Managing Design Tokens in Figma

Key Concepts

• Design Tokens: The foundational elements of your design system, representing values like colors, typography, spacing, and shadows.
• Token Organization: How to structure and categorize your design tokens for easy access and management.
• Token Usage: How to apply design tokens across different components and platforms to ensure consistency.
• Token Updates: How to update and propagate changes to design tokens across your entire design system.

Design Tokens

Design Tokens are the building blocks of your design system. They represent specific values such as colors, typography, spacing, and shadows. These tokens are stored as variables and can be reused across different components and platforms to ensure consistency.

Example: A color token named $primary-color with the value #0070f3 can be applied to buttons, text, and backgrounds throughout your design system.

Token Organization

Organizing your design tokens is crucial for maintaining a scalable and manageable design system. Use categories and subcategories to structure your tokens. For instance, you might have a category for colors, with subcategories for primary, secondary, and accent colors.

Example: Under the "Colors" category, you might have subcategories like "Primary Colors," "Secondary Colors," and "Accent Colors." Each subcategory contains specific color tokens.

Token Usage

Applying design tokens across different components and platforms ensures consistency. Use the tokens in your components to define properties like color, font size, and spacing. This makes it easy to update the design system later, as changes to tokens will automatically propagate to all components that use them.

Example: If you have a button component, you can apply the $primary-color token to its background color. If you later decide to change the primary color, all buttons using this token will update automatically.

Token Updates

Updating design tokens is essential for maintaining and evolving your design system. When you change a token, the update should propagate to all components that use it. This ensures that your design system remains consistent and up-to-date.

Example: If you decide to change the $primary-color token from #0070f3 to #0056b3, all components using this token will update to reflect the new color. This ensures that your entire design system remains cohesive.