GOV.UK Design System vs Swiss
GOV.UK デザインシステム / スイス・スタイル
GOV.UK Design System comes from Design Systems and Swiss from Functionalism. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
GOV.UK Design System
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The design language the UK government's Government Digital Service publishes and maintains for public services. Everything runs in one undecorated left aligned column set in GDS Transport, and the green button keeps square corners while carrying a darker green band along its bottom edge, dropping by exactly that depth when pressed. Whatever holds keyboard focus turns yellow with a black rule under it.
Swiss
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Puts order front and center and makes the information itself the protagonist.
| GOV.UK Design System | Swiss | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2012– | 1950s– |
| Family | Design Systems | Functionalism |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | One undecorated left aligned column, with almost no boxes and no shadows / A green button with square corners and a darker green band along its bottom edge, which drops by that exact depth when pressed / Whatever holds keyboard focus turns yellow with a black rule drawn beneath it / Type sizes step coarsely through 48, 36, 24, 19 and 16px with nothing in between | Strict grid / Sans-serif type / Asymmetry / Objective photography |
| Best used for | Rebuilding a government or public service form as a single left aligned column asking one question per screen · Making the current focus position unmistakable for someone operating the service by keyboard alone | Making complex information fast to read · Giving an organization rationality and transparency |
| Type | One sans serif only, in five fixed sizes with nothing in between. Headings are bold and body text sits at 19px. | Neutral sans-serif; be bold with size contrast |
| Composition | Hold the content to a single narrow column and align every element to one left rule. No multi column layouts and no boxes, because a horizontal rule is the only break between topics. | 12-column grid, left-aligned, asymmetric |
| Material | Colour is tied to meaning and never used decoratively. Buttons keep a corner radius of zero and gain their thickness from a band of their own darker shade along the bottom edge. The focus state is always yellow ground with a black underline. | White space and objective photographs; almost no ornament |
| Caution | Tidying the look by rounding button corners or thinning the borders on form inputs deletes the two signals this style relies on entirely, the pressable thickness and the position of focus. | Too much tidiness turns anonymous. Keep one strong jump in scale. |