(An excerpt from an interview between Elyse Holladay and Dan Mall on the On Theme podcast.)

When we think about foundations for design systems, we often think about tokens, atomic-level components, colors, typography, and things like that.

I don’t think those are the real foundations of a design system.

You can always do those later.

In fact, I consider tokens an advanced level concept in design systems, not a basic level concept.

It’s hard to create one color, five shades of gray, the brand primary brand color, secondary brand color, and then scale that across an entire organization and centralize that.

When I asked, “Why did you work on tokens first?”

They say, “Because the promise of tokens is, if we have tokens set up, then whenever like a rebrand comes along or we need to change the brand color, we could just flip a switch and the brand color will change everywhere.

I say, “Cool. Can you show me how you flip that switch? Where do we log in to flip the switch?”

They say, “No, no, like in theory, that’s how it works.”

I say, “Does it actually work though?”

They say, “No, we’d actually have to do more work to get that to happen.”

“How much more work?’

“Six months more work.”

“How long did you spend on tokens in the first place?”

“About a year.”

“So you spent you spent a year already, and it would be another half a year doing something that actually doesn’t work yet?”

And we wonder why our stakeholders get so impatient with design system work.

​Listen to the rest of the interview for more spicy takes.