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There’s certainly no shortage of design systems available to use when building your next project. Between IBM’s Carbon, Wanda and Nord, there are plenty of terrific design systems to choose from. Yet, while each one contains its own nuances and opinions, most share a similar goal — simplifying the development process of creating beautifully accessible user interfaces.
It’s an admirable goal and, honestly, one that has led me to shift my own career into design systems. But a core feature at the foundation of many design systems is the extensibility for theming. And why wouldn’t it be? Without some flexibility for branding, every product using a particular system would look the same, à la Bootstrap around 2012.
While providing support for custom themes is vital, it also leaves the most well-intentioned system’s accessibility at the mercy of the implementation. Some teams may spend weeks, if not months, defining their ideal color palette for a rebranding. They’ll labor over each shade and color combination to ensure everything is reliable, informative, and accessible.