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$350^.00 $450^.00 Register for this workshop → 5 × 2h live sessions + Q&A. Dec 1–15.
With all video recordings & slides. Get a ticket.

“Light and dark mode across five brands, with unique requirements for web and native apps, plus classic and cozy style options.”

Sound familiar? Modern design systems are asking more from designers than ever before. While today’s tools give us the power to work faster with fewer resources, organizing these design decisions across platforms, brands, and accessibility requirements has become increasingly complex.

The result? Design tokens that are rigid and hard to scale, component libraries bursting with variants, and frustrated team members who can’t find what they need.

In this workshop, you’ll learn to structure your design tokens for scalable, multi-dimensional theming strategically. Gain practical skills to streamline your design system and bridge the gap between design and development.

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What You Will Learn

The workshop focuses on practical skills you can apply immediately.

Working in small, collaborative groups, you’ll learn how to transform complex requirements into a scalable token structure that can adapt to future needs. Through hands-on exercises and real-world scenarios, you’ll practice mapping design decisions as visual representations of future-friendly themes. So not only will cross-functional team members be able to find the right color, font, or spacing for their project, your component libraries will be able to support more brands, products and platforms as the organization grows without a ton of re-work.

You will gain practical skills to create future-friendly themes and manage scalable design systems:

• The fundamentals of systems thinking as it applies to design systems.
• Transform wishes and requirements from cross-functional team members into functional design decisions within a design system.
• Use visual mapping techniques to plan, document, and communicate design decisions.
• Map complex design requirements into flexible, scalable token structures that support future growth.
• Visualize multi-dimensional themes that can handle multiple brands, products, platforms, or visual styles based on past, present and future system requirements.
• Understand the relationship between theming and naming of design tokens and components that support automated workflows between design and development, and are user-friendly for non-technical team members.
• Practice giving and receiving feedback and presenting ideas in a safe space.

By the end of the workshop, you will know how to apply systems thinking to solve real-world problems common in scaling organizations and learn how to present your design system solutions to cross-functional team members and stakeholders with clarity and confidence.

$350^.00 $450^.00 Register for this workshop → 5 × 2h live sessions + Q&A. Dec 1–15.
With all video recordings & slides. Get a ticket.

Why You Should Attend?

Gone are the days of themes = light and dark. Today’s systems designers are now facing challenges like:

• “How do we structure our components to handle light mode, dark mode, AND high contrast mode across 5 brands?”
• “Where should themes live in our token structure when we need to support both web and native apps?”
• “How do we organize these decisions so marketing can find the right brand colors, product designers can use component libraries that don’t have 1000 variants, and developers aren’t pulled into another QA meeting because the spacing on a button is off?”

If you’re wrestling with questions like these, you’re not alone. Many designers jump straight into creating tokens or variables in Figma without visualizing how their design decisions should flow through their system. This leads to rigid token structures that become difficult to expand as the system scales and priorities shift.

This workshop teaches you how to step back and visualize your system’s needs before diving into implementation. You’ll learn proven approaches to organizing themes and tokens that scale with your organization, whether you support multiple brands, clients, products, platforms, accessibility requirements, or all of the above.

Building these foundations now pays off in a big way down the line. Instead of constantly rebuilding your token structure as new requirements come in, you’ll have a flexible system that can adapt to future needs while remaining simple enough for everyone to understand and use.

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Who Should Attend

This workshop is ideal for anyone who wants to build a system where they “flip a few switches” to change existing designs, components and patterns when the project needs change, without needing to rebuild.

• Designers wanting to understand how and where their design decisions should “live” in their system to support future-friendly themes.
• People working in Design Systems or building component libraries who want more flexibility without building more components.
• Agency, freelance, or in-house designers who need to support multiple brands, products, or white-label solutions with efficient theme management.
• Product designers ready to level up their system design skills to better support scaling teams, organizations, and products

Experience with design tools like Figma is helpful but not required. We’ll be using visual mapping techniques that work for any design tool or platform.

If you have specific workflow or tool requests, let Sam know, and she will try to accommodate them!

A basic understanding of design tokens, design systems, and how components are built in code will help you get the most out of this workshop.

What hardware/software do you need?

• A free Figma account to use FigJam to participate in group activities.
• Access to Zoom to attend the live workshop sessions.
• Access to Smashing’s Slack to ask questions during live workshop sessions.
• Access to Google Docs where workshop links are stored.

Optional Tools Demonstrated by Sam:

• Paid Figma account to use Variables and Modes
• Spreadsheet tool (Airtable is shown, but Excel or Sheets will work).
• Free GPT account to access a custom agent built by Sam to speed up Token Naming

About Sam

Sam is a Freelance Design Systems pro with a Design Tokens obsession.

You might recognize her under the alias of Sam I am Designs , where she’s well known in the design systems industry for making people laugh while she shares pro tips, workflows, and epic fails as a public speaker, host of design systems events, and educational content creator focused on Systems Thinking and Design Tokens.

These days, Sam works with larger organizations that are scaling their design system, but she’s spent most of her career as a “Design Team of One” at various tech innovation startups, working on everything from design tokens tools for designers to life-or-death design to genetic testing for psychedelic-assisted therapy. This range of experience has given her a unique perspective on ways of working in small teams to build big things while helping stakeholders appreciate the value of design processes.

Time & Schedule

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

The workshop sessions will run on the following days:

• Mon, December 1, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
• Tue, December 2, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
• Mon, December 8, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
• Tue, December 9, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
• Mon, December 15, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT

$350^.00 $450^.00 Register for this workshop → 5 × 2h live sessions + Q&A. Dec 1–15.
With all video recordings & slides. Get a ticket.

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Day 1

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

9:00 AM – 9:50 AM
FUNdamentals of theming in design systems through a systems thinking lens. A crash course in how theming, naming, design tokens, and systems thinking all work together to scale your design system.

9:50 AM – 10:00 AM
Break

10:00 AM – 10:50 AM
A series of FUN group activities to put the fundamental concepts of systems mapping into practice while getting to know each other a bit better.

10:50 AM – 11:00 AM
Q&A with Sam 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
An interactive deep dive into defining and mapping a design system theme following a three-tier token structure.

9:50 AM – 10:00 AM
Break

10:00 AM – 10:50 AM
Work with a small group to practice identifying the parts of a “simple” design systems theme and how it applies to component anatomy.

10:50 AM – 11:00 AM
Q&A with Sam 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
Design systems are a cross-functional team sport. We will explore strategies on how to consider the past, present, and future needs of the folks who touch our design system as our theming gets more sophisticated.

9:50 AM – 10:00 AM
Break

10:00 AM – 10:50 AM
Work with your small group to practice scaling your design systems theme from “simple” to “sophisticated” based on the past, present, and future needs of cross-functional team members.

10:50 AM – 11:00 AM
Q&A with Sam 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
Time to put our reps in. 💪 Group activities to work through a series of common theming examples (think multi-brand, multi-product etc.).

9:50 AM – 10:00 AM
Break

10:00 AM – 10:50 AM
Working in the same small groups from previous days, you’ll expand your design system theme from “sophisticated” to “multi-dimensional” support.

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

Day 5

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

9:00 AM – 9:50 AM
You’ll learn some of Sam’s pro tips on how to communicate your theming decisions with confidence. Then you’ll work with your small group to plan your theming presentation.

9:50 AM – 10:00 AM
Break

10:00 AM – 10:45 AM
Each small group will take turns explaining their theming decisions and sharing their system map to practice presenting and giving constructive feedback in a safe space.

10:45 AM – 11:00+ AM
Extended Q&A with Sam on the day’s material. Networking!