Component Tokens as a Dark Art

Tue 29th – 10:50

A taxonomy of generic and semantic concepts is very often enough to spread purposeful visual decisions across a UI component catalog. Many design systems can live forever without nary a component-level design token. But once intent shifts to offer themes, that clean token taxonomy can drift into a messy, complicated, and darker place.

In this talk, Nathan will share experiences of working with teams to achieve thematic goals by extending token taxonomies with just enough component-level design tokens. An initial focus will center on color themes to enable light and dark mode. Yet, theming more broadly can drift into hooks to shift typography, space and size too. Along the way, Nathan will highlight reusable patterns, complementary models and how to think about interactions across visual attributes.

Some see themed outcomes as unexplainable magic. But underneath, solutions are complicated yet achievable. You’ll walk away with techniques and examples to help you know how far you need to go to unify theming across design and code assets in a clean, clear and durable way.

Nathan will also give a workshop on Design System Planning and Process.