WWW… Wednesday! Diez – Universal Style Sheets
by Taylor Slattery | January 15, 2020
Online, visibility is everything. Maintaining a consistent visual experience for visitors across browsers and devices can be a cumbersome task. Although the days of creating device-specific versions of a site are long gone, the sheer number of different platforms a company might employ to deliver their product or service can make simple updates to their visual identity a nightmare.
For any online business, scalability is key. With the way information is disseminated online, market behaviors can be somewhat unpredictable. There are so many factors at play, you never know when an ad campaign, influencer shout-out, or blog mention will result in a sudden surge of traffic. Businesses need to be able to respond to growth at a moment’s notice. Planning for growth and establishing a foundation built upon scalable tools will enable you to capitalize on momentum when the moment strikes. Failing to do so can produce disastrous results. Whether that takes the form of a product whose manufacturing time is too slow for a sudden spike in demand, or an app unable to meet the needs of a rapidly growing user-base. The biggest obstacle to scalability is an incompatibility between a business’s moving parts. When timing is everything, any tool that can save you time will save you money. Whether you have an app or an e-commerce store, being able to manage your visual identity from a single location is a massive time-saver. Diez allows you to do exactly that.
Diez pairs the traditional components of a design system, such as typography, color palettes, and imagery, with their digital counterparts like drop-down menus, buttons, and input fields into a single, unified design system. Its TypeScript can extract all the necessary design information from software such as Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD, making it adaptable to any pre-existing workflow. Via a single design language, it allows users to make changes across iOS, Android, and web simultaneously.
Diez also allows for plug-ins, so the experience can be custom-tailored to your specific needs. Whether you run a small business from home or a large brand with many subdivisions, Diez makes managing visual identities ridiculously easy. Diez is available in a free, open-source community edition, as well as a paid enterprise edition. You can learn more here.
Taylor is the Managing Editor of Notes on Design. Taylor is a graphic designer, illustrator, and Design Lead at Weirdsleep.
If you are interested in learning to use typography, Sessions College offers Basic Typography and Advanced Typography courses as well as a course in Web Typography. Contact Admissions for more information.
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