Reading Material 3's color documentation. It does something most systems don't bother with: it explains why each decision exists. Not just what the tiers are. What problem each one solves, and what breaks without it. Thread on what that actually looks like. 🧵

Hot take👉 changelogs are not documentation. They're release notes. There's a difference. A changelog tells your team what changed in v2.4.1. Documentation tells them why the component works the way it does, when to use it, and what breaks if they don't.

if you could go back and change one thing about your token system, what would it be? too many tokens / too few / better naming / better docs reply with yours! curious if there's a pattern

The token most teams overcomplicate: spacing. 8 sizes cover most products. Maybe 12 if you genuinely need it, and that works when they're semantically tiered (page-level, layout-level, component-level), so designers know which scale to reach for.

Polaris handles surface tone emphasis with 3 tokens: subtle, default, strong. That's the entire scale. One for background, one for mid-level, one for emphasis. Nothing else.

Token tiers across 4 systems + what each choice is optimizing for. Material 3: 3 tiers, built for thousands of teams across a fragmented Android ecosystem. The complexity reflects the context. Carbon: 2 tiers, lean by design.

Spending May on one question: why do well-designed systems still fall apart at the foundations? Starting with tokens. The place where most of the damage quietly happens.

1/5 Most typography systems fail because they lack a logic chain. If you have 50 styles and half of them are "one-offs," you don't have a system you have debt. Here is how to build typography architecture that actually works for both designers and devs. 🧵 #DesignSystems #Typography #UX

1/6 Ever wonder what makes your favorite apps and websites feel so intuitive? Behind every smooth digital experience is a design system doing the heavy lifting.👇 Here are the top 5 design system category components. #DesignSystems #UXDesign

FREE Typography Audit checklist in Notion to review scale, roles, tokens, responsiveness, and accessibility. Built for designers working with design systems: designsystems.surf/products/typ... #DesignSystems #Typography #UIDesign #FreeResource

1/4 💸 FREE guide for Design System teams We made AI DS Starter Stack, a short overview of how AI can actually help your Design System – without changing your whole stack. designsystems.surf/products/ai-... #FreeGuide #AITools #DesignSystem #DSStarterStack #AIDesign #DesignWorkflow

1/4 Denmark’s Det Fælles Design System (DKFDS) standardizes public self-service experiences with tested, accessible components for citizen-facing services. designsystems.surf/design-syste... #DenmarkDesign #designsystems #UIdesign #UXdesign #ProductDesign

1/6 When products grow, small design decisions pile up into big design debt. This article explains how a Design System turns that chaos into a shared, scalable structure. designsystems.surf/articles/how... #designsystems #UIdesign #UXdesign #ProductDesign

1/9 We often talk about design systems in the context of big tech or global brands, but some of the most meaningful ones are built quietly inside public institutions. #DesignSystems #PublicSector #GovTech #CivicTech #UX #DesignOps #ServiceDesign #Accessibility #InclusiveDesign #DigitalGov