What would HTML do? - The Cascade

“Content & Display Patterns,” an article by Dan Mall

A really terrific article from Dan on building pattern libraries. In summary:

1. Naming things is hard,
2. Separation of content and presentation is A Good Thing.

There are some really good insights here into getting just the right level of abstraction for a component—not too tightly tied to a specific visual display, but also not too tightly tied to a specific kind of content type:

When thinking about patterns, content strategists are primarily thinking about Content patterns, designers are primarily thinking about Display patterns, and front-end developers are responsible for bringing the two together.

(And it’s great to see Charlotte’s excellent article get a shout-out in the “Related reading” section at the end,)

Responsive typography and its role in design systems | Clagnut by Richard Rutter

Okay, if you weren’t already excited for Patterns Day, get a load of what Rich is going to be talking about!

You’ve got your ticket, right?

Home | The Component Gallery

Here’s an aggregator of components from multiple design systems.

Adoption. — Ethan Marcotte

Ethan highlights a classic case of the McNamara Fallacy—measuring adoption of design system components.

Craft vs Industry: Separating Concerns by Thomas Michael Semmler: CSS Developer, Designer & Developer from Vienna, Austria

Call me Cassandra:

The way that industry incorporates design systems is basically a misappropriation, or abuse at worst. It is not just me who is seeing the problem with ongoing industrialization in design. Even Brad Frost, the inventor of atomic design, is expressing similar concerns. In the words of Jeremy Keith:

[…] Design systems take their place in a long history of dehumanising approaches to manufacturing like Taylorism. The priorities of “scientific management” are the same as those of design systems—increasing efficiency and enforcing consistency.

So no. It is not just you. We all feel it. This quote is from 2020, by the way. What was then a prediction has since become a reality.

This grim assessment is well worth a read. It rings very true.

What could have become Design Systemics, in which we applied systems theory, cybernetics, and constructivism to the process and practice of design, is now instead being reduced to component libraries. As a designer, I find this utter nonsense. Everyone who has even just witnessed a design process in action knows that the deliverable is merely a documenting artifact of the process and does not constitute it at all. But for companies, the “output” is all that matters, because it can be measured; it appeals to the industrialized process because it scales. Once a component is designed, it can be reused, configured, and composed to produce “free” iterations without having to consult a designer. The cost was reduced while the output was maximized. Goal achieved!