Building empowering style guides with practical researchHello from the sky! It's been a while and wanted to give you an update on the Atomic Design book.
Despite my best intentions of wrapping up the manuscript last month, my client work and seemingly nonstop travel (6 cities/ 3 countries in the last three weeks) have kept me from diving into writing.
BUT! It's not all bad news; I have some good news as well. I had the great fortune to travel to San Francisco to speak at Clarity Conf, which was the first ever conference dedicated to design systems and style guides. All of the sessions were absolutely incredible and insightful, and I have no doubt that the conference will influence Atomic Design's text.
I was able to take notes on the sessions, and I highly recommend you check them out!
Notes from Clarity Conf
- Building empowering style guides with practical research - Isaak Hayes & Donna Chan describe their process for creating a style guide at AppDirect.
- Beyond the Toolkit: Spreading a System Across People & Products - Nathan Curtis talked about making design systems and how to make sure they take root at your organization.
- Deconstructing Web Systems; or, A Pattern Language for Web Development - Claudina Sarahe discussed the many types of patterns that make up frontend web systems.
- Code Patterns for Pattern-Making - Miriam Suzanne talked about establishing patterns to make your codebase easy to document and maintain.
- Crawl, Walk, Run – the Evolution of a Design System - Stephanie Rewis &Brandon Ferrua discussed the creation of the CSS framework that’s part of Salesforce’s Lightning Design System.
- Being Human, Being Slack - Anna Pickard discussed everything that goes into creating a cohesive voice and tone at Slack.
- Communicating Animation - Rachel Nabors talked about UI animation and how to document animation within a design system.
- Baking Accessibility In - Cordelia McGee-Tubb talked about building accessibility into design systems.
- Living Systems: Brand in the context of peoples lives - Jeremy Perez-Cruztalked about the human elements that go into great brand systems.
- Designing for Earthlings and Astronauts - Richard Danne discussed his long experience creating style guides for massive organizations.
Again, I definitely recommend diving into the notes from the session. Chris Coyier, who also emceed the event, rounded up a bunch of notes as well. Check em out!
Other Resources
There have been some great additions to Styleguides.io, so give that a look for some inspiration.
Color in Design Systems
Here's Nathan Curtis with some fantastic advice for dealing with color in design systems and pattern libraries. Some really practical stuff there.
Introducing iframify
Hugo Giraudel created a tool that wraps elements in an iframe, which is perfect for demonstrating responsiveness in the context of a pattern library.
Design Systems Slack Channel
A bunch of smart people who talk about design systems, pattern libraries, and all sorts of atomic goodness are hanging out in a Slack channel. Join the conversation!
Frontend Guidelines Questionnaire
I shared this last time, but my frontend guidelines questionnaire has gotten some additional questions for your team to consider.
What's next with Atomic Design
I have one more big trip on the horizon, but I've finished my client work and have two weeks to dive into wrapping up the last chapter of the book. AND! I'm working with a copy editor who's combing through the existing chapters and tweaking the language and making sure everything's making sense. I'll share more about that process soon.
As always, you can follow along with project updates here. And if you would like to support the project (and haven't done so already), you can preorder the book here for $10. If you have any questions or have any feedback for me, feel free to contact me via email or on Twitter.
Thanks again for supporting Atomic Design!
