A CSS methodology from Andy Bell:
The most important part of this methodology is the language itself: CSS. It’s key to note its existence in the name because some alternative approaches, such as BEM—which I have enjoyed for many years—can veer very far away from Cascading Style Sheets. I love CSS, though and think that its core capabilities are actually key to scalable CSS.
A favorite bit…
[…] a design system doesn’t just make you think at a micro-level, but also at a macro-level, because you have to make not just decisions about pixels, but also high-level organisation decisions which the design system helps to solve. Design system work is actually diplomacy work, a lot of the time.
This is often where I see narrow, component-only tunnel vision fall short and really, these approaches are less design systems, but more component libraries that solve a much narrower cohort of problems.
I like the idea of approaching CSS both from an inside-out philosophy — focusing on styling very small specific things then grouping them together to grow bigger thing — and from an outside-in philosophy — not forgetting that components need to be composed together sensibly.
