The LEGOism of design systems

Highlights of the week ↘

The LEGOism of design systems - We’re pitching the value of a design system as a time-saving, plug n’ play collection of LEGO bricks when we really should be pitching the Building Instructions instead. - Mark Anthony Cianfrani

How to generate color palettes for design systems - Modern software needs accessibility, adaptability, and consistency across dozens of devices, themes, and contexts. Picking colors by hand is practically impossible. - Matthew Ström

Product design, UX/UI and PM ↘

The Big Sur-ification of macOS icons - As a self-professed icon-noisseur, I love browsing through app icons that people have re-imagined for their desktops - wresting control of the visual appearance of the app icon from its maker and appropriating it to themselves. - Jim Nielsen

Choosing the perfect icons for your typeface - A complete guide on how to pair icons and typefaces to create a consistent visual language. - Streamline

3 models for framing software complexity - Using 37 Signals’ visual metaphors to strategically approach software projects. - Patrick Morgan

Design engineering ↘

Meet Ritmo, Musixmatch’s cross-platform design system - One of the most interesting aspects of working on design systems is that there is no absolute truth for everyone: each team or organization finds its own, based on its own needs and those of the people who are part of it. - Andrea Zilibotti

Roaming shapes for empty states - I really enjoy sweating the details and going the extra mile to elevate experiences in apps. One example I’ve worked on recently had a few empty states that were missing something. - Tony Ward

The art of design system recipes - Recipes are a critical - and often misunderstood - layer in the design system ecosystem. First of all, what exactly are recipes? - Brad Frost

Masonry layouts in CSS - Jen Simmons has written a stellar piece for the WebKit blog about masonry layouts and a proposal to introduce them in CSS Grid Level 3. - Robin Rendle

Hardest problem in computer science: Centering things - This is my claim: we, as a civilization, forgot how to center things. I mean, we know how to do it. It has never been simpler. - Nikita Prokopov

Tools and resources ↘

Typography variables in Figma are here - And everything else that’s new from Figma’s Framework event. - Joey Banks

The front end developer handbook 2024 - A guide to modern front-end web development/engineering. - Frontend Masters

Inspiration and creativity ↘

Works on screen - These works respond to your screen dimensions and many have a time-based component, often synchronized for all viewers. - Joshua Jenkins

3 hours or nothing - The merits of being binary with your time. - Anu Atluru

Last but not least ↘

This web of ours, revisited - Why did leading designers in 2000 look down their nose at the web? And are things any better today? - L. Jeffrey Zeldman