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How to name colors in a Design System
Definitive, Semantic, and Contextual naming conventions.
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There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. — Phil Karlton
Colors are the foundation of any Design System, but naming colors can be a struggle even for experienced Designers.
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Over six years ago, I created my first Design System and made a color palette to support a mobile survey app called QuickThoughts. I was using Sketch and loved how Zeplin automatically assigned ‘cool’ color names on import so I renamed all of my colors in a similar fashion.
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My choice of color names (‘Laughing Orange’, ‘Cardboard Tan’, ‘Shire Green’, etc) seemed reasonable at the time. However, this decision would soon prove to be a mistake when our organization bought another company that had a similar mobile application called ‘iPoll’.
After months of discussing how to include/support iPoll in our organization, the decision was made to deprecate the existing product and integrate its brand into…