC0 1.0 Universal (Public Domain). USWDS is also released under CC0 1.0 by the U.S. General Services Administration.