We consider ordered pairs $(X,\mathcal{B})$ where $X$ is a finite set of size $v$ and $\mathcal{B}$ is some collection of $k$-element subsets of $X$ such that every $t$-element subset of $X$ is contained in exactly $λ$ "blocks" $B\in \mathcal{B}$ for some fixed $λ$. We represent each block $B$ by a zero-one vector $\mathbf{c}_B$ of length $v$ and explore the ideal $\mathcal{I}(\mathcal{B})$ of polynomials in $v$ variables with complex coefficients which vanish on the set $\{ \mathbf{c}_B \mid B \in \mathcal{B}\}$. After setting up the basic theory, we investigate two parameters related to this ideal: $γ_1(\mathcal{B})$ is the smallest degree of a non-trivial polynomial in the ideal $\mathcal{I}(\mathcal{B})$ and $γ_2(\mathcal{B})$ is the smallest integer $s$ such that $\mathcal{I}(\mathcal{B})$ is generated by a set of polynomials of degree at most $s$. We first prove the general bounds $t/2 < γ_1(\mathcal{B}) \le γ_2(\mathcal{B}) \le k$. Examining important families of examples, we find that, for symmetric 2-designs and Steiner systems, we have $γ_2(\mathcal{B}) \le t$. But we expect $γ_2(\mathcal{B})$ to be closer to $k$ for less structured designs and we indicate this by constructing infinitely many triple systems satisfying $γ_2(\mathcal{B})=k$.