One person sets the design system up. Everyone else signs in and builds from it. This guide covers the whole path: inviting your team to the workspace, making someone a Design System Admin, getting your Figma component library into your own Figma team, creating a design system inside the Email Love plugin, uploading components section by section, and what each teammate sees afterwards.
If you only want the mechanics of creating a design system and uploading components, see Creating and Managing Design Systems. This page is about doing that for a team.
How it fits together
There are two libraries and they do different jobs:
You need both. The Figma library is the source of truth. The design system in the plugin is how your team, and Email Love’s AI features, get at it.
The three roles
The workspace owner is the person who created the Email Love account. The role is permanent. The owner can invite teammates and promote any of them to Design System Admin, which lets that person create design systems and upload components the rest of the team can use. Everyone else is a member: they build from the design system and save templates, but cannot change what is in it.
Most teams make the designer who maintains the Figma library the Design System Admin, and keep the owner role with whoever manages the account.
Step 1: Invite your team and name a Design System Admin
Create the workspace
Open the Email Love plugin in Figma. On the welcome screen choose Sign up for free and complete the signup with the owner’s work email. If your company already has an Email Love account, sign in with it instead.
Move to a paid plan and set your seats
Click the profile name in the top left of the plugin to open the Account page, then Upgrade plan. Choose a plan, set the number of seats to the number of people who will use the plugin, and complete checkout. Creating design systems and uploading components is a paid feature; see Email Love Subscription Plans. Invite members
From the Account page, invite each teammate by their work email. They receive an invitation and sign in to the plugin with their own login. Do not share one login between people: the plugin records who uploaded what, and delete permissions depend on it.
Make someone a Design System Admin
In the member list on the Account page, change the role next to the designer’s name to Design System Admin. They can now create design systems and upload components. You can give the role to more than one person.
Only the workspace owner can invite members, change roles, or manage billing. A Design System Admin who needs another seat asks the owner.
Accounts on a Gumroad license key do not have roles. Everyone on the same key sees the same design systems and can delete anything.
Step 2: Put the Figma library in your own team and publish it
If Email Love built your design system, the Figma file was created in our Figma. It should live in yours. The Design System Admin usually does this step.
Duplicate the file into your Figma team
Open the file we shared, choose Duplicate to your drafts from the file menu, then move the copy into one of your team projects. This copy is now your master. Stop editing the original.
Publish it as a library
In the copy, open the Assets panel, click the library icon at the top, and under This file click Publish. Leave every component selected, add a short note, and publish.
Switch the library on in your other files
In any other Figma file, open the Assets panel, click the library icon, and turn your library on. Its components now appear in that file’s Assets.
Publishing matters for the plugin too. Saved components stay linked to their Figma source, and that link works from any file only when the source is published to a team library. For local, unpublished components the link only works inside the same file.
Step 3: Create the design system in the plugin
The Design System Admin (or the owner) does this.
Open the design system dropdown
In the plugin, click the design system dropdown in the top left. It shows Default out of the box.
Create a Design System
Choose Manage your design systems, then Create a Design System. Name it after the brand, for example Acme Marketing, and click Create Design System.
Select it
Pick it from the dropdown. The plugin remembers the choice between sessions, for you and for everyone else on the workspace.
Create one design system per brand or per distinct look. Sub-brands that share components can share one.
Step 4: Upload your components, section by section
A design system has 13 fixed sections: Header, Heroes, Single Column, Two Column, Three Column, Four Column, Buttons, Reviews, Images, Lists, Order Tables, Footer, and Code. You fill each one from the matching part of your Figma file.
Go to the Figma page for one section
For example, the page that holds your three-column modules.
Select the components on the canvas
Select the components themselves, the outer Wrapper of each module. Selecting a Section, a Column or a layer inside leaves the Upload button greyed out. You can select several components at once.
Open the matching section in the plugin and click Upload
Here, Three Column. Confirm the dialog. The plugin shows how many components saved.
Repeat for each section you use
You do not need to fill every section. Empty ones are skipped by AI Studio.
Each saved component keeps a link to its Figma master, shown by a blue chain icon on the thumbnail. Change the master in Figma and publish, and the saved copy updates on its own: colours, images, text, spacing. Only a structural change, such as adding a section inside a module, needs a re-upload.
To prove the link to yourself, change a colour on a master component, publish, and open that section in the plugin. The thumbnail updates. Then change it back.
If you also use Generate from Brief or the Builder, sync the design system afterwards: AI Studio, then Generate from Brief, pick the design system, click Sync Template Design. Building by hand in Figma needs no sync.
Step 5: What your team sees
Nothing is shared by hand. Design systems, saved components and saved templates belong to the workspace, so everyone who signs in to it sees the same library. Each member needs two things.
Access to the Figma library
Add them to the Figma team that holds the master file, or give them at least view access to it. In their own files they switch the library on from the Assets panel. Without this, components they place from the plugin still work, but lose the link back to the master.
Their invitation accepted
They install the plugin from Figma Community, open it, choose Existing user? Sign in, and sign in with the login from their invitation. Your design system appears in their top-left dropdown, already selected. They open any section and click a component to drop a live instance into their email.
Members cannot upload into the design system. If a member builds a module the whole team should have, they hand it to the Design System Admin, who uploads it from the master file so it stays linked.
Step 6: Save finished emails as templates
Components are for building any email. Templates are for starting the next send from the last one. The plugin keeps them apart: components go into design system sections, whole emails go into the Customs tab. Any member can save a template.
Select the whole email frame
Not a Wrapper inside it. Select several frames to save them in one pass.
Open Customs and create a category
Click the Customs tab in the top left, then Create Category. Name it by email type: Newsletters, Promotions, Transactional.
Add New Template
Click Add New Template, pick the category, click Add Template. With several frames selected the plugin opens Save Multiple Templates instead.
A saved template is a snapshot. It does not follow the Figma master the way components do, so when a template changes for good, save it again and remove the old one. If your templates use component properties (Show toggles for optional sections), those toggles come through when a teammate inserts the template, so they can switch sections on or off before editing copy.
Full detail on the two shapes is in Saving Customized Components & Templates.
FAQ
A teammate cannot see the design system.
They are signed in to a different workspace or with a personal account. Have them sign out of the plugin and back in with the login from their invitation. If they belong to more than one workspace, the Account page lets them switch, and everything they see follows the workspace they pick.
The Upload button is missing for a teammate.
They are a member, not a Design System Admin. The owner changes their role on the Account page.
Can we have more than one Design System Admin?
Yes. The owner can give the role to as many members as needed. Each admin can delete what they uploaded; only the owner can delete a whole design system.
Our workspace owner is leaving the company.
The owner role cannot be transferred from inside the plugin. Contact support@emaillove.com before their last day.
Do teammates need edit access to the Figma master file?
No. View access is enough to use the published library. Give edit access to the Design System Admin and whoever else maintains the components.
We changed a component in Figma but the plugin still shows the old one.
Open the section in the plugin; linked components check for updates when the section opens. An orange refresh icon means an update is waiting, and a click syncs it. If the change was structural, delete the saved component and upload it again.
Can we move components between sections?
Not directly. Delete from the current section and upload again into the right one.
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