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Expanding the Reach of Design Tokens: How to Use Them in Non-UI Design
Design Tokens: The Secret to Consistency Beyond the User Interface
An organization can use design tokens to ensure consistency and coherence across all of its design decisions, not just those related to the user interface (UI). As we’ll see in this post, design tokens can be used to make a wide variety of design elements, including PowerPoint presentations, flyers, ads, and even a company’s printer and other printed materials, more consistent and high quality. But let’s discuss some basics for the people who are new to the concept of design tokens.
What are design tokens?
A design token is a variable that represents a core design element in a system, such as color, typography, spacing, and other interactive and visual properties. Designers and developers can easily access and use these elements as tokens throughout the design process, ensuring that each design decision is consistent with the overall design scheme.
Why use design tokens?
- Using design tokens has several benefits. First and foremost, it ensures consistency in the design of a product or brand. All elements of the product or brand can have a cohesive and harmonious look and feel by using the same set of design tokens throughout the design process.
- As well as improving consistency, design tokens can increase the efficiency of the design process. Defining design elements as tokens allows designers to easily access and use them, eliminating the need to create common elements from scratch. For larger design projects, this can save a great deal of time and effort.
- Finally, design tokens can enhance the maintainability of a design system. By using tokens to represent core design elements, designers can easily update the system to reflect changes in branding or design direction. To stay on top of changing trends or market needs, this can be particularly useful for companies.
Tokens beyond UI design
Design tokens are frequently used in UI design, but they can also be used in PowerPoint presentations, flyers, ads, PDFs, and even physical materials like company printers.
