Mozilla Protocol - Protocol Design System
Mozilla’s work-in-progress style guide and pattern library.
Designing inspired style guides presentation slides and transcript | Stuff & Nonsense
Having spent half a decade encouraging people to make their pattern libraries public and doing my best to encourage openness and sharing, I find this kind of styleguide-shaming quite disheartening:
These all offer something different but more often than not they have something in common. They look ugly enough to have been designed by someone who enjoys configuring a router.
If a pattern library is intended to inspire, then make it inspiring. But if it’s intended to be an ever-changing codebase (made for and by the kind of people who enjoy configuring a router), then that’s where the effort and time should be concentrated.
But before designing anything—whether it’s a website or a pattern library—figure out who the audience is first.
Related links
Herman: Automated Pattern Libraries | OddBird
A lightweight style guide generator. This one uses SassDoc to parse out the documentation for colours, type, etc.
Distilling How We Think About Design Systems
Advice on building design systems:
- If you can avoid being ambiguous, please do.
- Favor common understanding over dictionary correctness.
- Make great operations a priority.
- Don’t get trapped in defining things instead of explaining things.
Design Systems | susan jean robertson
Susan reviews Alla’s superb book on design systems:
If you’re interested in or wanting to create a design system or improve the one you have or get buy in to take your side project at work and make it part of the normal work flow, read this book. And even better, get your colleagues to do the same, so you’ll have a shared understanding before you begin the hard work to build your own system.
Susan also published her highlights from the book. I really like that!
Patterns Day 2017: Jina Anne on Vimeo
Jina invented an entirely new genre for her Patterns Day talk—autobiographical fantasy.
Related posts
Patterns Day videos
The first video is online for your enjoyment.
Components and concerns
Gotta keep ‘em separated.
Scenario-Driven Design Systems by Yesenia Perez-Cruz
A presentation at An Event Apart Seattle 2018.
Pattern Libraries, Performance, and Progressive Web Apps
You should hire Clearleft for these front-end development skills.
The schedule for Patterns Day
Just look at that line-up!