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January 16, 2020

Design Tokens beyond colors, typography, and spacing.

In recent months, I couldn’t help but notice how many people (and companies) when referring to “design tokens” what they actually mean is colors, typography, spacing (and in some cases elevation, timing, and sizing).

While this is perfectly true, I think a key part of the picture is missing: design tokens can be much more than this.

As Sarah Federman puts it perfectly:

The longer I do this, the more convinced I am that global design tokens and component design tokens are hugely different problems and the fact that everyone is treating them the same is why much of current solutions are brittle and rely almost entirely on convention
— Sarah Federman (@sarah_federman) August 21, 2019

In this post, I share my point of view and my experience on this topic, showing why so much more can be done with them, and how.

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