Why your voice and tone guide belongs in your design system

By figuring out why design systems are so beneficial for product teams, we can get more value from them, faster.

Maya Hampton, Product Manager of REI's design system Cedar, wrote a follow-up to her episode of the Design Systems Podcast. Read on to discover what the product manager of a leading design system does and how she makes an impact.

Knapsack’s mission is to change the way people think about digital products while being excellent humans along the way. As part of that mission, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Knapsack’s design system publication.

Version control is a well-known best practice for developers; now we're welcoming it to design systems. Here's how to keep your design system impactful and up-to-date using version control.

Accessible design and design systems are both more than just good design practice—they're good business. How can we build design systems that support accessible design practices?

Form design isn’t a nice-to-have; they come up often and are carefully curated to get the right information at the right time. But when forms involve players from multiple teams, priorities can get mixed up and inclusion can fall to the wayside.

Design systems should serve your entire product team. That's why Knapsack has removed boundaries keeping non-engineers from being full contributors and made your design system accessible to everyone who needs it.

Design thinking was revolutionary—but it's not perfect. Pattern-based thinking is the solution.

To get the most out of a design system, we need to make sure it's built to last. Utilizing pattern-based thinking is key to creating a reusable, impactful design system.

Design tokens are a critical part of your design system's functionality.

Maya Hampton, product manager of REI's design system, joined Knapsack CEO Chris Strahl to discuss why design systems need to be flexible, the role of a product manager in a design system, and viewing design systems as products.

Microsoft’s Josh Cusick and Chris discuss how to convey intent when working with a design system, the importance of buy-in for a successful design system culture, and whether or not your design system will ever be finished.

In episode 30 of the Design Systems Podcast, Jehad Affoneh, Scott Mathis, and Chris discuss the advantages of open-source, the role of content in design systems, the pattern-based approach to building apps, and similarities between music and tokens.

Stephen Gates joined Chris Strahl on the podcast for a long talk about team culture, design systems, and more.

Leonardo De La Rocha and Chris discuss the “federated” design system model, how to connect design systems to business needs, designing friction-free cross-platform experiences, and C-suite awareness of design needs.

Jess Clark and Chris discuss the meaning of design systems and the potential of design systems as a service. What can design systems offer us beyond infrastructure? How can approaching design systems as products, rather than repositories, increase their capabilities?

Design systems don't just contain design elements: they're a central source of truth for product teams and ideally hold all of a product's assets, including content. Jess Sattell, Senior Content Strategist for Adobe's Spectrum design system, shares her experiences and thoughts on writing for design systems.

Knapsack's new Figma integration turns your color styles to design tokens—in code. Learn how our plugin will make designer-dev collaboration easy.

What’s the difference between a design system and a pattern library? They serve different purposes.

If you want to learn about design systems, there’s an endless list of resources at your disposal. This garden of resources, however, has a downside: uncertain quality. As a senior practitioner, you can’t risk trusting the wrong sources. That’s why we’ve put together a collection of resources vetted by design system experts.

Want to supercharge your design system? Learn what people practices you need to nail down.

I don’t need to tell you that it has been a year. We’ve got some cool things and big news lined up for 2022, but we’ve been putting in work over the last month of 2021 too. Before most of the working world heads out for a well-deserved holiday break, we want to share updates to the Knapsack platform that make design system management an easier, more pleasant experience.

Audrey and Chris discuss the vision guiding Xero’s design system team, how co-ownership helps design system teams thrive, the processes she uses for managing a global team, and how the Xero design system team approaches modernization.

Writing accessible documentation makes design systems easier to use, manage, and scale. Committing to writing accessible documentation isn’t just good practice; it’s good business. Read on to understand why accessible documentation is important for your design system and how it will benefit your workflow.

Design systems and pattern-based design are accessibility's best friends. By setting accessibility standards early, you can ensure products that meet high accessibility standards all the time.

This episode is a little bit longer—okay, a lot longer—than our usual. Chrome developer advocate Adam Argyle and Chris Strahl talk about tokens in all their glory without worrying about time limits. If you’ve ever wondered about the limits of tokens and what’s left to explore in the token stratosphere, check out this transcript.