> This is an organizational tool that increases in value as a multi-platform company grows.
That sounds impressive enough for the UX sales presentation. Meanwhile, how is it any different from "don't just use numbers, use an agreed-upon set of constants"?
> When your brand evolves to a different shade of green, you update one value in one place. All of the above surfaces are updated at the same time.
Awesome. And I assume all contrast issues fix themselves? So do color clashes? No? Designers still need to consider their change in context? So, again, how is it different from a set of agreed-upon constants?
CSS variables and derived values are a way to implement those constants. Not the only one, but a decent one. Yes, you need to properly resolve dependencies/propagate values, but you need to do that with any other implementation as well.
Sure, call it design tokens instead of constants - but is there any difference? I'm really trying to understand how this is contributing anything on top of symbolic referents. Something that at least on the engineering side is well known since before the infamous "should the value of pi change" manual entry.
It's not too different, as the concept was heavily influenced by localization libraries.
That said they're not always constants. A design token can mutate based on device, light/dark/high-contrast mode, viewport size, user preference, locale, brand, product, theme, etc. This mutation can apply at runtime or at build time depending on the use-case.
That sounds impressive enough for the UX sales presentation. Meanwhile, how is it any different from "don't just use numbers, use an agreed-upon set of constants"?
> When your brand evolves to a different shade of green, you update one value in one place. All of the above surfaces are updated at the same time.
Awesome. And I assume all contrast issues fix themselves? So do color clashes? No? Designers still need to consider their change in context? So, again, how is it different from a set of agreed-upon constants?
CSS variables and derived values are a way to implement those constants. Not the only one, but a decent one. Yes, you need to properly resolve dependencies/propagate values, but you need to do that with any other implementation as well.
Sure, call it design tokens instead of constants - but is there any difference? I'm really trying to understand how this is contributing anything on top of symbolic referents. Something that at least on the engineering side is well known since before the infamous "should the value of pi change" manual entry.