Introduction to Design Tokens

Episode 9, in which we discuss the basics of design tokens. Learn what they are and in what scenarios it's worth to implement them.

You probably heard the design tokens term popping up in various design-system-related conversations. In recent years, this has been a really hot topic. Tokens are used by the largest product companies, such as Google, IBM, Adobe, Salesforce, and Atlassian. However, they are rather a hard nut to crack. In this article, we will take a closer look at the topic of design tokens. You’ll get an introduction to their basics and learn when it’s worth using them and when not.

Cover illustration: Joanna Litarowicz

What are design tokens?

Design tokens can be described as design decisions about the visual attributes of a user interface. The goal of design tokens is to move away from using hard-coded values, such as pixels or hex values, in favor of storing them as objects with names that describe the use of the values assigned to them. They are the smallest and basic element of the design system.

What can be tokenized?

As I mentioned earlier, tokens store the visual attributes of our design. Here's a…