Atomic Design, a revolutionary approach to web development, breaks down complex interfaces into fundamental building blocks. It's a methodology that fosters both creativity and efficiency. Let's delve into its principles, benefits, and real-world applications.
We’re not designing pages, we’re designing systems of components
As Web design continues to evolve, we need to develop thoughtful design systems, rather than creating simple collections of web pages.
- Atomic design is the study of how we can break entire interfaces down into fundamental building blocks and work up from there.
Pattern Lab
A tool called Pattern Lab can be used to create atomic design systems
Atoms
These are abstract HTML tags that can include more abstract elements like color palettes, fonts, and even more invisible aspects of an interface like animations.
- Useful as a reference in the context of a pattern library as you can see all your global styles laid out at a glance.
Pages are specific instances of templates. Here, placeholder content is replaced with real representative content to give an accurate depiction of what a user will ultimately see.
The page stage is essential as it is where we test the effectiveness of the design system.
- Viewing everything in context allows us to loop back to modify our molecules, organisms, and templates to better address the real context of design.
Molecules
Molecules are groups of atoms bonded together and are the smallest fundamental units of a compound
- These molecules take on their own properties and serve as the backbone of our design systems
- While molecules can be complex, as a rule of thumb they are relatively simple combinations of atoms built for reuse
Why Atomic Design
Provides a clear methodology for crafting design systems
- Clients and team members can appreciate design systems by seeing the steps laid out in front of them
- Create systems that promote consistency and scalability while simultaneously showing things in their final context
- By assembling rather than deconstructing, they are crafting a system right out of the gate
Further Reading
Andy Clarke has been setting the stage for these types of conversations for a long while
- Web Components: A Tectonic Shift for Web Development
- Modularity
- Responsive Deliverables by Dave Rupert
- A talk by Brad Frost on Atomic Design at Beyond Tellerrand in Germany
Organisms
Molecules give us some building blocks to work with, and we can now combine them together to form organisms.
- Organisms are groups of molecules joined to form a relatively complex, distinct section of an interface.
- Building up from molecules to organisms encourages creating standalone, portable, reusable components.
Templates
At the template stage, break our chemistry analogy to get into language that makes more sense to our clients and our final output.
- Templates consist mostly of groups of organisms stitched together to form pages. It’s here where we start to see the design coming together and start seeing things like layout in action.
