Building a Design System in Figma

1. Creating Design Tokens

Design Tokens are the foundational elements of your design system, representing values like colors, typography, spacing, and shadows. These tokens are stored as variables and can be reused across different components and platforms to ensure consistency.

For example, you might create a color token named $primary-color with the value #0070f3. This token can then be applied to buttons, text, and backgrounds throughout your design system. Think of design tokens as the paint colors and materials you choose for your house, ensuring consistency and making it easy to update the look and feel of the entire design system.

2. Building Reusable Components

Components are the reusable building blocks of your design system. They encapsulate specific functionality and can be combined to create more complex interfaces. Components can range from simple buttons to complex data tables.

In Figma, components are created by duplicating a master component and then overriding its properties as needed. This allows for easy updates and ensures consistency across the design system. Think of components as the furniture in your house. Each piece serves a specific purpose and can be moved or modified without affecting the overall structure of the house.

3. Organizing with Variants

Variants are different states or variations of a component. For example, a button component might have variants for different sizes, colors, or states like hover, active, and disabled.

In Figma, variants are created using the Variants feature, which allows you to define different states and properties for a component. This makes it easy to manage and update multiple variations of a component. Consider variants as different styles of the same piece of furniture. A chair might come in different colors, materials, and sizes, but it remains a chair in all its forms.