Subatomic: Flexible Design Systems with Design Tokens

For 20 years, IxDA Pittsburgh has brought together the UX community for fun and educational events. As we continue celebrating this milestone, we invite you to an evening with one of our world-renowned luminaries.

For years, we’ve heard whiney sentiments like “Design systems kill creativity!” Design systems unlock desperately-needed efficiency & consistency, but is it possible to provide the benefits of shared systems without forcing everything to look exactly the same?

The answer is: Yes, with design tokens! In this talk, Brad Frost (creator of Atomic Design) and his brother Ian Frost will share how they’ve helped dozens of organizations—including much of the Fortune 500—create design token systems to help them create design systems that strike the balance between consistency/efficiency and expression/innovation.

About Our Speakers

Brad Frost

Hi, I’m Brad Frost! I’m a design system consultant, front-end developer, teacher, speaker, writer, musician, and artist. I’m so incredibly passionate about the web, creativity, and helping people collaborate to make great digital things together.

Over the course of my career, I’ve helped teams establish and evolve design systems by combining solid architecture with more collaborative processes and culture. I created Atomic Design, and my book introduces a methodology to create and maintain effective design systems. I’ve been a part of a slew of design systems projects, including co-hosting the Style, inventing Pattern Lab, curating Styleguides.io, creating Style Guide Guide, and many others.

I love creating things, and I’m equally passionate about teaching. Through conferences, workshops, trainings, seminars, my long-running blog, my book, and other avenues, I’ve taught design systems best practices to hundreds of thousands of designers and developers all over the world.

I live in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA with my wife, my daughter Ella, and our French bulldog Bootsy. When I’m not neck-deep in design tokens, you can find me playing music and creating things any chance I can get.

Ian Frost

I’m Ian Frost, Brad’s younger brother. I’m a front-end architect, technical lead, and consultant who loves to help level up developers.

I’ve been developing design systems alongside Brad since 2015. Over the years, I’ve built design systems in many technologies: Web Components, React, Angular, Vue, and others. I’ve partnered with tech leads, developers, and designers from dozens of organizations to help them successfully establish, implement, and maintain sturdy design system and token architecture. This work is equal parts art and science, and I’m so excited to share our hard-earned lessons to make your life easier.

Before my life as a web designer, I was a professional meteorologist. When I’m not slingin’ code or forecasting for snow, you can find me playing music, sports, or spending time with my wife and son.

About Their Course

Subatomic: The Complete Guide To Design Tokens

World-renowned design systems experts Brad Frost (creator of Atomic Design) and Ian Frost teach you everything you need to know about creating an effective design token system to help your organization design and build at scale.

Course includes:

• Over 10 hours of in-depth videos
• Figma & code sample architecture
• Naming & governance workflows
• PDF with examples and resources
• Certificate of completion
• Live team training option

About Our Host

We’re happy to partner with Innovation Works to bring you this event. They’re providing the use of their AlphaLab facility at Techforge in Lawrenceville. Free parking is available.

Innovation Works is focused on growing and connecting the local startup ecosystem. Every year, we help hundreds of entrepreneurs, researchers and small manufacturers to create new markets and change the world with their innovations. No matter what your technology is, our programs are designed to accelerate growth.