Phantasma

An open source design system for individuals and small teams.

Deliverable

Documentation and Figma template file

Role

Lead Product Designer

Impact

Data still being gathered

Where It Started

A designer I admired said, hey if you want to learn more about design systems, try this course. I was skeptical, who isn't these days? But of all the classes I had looked and taken in recent years, this one was the cheapest and most praised. It was Intro to Design Systems from Memorisely. My instructors ended up being two amazing individuals: Jarvis Moore & Anabelle Dubois

This lead to experimenting with variables, token studio, and nested components, uncovering a rabbit hole from which I would never again escape. Nor did I want to. I spent the class experimenting and documenting Codecademy (uncovering some inconsistancies in their overall brand, and some places for improvement.)
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Where It's Going

After completing the course, I realized how much time I was losing simply setting up files for new projects that came down the pipeline. I decide to work on a template (just like how I did for my other projects) and save myself the time and agony down the line.

This manifested as Phantasma, an open source design system template that can be shared via GitHub. It's a work in progress (what isn't), but it currently contains an editable Figma file for token studio compatible variables relating to sizing, colors, and typography. In addition, I've written and included a robust document to begin the process and remove barriers to maintaining and implementing this system. At this time, Phantasma does not contain any components.
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How It Will End

Or so I hope...

There's quite a few things remaining for me to feel satisfied with truly recommending and offering this to anyone on a more prominent scale. I do have preliminary files uploaded to GitHub along with a few comments from helpful friends along the way (shoutout to Alice Packard for all their help.) In an ideal universe I would add some basic highly customizable nested components and some code examples to the documentation. In the meantime, I'll just keep quietly mentioning it to family, friends, and all of you.