Design libraries have been around forever, and I’ve been lucky enough to be in companies that have already established their design languages and know how to communicate them (Polaris still the GOAT).
Now that I’m navigatingfreelance land and building from 0, I’m finding that, while I know how to create flows and designs, I don’t know how to organize and communicate them in an effective way for developers to inspect or new designers to pick up.
I know this isn’t my bag; I know there are way more competent designers than me that get off on building libraries. I’m finding it stifles my creativity have to build/work off of one, so I’m trying to figure out an efficient/effective way of building a design library without feeling the overwhelm.
Scratchpad🐾
- Current issues:
- New developers joining the team, have a hard time following artboards
- Finished one section of the project, feels like a good time to build the library now that we’re building more screens and exploring mobile
- Using one library that’s about to be revamped
- Using tokens that might not be relevant anywhere else
- Could use design variables to establish starting point, then tweak later
- Hardcoded variables > Foundational variables based on existing libraries (because this is what we’re primarily using) > Project-specific Tokens so that when the redesign happens, we can just swap the hardcoded variables and remap accordingly
- Audit 2.0 library to see if we can use those specific elements instead
- Game plan
- Design mobile as per usual
- Fix up the components later in a separate library (since we’re on a tight schedule)
- Swap library components for old components to make sure they’re mapped in the appropriate places
- Tweak everything later, when everything is connected