A lot of design systems start out with basic design tokens for things like colors and sizes, which can be easily translated into CSS variables (or Sass, or Less, etc.).
// tokens.scss $primary-text-color: #aaa; $secondary-text-color: #ccc; $size-s: 8px; $size-m: 16px; // some-component.scss .some-component { color: $primary-text-color; padding: $size-s $size-m; h4 { color: $secondary-text-color; } }
The next logical addition to your collection of tokens is fonts. And while you can apply the above pattern to fonts, most designers I’ve ever encountered think about typography as a whole. The font and its weight influence its size and line-height — it’s all a package deal.
In other words, typography is treated as a class. This is a great use case for a Sass (or Less) mixin (unfortunately, there’s currently no equivalent in native CSS).
Here’s an example:
// tokens.scss $font-sans-serif: Aria, Helvetica, sans-serif; $size-s: 8px; $size-m: 16px; $size-l: 24px; $size-xl: 48px; @mixin heading-sans-serif-l { font-family: $font-sans-serif; font-size: $size-l; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.3; } @mixin heading-sans-serif-xl { font-family: $font-sans-serif; font-size: $size-xl; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.4; } // some-component.scss @use "tokens"; .some-component { h2 { @include tokens.heading-sans-serif-xl; padding: $size-l $size-xl; } h3 { @include tokens.heading-sans-serif-l; padding: $size-s $size-m; } }
Every h2 and h3 within any component with the some-component class will get all of the styles defined within its included mixin — font-family, font-size, font-weight, line-height — and we’re free to extend it by adding in some padding (you import from an outside file by using @use). You could also overwrite any of the mixin values, if necessary (or if you want to make a designer’s eyes twitch).
This is the approach I took when building out a design system at Dictionary.com. It definitely helped streamline the redesign effort of our home (Thesaurus.com, too!) and browse pages (/browse/light is the quintessential example), which launched earlier this year.
Leverage mixins to create powerful building blocks within your design system.
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