Agile Design Systems
with meaningful code and automation
OddBird’s Accoutrement tools help keep design tokens meaningful to both humans and machines – opening the door for automation, while improving readability. These tools also integrate with Herman, our automated pattern-library generator.
By storing all our design tokens and patterns in Sass maps, we can improve both organization and automation – making our design systems meaningful to both developers and the Sass language.
# npm
npm install accoutrement
# yarn
yarn add accoutrement
Generic syntax for managing design tokens and arbitrary patterns in a format that encourages maintenance and automation.
Lightweight browser normalization. This is the only Accoutrement library with direct CSS output when imported.
Manage timing, easing, transitions and animations – with built-in shortcuts for common patterns.
Manage your color palettes in one place, and access them from anywhere with optional accessibility guidance from the WCAG.
Layout utilities including named media-queries, shorthand positioning, fluid aspect-ratios, box-sizing, and float-clearing.
Manage a system of consistent sizes to use across your project for typography, spacing, layout, and more. Generate sizes based on modular-scale ratios, and access sizes in any unit you need.
Manage your webfonts, import them all with a single command, and access font-stacks on-the-fly, with utilities for generated content and accessibility.
with meaningful code and automation
Agile design systems in Vue
I’ve been excited about Vue.js since Sarah Drasner first showed me the basics. Since then, we’ve started using it for client work at OddBird, and I’m constantly impressed by the power and simplicity – so it was a real honor being invited to speak at the first VueConf US in…
An agile approach to design systems on a budget
Design systems streamline development, communication, and consistency – but often rely on dedicated teams and extended budgets. We wanted a tool to create and maintain living style guides & pattern libraries in an agile process, and on a budget. Herman helps keep our development flow simple, and our UX consistent…
Living Style Guide documentation on the web is a difficult problem, gaining a lot of attention in the last few years. Let’s take an in-depth look at one way to store patterns directly in Sass, and generate documentation automatically.
Code documentation is ideally written as close to the actual code as possible, but compiled into a comprehensive set of documentation that includes code from all languages in use. Here’s how we intend to do that.