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This workshop is for experienced design system practitioners that know the basics inside and out, and are looking to dive into the details of design system architecture and process that truly make or break a design system effort.

These sessions will cover the design system ecosystem, design token architecture for multi-brand design systems, component architecture best practices, adoption, team structure, governance, and communication best practices.

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In This Workshop, You’ll Learn:

• How to architect a design system ecosystem that’s tuned to your organization’s specific needs and goals
• The art of creating and governing design system recipes, which help product teams assemble design system assets into product-specific compositions
• The nuances of creating and managing multi-brand and multi-product design systems
• Advanced design token architecture, naming conventions, process, and best practices
• Component API design naming conventions, processes, and best practices for Figma and code
• UI component construction and composability best practices for Figma and code
• How to craft design systems that provide helpful structure without being overly rigid
• Best practices for design system team structure, roles, and position within your organization
• How to get your design system adopted by products so that real business-critical software is powered by your design system
• Best practices for governance, contribution, and release processes to clarify how teams should wield, extend, bend, and even break the system.
• Communication and relationship best practices to ensure the long-term health of the design system and the digital products it serves.

Why You Should Attend?

By attending this workshop, you will:

• advance your own design system skills and knowledge
• ensure your design system architecture can support multiple brands, products, and evolving business needs.
• learn what goes into creating end-to-end design systems
• gain actionable insights and techniques to implement in your organization that are backed up by Brad’s deep experience from working with dozens of organizations
• be better equipped to collaborate with other disciplines and groups
• network with peers and professionals facing similar challenges
• learn from one of the industry’s pioneers and leaders

What Hardware/Software Do You Need?

You’ll need Zoom for video and screensharing, Figjam for exercises, and Slack (using a SmashingConf private channel for workshop communications). Having access to Figma and a code editor is a good idea, but not a hard requirement.

About Brad Frost

Brad Frost is the inventor of Atomic Design and is a design system consultant, front-end developer, speaker, writer, musician, and artist located in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA. As a principal and design system consultant at Big Medium, he’s helped 10% of the Fortune 100 establish and evolve their enterprise design systems. He is the author of the book Atomic Design, which introduces a methodology to create and maintain effective design systems.

He co-hosted the Style Guides Podcast and has helped create several tools and resources for web designers, including Pattern Lab, Styleguides.io, Style Guide Guide, This Is Responsive, Death to Bullshit, and more.

Time & Schedule

This workshop is split over four days. Our virtual doors open at 8:45, we start at 9 AM PT.

The workshop sessions will run on the following days:

• Tue, November 12, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
• Wed, November 13, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
• Tue, November 19, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
• Wed, November 20, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT

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Day 1

8:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 9:50 am
The Design System Ecosystem, Core design system assets

9:50 am – 10:00 am
Break

10:00 am – 11:50 am
Technology-specific component libraries, the art of design system recipes, smart components, product layer

10:50 am – 11:00 am
Q&A with Brad on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 2

8:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 9:50 am
Themeable design systems, use cases, design token architecture and nomenclature

9:50 am – 10:00 am
Break

10:00 am – 11:50 am
Design tokens in Figma, code, and documentation

10:50 am – 11:00 am
Q&A with Brad on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 3

8:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 9:50 am
Component architecture

9:50 am – 10:00 am
Break

10:00 am – 11:50 am
Component tokens, Figma modes and theming

10:50 am – 11:00 am
Q&A with Brad on the day’s material. Networking!

Day 4

8:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 am – 9:50 am
Design system adoption, How atomic design creates a virtuous cycle between design system and digital products

9:50 am – 10:00 am
Break

10:00 am – 11:50 am
People: team structure, the design system service organization, governance and contribution model, communication strategy

10:50 am – 11:00 am
Q&A with Brad on the day’s material. Networking!