Design tokens are the building blocks of design systems. Design tokens adoption ensure unified, flexible and scale-ready design systems.

Overview

Design tokens store repetitive design decisions in a platform-agnostic way. Design tokens act as a single source of truth for the design system.

Single source of truth (SSOT) refers to the centralised repository which acts as a single point of reference for different artefacts.

Design decision refers to the choice that the designer makes from the available choices, like choosing a brand color, typeface, or deciding spacing between a heading and paragraph.

Summary

Design tokens are modular, platform agnostic building blocks of design systems that store repetitive design decisions. Design tokens act as a single source of truth and enable flexibility and scalability within design system.

Design tokens primarily have 3 types which can form a multi-tier hierarchy to establish more controlled and flexible design systems.

Using design design tokens instead of hard coded values ensure more flexible design systems that are easy to build, maintain and scale.