Brad Frost's atomic design theory offers a practical way for designers to create and manage design systems or pattern libraries. By breaking down designs into reusable components (atoms), you can build more complex structures (molecules, organisms) that align with the larger guidelines of the design system.

In practice, this means you can build a collection of consistent UI elements like buttons, labels, and inputs, and then combine them in various ways to form more intricate layouts and templates. By doing so, you're not just designing individual pages but creating a coherent and scalable system.

This modular approach simplifies collaboration across teams and ensures that updates to a single component will reflect across all instances where it's used. Integrating atomic design into a pattern library or design system ultimately leads to a more efficient design process and a cohesive user experience across products and platforms.