Ridd argues that the pendulum has swung too far, and designers hating on design systems are missing the point. You might not need an enterprise-grade system with all bells and whistles, but every product can benefit from a set of simple components: ​“I’ll suggest design systems are most valuable when you DON’T know what the product will be… Investing in a set of core components minimizes the number of knobs you need to turn in order to iterate.”

Zigma connects your design system to the production code, directly syncing design variables from Figma into your GitHub projects. Made by the NextUI team.

Shu Ha Ri is a robust design system meticulously crafted for Figma, offering many essential features and a generous free version. It revolves around modularity and empowers designers to efficiently create diverse instances with a single master component.

Nathan Curtis: ​“In 2015, I established three models of forming teams for scaling design systems: solitary, central, and federated. The article progressed through each, scoffing at solitary, considering central, and favoring federated based on the section’s positioning and proportional length. […] In this article, I’ll dig into how federated is not a choice, it’s a facet. In practice, it’s never pursued first and never without central investment. In most cases, it’s optional and its outcomes can be so expensive and frustrating that it’s not worth it. Even worse, positioning federated as a primary objective anchors so many stakeholder myths to unwind that it damages system potential and even threatens its existence.”

Molly Hellmuth shares daily discoveries while working on the UI Prep design system update. There are great tips on pairing heading and body sizes, clearly marking a default text size, avoiding hiding components with a period or underline in the name, scoping variables in bulk, establishing a set of ​“surface” colors, removing a focused state, and including a special data text style for tables.

“Spectrum, Adobe’s design system, already had a robust icon system, but the time had come for a redesign. Evolving a design system’s icons can involve updating and/​or redesigning assets, improving how icons are maintained and served to the teams using them, and creating a solution for adding, updating, and deprecating design elements within it. Months of discovery, exploration, reviews, and sharing laid the groundwork for the icon team’s three-phase process. It began with extensive design exploration and beta testing to confirm the needs of product teams, and ended with implementing suggestions for improving search, customization, and serving icons. It’s a method of inquiry, feedback, and refinement that other teams can apply to their work.”

Explaining systems thinking applied to design systems through an off-road vehicle platform? That’s my jam. ​“Nissan has developed a vehicle platform that gives it flexibility across a wide selection of vehicles. They leverage the same base component (the frame), and attached different components to that base in order to achieve the desired design. When building a design system, we should strive for a similar level of structure and flexibility. This gives us consistency while also allowing us to be adaptive and scale to our user’s needs.”

Ana Boyer helps design system teams ensure designers get library updates not by copying main components into their working files.

“The Library Analytics API, part of the Figma REST API, lets you fetch analytics data about how your organization’s design system libraries are being used. The API provides similar information to the in-product library analytics feature, but in a format that you can use to do more fine-grained, custom analysis. In this video Gerard shows how to get started with the API, and shows how you might use the data.”

Developer Advocate Jake explains some of the reasons why product experience can be misaligned between design and development. He points out that the source of truth can vary depending on the scenario, from the design system to the code in production to the design files. To find the truth, we have to ask a few questions: ​“What do we want?”, ​“What do we have?” and ​“What is the difference?”

I shared this design system back in October of last year, but it just shipped a new version and won #1 Product of the Day at Product Hunt. ​“Included in this package are more than 200 styles (Typography, Effects, and Color), over 200 variables (Surface, Text, Outlines, and Radius), and 700+ components (Buttons, Form Elements, Navigation, Web3, and more). It also offers pre-made layout samples, a one-click dark mode option, and a fully tokenized design using Figma variables.”

Chad Bergman continues the series on getting started with design systems with a walkthrough of the basics of creating a system tailored to your unique goals and challenges, whether building from scratch or starting with existing pieces.

The Figma team answers FAQs on design systems and everything launched at Framework, ranging from introductory questions to more complex ones.

Designer Advocate Ana Boyer takes us on a deep dive into typography and gradient variables, sharing best practices for leveraging these new features in your design system.

Jacob Miller, a Product Manager for Design Systems at Figma, gives an overview of everything launched at Framework — Code Connect for developers, typography and gradient variables, and the new Library Analytics API. All of the above is designed to drive design system adoption across the teams because ​“building a design system is only half the battle — the real challenge is getting it adopted by both designers and developers.” If you missed the event, that’s one summary you need.

“The Washington Post’s inclusive process for creating new design system components bridges the gap between design and development to make features that help navigate the news online.”

Ana Boyer wonders, what if we also marketed design systems like products? ​“In my time at Figma, I’ve talked to dozens of design systems teams looking to drive adoption and prove the value of their work. Now, more than ever, it’s important to think, strategize, and execute like a marketer. Here are some of the tactics and strategies for helping you position your design system as an integral asset — whether launching anew or revitalizing existing efforts.”

A reminder that Framework is happening on Tuesday, April 16th. Figma published the schedule for this 3‑hour-long event, which will be a great fit for anyone interested in variables, design systems, and design-to-code handoff.

A free beta of the design system generator. Figr Identity helps set up styles and variables for color, typography, spacing, grids, radius, and shadows. Automate tedious work by generating a scalable component library and easily managing your design system.

Figma is bringing together the design systems community on April 16 to share new features, best practices, and a peek into what’s coming next in the half-day event. ​“We’ll share more about new capabilities to make design systems more powerful and easier to adopt, as well as features to connect your system closer to code. Our product sessions will dive deep into strategies for structuring and maintaining your system.”

Considering it’s only a couple of months until Config 2024, it’s pretty clear they will put a bow on some of the features announced last year. Typographic variables, anyone?