π Articles
Retrofitting a Design System Into an Existing Product
AnΔ±l highlights the challenges of integrating a design system into an evolving product with existing design debt. The team analysed inconsistencies before strategically rolling out core styles like border radius, spacing, typography, and icons. By emphasising education and using automation tools for insights, they laid the groundwork for future improvements while respecting the product's legacy.
Beyond Components: Designing for Meaning in an Agent-Assisted Era
Derek discusses the evolution of design systems, which have shifted from efficiency to governance challenges. He proposes OODS Foundry, an object-oriented design system that emphasizes meaning through coherent objects and traits. By integrating intelligent agents to maintain consistency while preserving human judgment, the system fosters collaboration, allowing designers to focus on defining rather than rebuilding.
Jira for Design Systems: Building a Transparent Workflow with Reviews and Automated Handoff
Victoria shares their experience improving the design system workflow at a streaming service with over 17 million daily users. They identified issues like unclear statuses and verbal handoffs, leading to rework and demotivation. By creating a structured Jira workflow with defined stages, automated handoffs, and clear checklists, they streamlined processes for designers and developers, enhancing collaboration and efficiency.
π Interesting Reads
Your tokens have become infrastructure
Murphy explains how design tokens evolve from helpful tools to critical infrastructure as design systems scale. When multiple teams depend on the same tokens, changes require careful governance and versioning. He emphasizes the importance of clear documentation and ownership to maintain reliability and adaptability, ensuring that tokens support a sustainable design system while effectively managing change.
From tokens to touchpoints: Powering a successful rebrand with your design system
Charlotte discusses how to leverage a design system to streamline a rebrand, transforming chaos into a structured process. She emphasizes the importance of design tokens for consistency and the need for early adoption among teams. Cross-collaboration is essential for alignment, and the design system should act as a single source of truth. By using data to showcase the rebrand's impact, teams can turn a stressful experience into a smooth and motivating project.
Announcing the Carbon AI Chat v1 Release
Anna announces the v1.0.0 release of @carbon/ai-chat, an open-source chat library designed for easy AI chat integration with the Carbon Design System. This stable version features a well-documented API, enhanced configuration, and improved test structures. Users are encouraged to follow migration guides if upgrading. Contributions are welcome, and future features are in development, with progress tracked on the GitHub project board.
π Tutorials
Creating and using component variants in Penpot
In this tutorial, Laura outlines how to create and use component variants in Penpot, enabling designers to define and switch between properties like size and colour effortlessly. This functionality enhances workflow efficiency and maintains design consistency across different contexts while preserving essential text overrides.
π§° Tools / Resources
Web Awesome
Web Awesome offers a large library of customisable, web standards-based UI components, designed to be framework-agnostic and easy to implement. With over 50 components, 100 patterns, and 11 themes, it enables rapid development while ensuring accessibility and usability, allowing you to create unique, stable designs with minimal effort using standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.