At the recent All-Hands call Sho Kuwamoto confirmed that Figma is working on design tokens. Schema Conference seems to be a perfect moment to announce them, so fingers crossed!

“This year we’re taking Schema by Figma, our annual design systems conference, on the road to host three in-person events in New York, London, and Tokyo, as well as a virtual event for the location agnostic. With so much to look forward to, we wanted to get our community prepped and primed with a sneak peek of the themes and talks our team is especially excited to see.”

Figma’s conference dedicated to design systems this year goes global and will happen in New York (Oct 26), Tokyo (Nov 2), and London (Nov 9). Bummed I can’t make it to NYC on this date, but it’s also available as a free virtual event on November 16. The number of live attendees is limited, so apply early!

Announced at Schema 2021, this is a new tool that helps you visualize Material You’s dynamic color and create a custom Material Design 3 theme. With built-in code export, it’s easy to migrate to Material’s new color system and take advantage of dynamic color. Don’t miss the article Introducing Material Theme Builder.

Pretty cool to see the backstage of the production. Schema wasn’t a typical Zoom conference.

Patrick Banta compiled a list of design system resources recommended during Schema.

“Ever wonder how other companies set up their Figma files? Joel Miller from Figma will take us behind the scenes and provide tips, tricks, and examples you can implement today.” See also a Twitter thread with all the resources that Joel shared.

Hugo Raymond, Burberry. ​“How can we better understand the context of our Design Systems among our broader product teams? Join us to learn Burberry’s approach, including how to best work with engineers, standardise and understand shared context for reusability, and how to think about both strict and loose frameworks of adoption.”

Heldiney Pereira, Monzo. ​“We all spend time reflecting on structures of design systems, but have we invested enough understanding the governance of those systems? Join Heldiney as he digs into the different models available to run and scale design systems globally.”

“Figma’s Designer Advocate Luis Ouriach has been collecting your questions in chat and online. He’ll dig in with our speakers to tackle design systems questions big and small.”

Ivy Knight and Rody Davis, Google. ​“Material You is enabling a new level of individuality across interfaces. But how does dynamic color interact with the distinct brand expression in your design system? In this session, we’ll dive into the NEW Figma plugin for generating dynamic color schemes and see those changes reflected throughout your app’s UI.”

Kelly Gorr and Prasanna Gunuru, Microsoft. ​“Figma is a powerful design tool that is used by many designers across Microsoft. Building custom Figma plugins can unlock new capabilities, resources, and shortcuts that are tailored to enhance design processes. Kelly and Prasanna take you through what it’s like building Figma plugins and how they are used at Microsoft.”

Jina Anne, Ivy Wang, and Ainsley Wagoner from Asana. ​“This talk is about how the Asana Design Systems team uses design tokens to get designers and engineers working at the same level of abstraction. We will talk about how Figma’s design system tooling, along with design tokens, enables us to make the redundant parts of designing more streamlined so that we can focus on solving design problems.”

Jeremy Dizon, Runi Goswami, Michael Yom, and Joanne Deng from Lyft. ​“Like any product, a design system is only as useful as it is usable. In this session, the Lyft Design Systems team will share the end-to-end resources that enable their system users to build consistent, quality products and features at scale. We’ll learn about their most resilient processes, their past mistakes, their new-ish contribution model, and more.”

Jennie Yip, Atlassian. ​“Design systems have evolved into robust ecosystems of interconnected tooling, documentation, conceptual models, and more. We’re excited to bring you on a journey to celebrate and reflect on the past decade as we shift our mindsets, apply systems thinking, take on the monster of scale, and embrace the complexity of ​“platform.””

Jan Toman, Productboard. ​“Not sure where to start? Get your libraries off the ground by learning how to craft UI kits that designers will love using. We’ll dive into building flexible components, aligning their API with code, and dealing with changes as the design system evolves.”

Jen Yee and Luca Orio, Netflix. ​“Jen and Luca will reveal how systems and freedoms can coexist and how your design community can thrive at any stage. Letting go of consistency and control might sound scary, but embracing a culture of context and trust is the key to supporting an ecosystem where collaborative creation can truly fuel innovation.”

Sho Kuwamoto, Director of Product at Figma. ​“Join Sho as he kicks off our inaugural Schema conference with opening remarks. Tune in for his reflections on how design systems have grown and changed and how us system designers can help shape a better, more inclusive future.”

All talks are already available in Schema’s event account. (NB: if you didn’t attend the conference, you’d need to create an account first.) Alternatively, I’ll share the direct YouTube links below with some relevant resources.

Figma announced Schema, a conference focused on building, scaling, and contributing to design systems. Apply to attend on October 7th, 2021 for a virtual day of sessions led by top design systems leaders from Atlassian, Lyft, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and Productboard. Read more in Thomas Lowry’s blog post.