How Penpot Reduces Design Tokens Fragmentation

Penpot's native Design Tokens feature enhances team collaboration through standardized tokens management.

Have you ever needed to modify a primary color or spacing across dozens of files during project development? Or discovered mismatches between your design system and final implementation because designers and developers interpreted design tokens differently?

Managing design tokens — the fundamental elements that define a digital product's visual identity — has always been challenging.

For multidisciplinary teams, synchronizing these values between design tools and development environments can become especially problematic.

The Path to Fragmentation

Traditionally, the design token workflow follows this cumbersome path:

1. Designers define tokens in their preferred tool

2. They export values in proprietary formats

3. Developers convert these values into code variables

4. The process repeats with each update

This fragmented approach slows down workflow and creates inconsistencies between design intentions and final implementation.

Built-in Design Tokens

In response, Penpot recently launched its native Design Tokens feature, which was developed in collaboration with Tokens Studio by Hyma.

Manage native design tokens directly in the Penpot app

The newly released feature promises to transform design token management.

Penpot's implementation stands out through its native approach: design tokens are built directly into the tool's core rather than added as plugins or extensions.
This creates seamless usability and genuine integration with the platform's features.

Open Standards for True Interoperability

A key innovation in Penpot's approach is its adoption of the W3C DTCG draft, currently the most universal standard for design token management.

Here's an example of how design tokens are formatted using the W3C Design Tokens Community Group (DTCG) specification:

{
  "color": {
    "primary": {
      "$value": "#1E90FF",
      "$type": "color"
    },
    "secondary": {
      "$value": "#FF69B4",
      "$type": "color"
    }
  },
  "font": {
    "size": {
      "medium": {
        "$value": "16px",
        "$type": "dimension"
      }
    }
  }
}

This ensures that tokens defined in Penpot can be seamlessly shared and synchronized with other tools that follow the same standard.

This interoperability is crucial in today's design and development ecosystem, where teams rely on diverse tools.

Advanced Features That Go Beyond Simple Values

Penpot's design tokens offer more than basic color and spacing management. They include advanced features such as:

• String and numeric token types

• Mathematical operations on tokens

• Integration with a graph engine for complex conditional logic

These capabilities enable creating dynamic, scalable design systems that adapt to various contexts and requirements.

Use Cases: From Small Startups to Enterprise

Penpot's design tokens are versatile enough for various scenarios:

• Enterprise teams: managing design consistency across web, mobile, and product platforms

• Multi-brand organizations: reusing patterns across products with distinct visual identities

• Independent designers and developers: ensuring scalability across diverse projects

The Future Is Already Here

Looking ahead, Penpot's ambitious development roadmap includes several exciting and transformative enhancements:

1. GitHub synchronization: export/import of design tokens for seamless collaboration

2. Gradient support: expanding design token capabilities

3. REST API and automation: enabling external integrations and workflow automation

Among the many design tools available today, Penpot stands out with its open-source philosophy and commitment to an interoperable design ecosystem.

The native implementation of design tokens marks a significant advance toward this vision, elegantly solving one of the most persistent challenges in designer-developer collaboration.

As Penpot states:

"Penpot Design Tokens: Small decisions to master complexity."

Indeed, sometimes the smallest decisions have the greatest impact on managing complexity.

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Learn more about
Penpot Design Tokens →

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