[s2l]

> or perhaps a brand refresh.

Doesn't brand refresh often includes new components and new design language? In creative space, every design agency tries to sell something different to the organization and thus brand refresh will discontinue any prior design tokens and come up with new one.

[kaelig]

"it depends"

When working on products that can last decades, you can't just throw away all styling and start from scratch. In this case, design tokens are essentially styling hooks that allow teams to propagate design changes at scale without rebuilding everything.

[starbugs]

> design tokens

> styling hooks

You mean variables.

I don't get why the marketing speak is necessary. I also think it's detrimental to what we've built as engineers. Please stop. It's neither a token nor a hook, it's a simple variable.

[kaelig]

It goes beyond variables. At the minimum it's a name and a static or dynamic value, but it can also contain metadata, transforms, private/public attributes, formatting constraints...

You may not be aware (and 10 years late in trying to stop this), but this name has been very well received in the web design industry and frontend world and helps us build a community of craft to solve similar problems together.. so it looks like it's here to stay.