Has it really been that long?
Oh hey, look at that, it’s been almost exactly two years since the last major update to this design system. In the meantime, I’ve been up to a fair amount. For one thing, I used this very design system to launch a new version of my personal site in August of last year. I started and lost a job, then started another new job. My family and I traveled a bunch this year. Both of my parents passed away. (Yeah, it’s been a wild ride to say the least.)
At my current job, I’ve been using Journey as the foundation for a new design system, web site, and web applications. (More on that when it all goes live eventually.)
As part of using this as a foundation for another design system, I’ve been chomping at the bit to get back to working on Journey and implementing some of the things I’ve learned. I’ve also had a boat load of features I wanted to implement from the start.
So what’s new? #
Before I could get started on components and updates, I wanted to get the design system set up on a more modern, decentralized, and open platform. So the new version is hosted on Forgejo, through OMG.lol’s Source.tube platform. I’ve also moved the hosting to Cloudflare Pages for better performance and easy deployment.
Apart from that big infrastructure change, the most noticeable thing is that I’ve added a tool to switch what data you can copy on the Colors page. At first, I thought that you would never really want to copy actual color values. Ideally the variable should be enough for any CSS you’re creating so that you never risk using a value that won’t match if the colors are updated. However, the variable is meaningless in any graphic programs so I quickly found I wanted color values when working with the system in other tools like Sketch, Photoshop, or Figma.
I also took time to review the colors and clean them up. The difference between the lightest and darkest variations of specific colors felt a bit too extreme so I’ve scaled that back some.
Finally I’ve started tinkering under the hood with CSS that either wasn’t supported when I started or which I’ve learned since then to improve the way some of the foundations work.