Re: [community-group] Themes/Schemes vs. Design Tokens (#187)

I agree naming conventions have not reached anywhere near standardization but I'm not certain naming key/values 'design tokens' is where we misalign. Let's start with colors.

- Definitive Color names are **Purple**, **Grey**, **Lilac**, or even **#555555**. They say what the color is, but not its intention.
- Contextual Color names such as **Color Accent**, **Color Text Body** are best described as 'contextual' since they typically use two other color tokens to describe behavior in dark/light mode in the context of backgrounds and/or specific components.
- Semantic Colors are **primary**, **secondary**, **warning**, **info**, **danger**, **neutral**, etc. and describe design intention regardless of the specific color. 

When it comes to white-label, very valuable to abstract away from Definitive Color names. If the color is named **primary** it's very easy to update the green color to blue but very tedious to re-map all contextual colors from $green to $blue. I only know because I've been there, done that.

At least for colors, we have a long way to go in alignment on what the name of color actually means, its purpose, and its intention. Calling **Color Text Body** a Semantic name comes from CSS Semantic naming conventions, but practically it is too specific a name IMHO.

Anyway, in short, ALL ARE design tokens, but we need to work on the deeper meanings of what kind of tokens they are.


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Received on Wednesday, 23 November 2022 12:51:32 UTC