Posts Tagged ‘design systems’

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  1. 09 Jan, 2025

    Design Tokens Course Update: 2hrs of video now available!

    In addition to stuffing our faces with cookies, Ian and I were hard at work over the holidays creating our design tokens course. I’m freaking thrilled that we published 2 hours of preorder-exclusive video content, shared several dozen links, and included […]

  2. 23 Dec, 2024

    Introducing Subatomic: The Complete Guide To Design Tokens

    BIG NEWS! We’re hard at work making an online course called Subatomic: The Complete Guide To Design Tokens. Over the past decade, Ian Frost and I have created design token systems for dozens of organizations — including some of the […]

  3. 05 Dec, 2024

    React v19 – React

    React v19 was just released with support for Web Components! React 19 adds full support for custom elements and passes all tests on Custom Elements Everywhere. In past versions, using Custom Elements in React has been difficult because React treated […]

  4. 15 Nov, 2024

    Design Systems Q&A

    I recently had the pleasure of doing a Q&A session with Molly Helmuth’s Design System Bootcamp cohort. The questions were great and varied, so I asked Molly if she’d be alright if I shared my answers with you all. Thankfully, […]

  5. 28 Oct, 2024

    Web Component continued progress

    At Big Medium, we’re fans of Web Components, and over the last 6 years have been helping our clients build standards-based, interoperable, design systems with them. The ability to deliver a consistent, cohesive experience to a any web-based technology perfectly […]

  6. 15 Oct, 2024

    “The design system isn’t working for me!”

    When design system users run into issues designing and developing with the system, they often have a hard time distinguishing between a bug, a missing feature, an intentional design deviation, a new pattern they need to create, or something else. […]

  7. 04 Oct, 2024

    Why every UX/UI designer should attend a masterclass with Brad Frost | by Zoi

    Well this is just a really nice piece of flattery, and a nice breakdown of my design system masterclass I delivered at HATCH Conference in Berlin last year. I truly enjoy teaching masterclasses, running workshops, and working with teams to […]

  8. 04 Oct, 2024

    Design systems die in darkness

    When you don’t hear from teams using your design system, we’ve learned over the years that it’s typically not a sign of “everything is going great” but “something is probably wrong.” We teach our client teams to be very skeptical […]

  9. 22 Jul, 2024

    Master design system governance with this one weird trick

    That one weird trick? TALK. What do you do when someone doesn’t see what component they’re looking for in the design system? TALK. What do you do when someone has questions about what a component does, if it meets their […]

  10. 15 Jun, 2024

    The future is built on solid foundations

    If you feel like you’re struggling to keep up with the pace of technological change, you’re certainly not alone. We feel this pressure at an individual level, but also at an organizational level. How do digital organizations establish solid, stable […]

  11. 04 Jun, 2024

    A rare use case for em units

    text-decoration-offset is a good use case for em units. Most of the time we favor rems over ems, but in this case we want the text underline offset to proportionally scale with the `font-size` property. Here’s a quick demo: See […]

  12. 07 May, 2024

    Transparent borders

    You Want border-color: transparent, Not border: none by Dave is a great reminder to not remove borders from components for accessibility reasons, especially to better support high contrast mode. border-color: transparent comes in handy for other use cases as well. […]

  13. 29 Apr, 2024

    Don’t put crap in the design system

    One of my favorite Josh lines that’s really stood the test of time and cuts through a lot of noise in a conversation: Don’t put crap in the design system. Josh Clark What is crap? Crap is rushed work, low-quality […]

  14. 10 Apr, 2024

    The Component Gallery

    There have been tons of design system roundup sites over the years, but The Component Gallery  by Iain Bean is particularly well designed and fun.

  15. 10 Apr, 2024

    The Value of Design Tokens in Modern Web Development | Southleft, LLC

    Here’s my pal and frequent collaborator TJ Pitre with The Value of Design Tokens in Modern Web Development. TJ’s post is a good overview of design tokens and the various aspects of working with them in a web development workflow.

  16. 02 Apr, 2024

    Brad Frost on Adaptable Design Systems | Design Systems Podcast

    I had a great chat with Chris Strahl on the Design Systems Podcast, and we covered a lot of ground! We sit down with Brad Frost, a leading voice in design systems. Together, we explore the critical intersection between adaptable […]

  17. 22 Mar, 2024

    Deep Dive with Brad Frost — The new frontier of design systems

    If you’ve dabbled in design systems then you’re no doubt familiar with Brad Frost and atomic design. He’s laid the foundation for design systems teams around the world. So in this discussion we talk about the types of challenges he […]

  18. 15 Mar, 2024

    Design Systems: From Atomic Design to a Global Solution

    I was recently a guest on the CodingCatDev podcast, where we covered a lot of ground around design systems, including the design system ecosystem, the idea of a Global Design System, and many of the challenges teams face when creating […]

  19. 13 Mar, 2024

    What’s Next for a Global Design System

    I recently published an article outlining the need for a Global Design System. In my post I stated: A Global Design System would improve the quality and accessibility of the world’s web experiences, save the world’s web designers and developers […]

  20. 04 Mar, 2024

    Evolving design systems | A free Webflow resource

    As organizations race to deliver best-in-class digital experiences to their customers, the ability to innovate has become essential. Building a strong foundation is no longer the end-all-be-all to success; it’s also the ability to reimagine what’s possible tomorrow that truly […]

  21. 27 Feb, 2024

    AI and Design Systems

    We’ve all watched with simultaneous fascination and trepidation as a flood of AI-powered tools continues to wash over the digital landscape. At Big Medium, we help complex organizations design at scale and pragmatically adopt new technologies, so naturally we’ve been […]

  22. 08 Feb, 2024

    Thoughts on a Global Design System – Chris Coyier

    Here’s Chris with some excellent thoughts on the idea of a Global Design System. Between this post and our ShopTalk Show conversation, there’s some great stuff to respond to! Chris spells out a lot of tough questions and challenges around […]

  23. 08 Feb, 2024

    Are Design Systems a zero-interest rate phenomenon? | daverupert.com

    I love this entire post from Dave, which matches my experience helping scores of organizations navigate their design system efforts. Design systems are a hard sell on their own, as Dave explains: There’s no particular “hair on fire” problem that […]

  24. 06 Feb, 2024

    601: Brad Frost on A Global Design System + Frostapalooza – ShopTalk

    Hooo boy, this is great! I had a fantastic time on the ShopTalk Show talking about the need for a Global Design System. It was a great conversation with two people that I feel fundamentally get it; so it was […]

  25. 01 Feb, 2024

    The Gulf Between Design and Engineering / Design Systems International

    The most crucial mistake in the collaboration between designers and engineers happens when we conflate this division of tools with a need for a strong division of labor. Treating design and engineering as two completely separate processes leads to an […]

  26. 09 Jan, 2024

    A Global Design System

    TL;DR: This is a call to action to create a Global Design System that provides the world’s web designers & developers a library of common UI components. A Global Design System would improve the quality and accessibility of the world’s […]

  27. 04 Jan, 2024

    2024 Design System Vibes

    OUT: Pattern Police IN: Empathic Sherpas OUT: An overstuffed design system libraryIN: A thoughtful, layer-cake design system ecosystem  OUT: Unnecessarily verbose documentationIN: Just enough, just-in-time documentation  OUT: Single discipline-focused design systemsIN: Cross-disciplinary design systems that serve the entire org OUT: Rushing […]

  28. 23 Oct, 2023

    Ship Faster by Building Design Systems Slower | Big Medium

    Here’s my partner Josh Clark with an absolute barn-burner of an article: Ship Faster by Building Design Systems Slower. In our work at Big Medium, we’ve guided dozens of design system teams who have felt the stress of being perceived as […]

  29. 21 Sep, 2023

    The Design System Ecosystem

    What does a mature, end-to-end design system look like in a big, complex organization? What are all the moving pieces, and how do they hang together as a well-considered architecture? What’s required and what’s optional? Hold onto your butts, because […]

  30. 15 Sep, 2023

    Design Systems with Brad Frost – The State of the Web – Google Chrome Developers

    YouTube’s recommendation algorithm led me to this interview I did about design systems with Google Chrome Developers: While it was published in Feb 2020 (😱), I think it still holds up pretty dang well!