Tokens before templates

Start with the small decisions

Tokens are the smallest decisions a team can agree on: a shade, a gap, a size. Once they exist, templates become assembly instead of invention.

A new page takes an afternoon, and it looks like the rest of the site because it is built from the same parts.

Name them for jobs

We name tokens for what they do, such as surface, ink, and accent, rather than what they look like. A rebrand then changes the values, not the names.