Atomic Design

“We’re not designing pages anymore. We’re designing systems of components.” Brad Frost, who helped create tools such as Pattern Lab, This Is Responsive and Styleguides.io, opens this 2014 talk by agreeing with Stephen Hay’s observation.

Over the preceding years, the web community had created style tiles, element collages, style guides, pattern libraries and a range of other tools to break interfaces down into their atomic elements. Because interfaces are going more places than ever before, this shift is essential: it helps teams understand what their websites actually consist of, so they can create smart, scalable and maintainable designs. In this session, Brad introduces atomic design, his methodology for creating robust design systems.

Pattern libraries are at the heart of this way of working, and the UI-Patterns.com library documents many of the recurring interface components such systems are built from.