Creating a design system in Figma: a practical guide by Marc Andrew UX Collective
Table Of Content
Best of all, you can customize every detail to suit your required aesthetic, including text styles, color styles, and fonts. Created by Kiwi.com, the Orbit Design System is a complete library of desktop website components. The design system comes with over 30 high-quality components for your web projects and desktop variants. Described as a “wireframe kit for product-enthusiasts,” CutFrame comes with 250+ components, 200+ screens, and 170+ icons for mobile devices. Taking full advantage of Figma’s incredible Auto Layout features, Module UI Kit is a wonderfully simple helping hand for Figma. Known for their regular updates and tweaks, Module is quickly catching the eye of designers around the world.
Building a Design System in Figma – Getting Started
If you’re not sure which naming convention to use, talk with your development team to learn about any existing conventions in your organization that you could also align with. At the end of the day, a spatial system is an incredibly valuable tool, but its effectiveness depends on designers using it correctly. By teaching designers about the benefits of the spatial system and encouraging them to use it consistently, teams can unlock its full potential. Variables in Figma store single values such as colors, whereas styles hold more complex information, such as gradients, and are better for detailed, multi-layered designs. Learn how Stash builds financial products that customers can trust by using Figma components and Ditto to ship out copy updates—speeding up their work by 20% and saving over 12,000 hours.
Create and collaborate with Figma
On tokens page, this time we are setting variable modes as the columns. Most how-to videos focus on switching from dark to light mode with variables. For a period tracker app, I used them to show different phases of the menstrual cycle.
Design systems 101: What is a design system?
Without a design system, you may find yourself in a crisis of inconsistency—navigating a maze where every turn could lead to confusion, brand dilution, or user frustration. When naming your variables and styles, it’s important to use clear and consistent conventions. Design system contributor, Nathan Curtis, suggests combining a base (like color or size) with modifiers (like variant or state) to create names that are easy to understand and use. The goal is to create a shared convention that everyone on your team can use to communicate and work more efficiently. Icons are small visual symbols that communicate ideas and actions quickly. A well-designed icon system strengthens your brand identity and improves usability.
Okta launches new open-source design system - Techzine Europe
Okta launches new open-source design system.
Posted: Fri, 05 Feb 2021 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Importantly, as the system continues to grow and evolve, it should mirror the changing needs and contributions of its community, making it a living resource, shaped by those it serves. The impact of a design system lies in its ability to streamline workflows, ensure consistency across a product, and foster collaboration among cross-functional teams. And if you have any other questions or topics you’d like to learn about, give us a shout on Twitter at @figma. Learn more about how Figma helps teams drive consistency, scale designs, and maintain parity with development using our design systems features and request a demo. Figma only covers the component library part of a fully fledged design system. For a fully rounded out design system, it’s worth considering other pieces that could be incorporated, such as brand guidelines, content style guides, and developer documentation.
The Ultimate Guide to UX/UI Design in 2024
Check out this Community file from Figma Designer Advocate Luis Ouriach for recommendations on how to build out your design system for teams, projects, and files. Effective spacing is crucial for creating visual hierarchy and relationships between elements of a design. By using consistent spacing units, you create a sense of harmony and balance throughout your product. Watch our lesson on applying tokens, variables, and styles, part of our introduction to design systems course. To simplify your color palette, look at your team’s existing designs and consolidate similar shades. Reducing the number of colors used for primary buttons, for example, can make your design feel cleaner and more intuitive.
Atomic design & Figma — SetProduct.com
The team at designsystems.com is always looking for interesting content. See how design choices, interactions, and issues affect your users — get a demo of LogRocket today. Design systems promise consistency, efficiency, and scalability, but realizing these benefits hinges on widespread usage. To get your entire team on board, you’ll need to tap into your inner marketer and craft a compelling adoption strategy.
Carbon’s documentation also mentions that a mid-fidelity prototyping kit is also in the works — awesome news for those that enjoy prototyping using design systems. Material Design’s Figma profile also provides some supplementary resources (such as this Material Design color scheme builder) to help you utilize the design system to its full potential. If you’re designing an app, you’re expected (and in some cases required) to make it look and function like it’s a part of the operating system that it’s installed on.
It involves educating and convincing various stakeholders of its long-term value, which requires clear communication, demonstrations of its impact, and a strategy for widespread adoption. This often means creating and nurturing a community around the design system, one that spans different departments and roles. The impact of a design system is profound, yet it unfolds over time. This slow reveal of benefits can sometimes hinder buy-in from leadership, particularly if it diverts resources or focus from immediate project goals. The initial investment, both in terms of time and potentially expanding your team, might be significant before the tangible rewards become evident.
To start making my variable collection, I clicked on a blank space in my design library. With an infinite library of brilliant kits and systems at our fingertips, we hope this summary helps you find the perfect design system for you. After all, every designer is at a different point in their journey with unique skills! If you want to level up your skills a little more, our Ultimate Figma Masterclass and Shipfaster UI Figma Design System is always waiting for you. The onboarding kit comes with a tonne of onboarding screens, including those with Illustrations, phone mockups, and more.
Designers, it's Time to Learn Figma—The Tool that is Giving Adobe a Run for Their Money - Inc.
Designers, it's Time to Learn Figma—The Tool that is Giving Adobe a Run for Their Money.
Posted: Mon, 16 May 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Test the full, interactive experience to get better feedback, sooner. You can define which parts of a component others can change by tying them to specific design properties. In this Figma tip, Designer Advocate Lauren Andres goes over what component properties are and how to create them. Learn more about spacing, grids, and layouts from Elliot Dahl, Head of Product Design at Hightouch, on DesignSystems.com.
This means that everyone on your team can access the same set of styles and components, no matter what they’re working on. However, just having a system in place doesn’t guarantee that everyone will use it perfectly. It’s like having a recipe book—it’s super helpful, but it’s up to the chef to follow the instructions and create a delicious meal.
Scrutinize your product’s look and feel across different platforms. If you find jarring inconsistencies or a brand identity that loses its thread from one experience to the next, it’s a sign that you may need a design system. Responsive design is an approach to building for screens that takes into consideration a diversity of devices, optimizing for an optimal viewing experience across each. Layout grids, spacing, and sizing (referred to collectively as “spatial systems”) are like the invisible glue that holds your design together. They create a sense of structure, consistency, and visual harmony that makes your product feel polished and professional. Try Stark’s Contrast & Accessibility plugin to help you streamline your accessibility workflow.
Comments
Post a Comment