TLDR¶

• Core Features: Flexible component variants via design tokens to manage states and appearances within Penpot’s open-source design system workflow.
• Main Advantages: Reusable components, consistent visuals across projects, and streamlined collaboration through token-driven variation.
• User Experience: Intuitive variant management with clear workflows for tokens and states, suitable for scalable design systems.
• Considerations: Requires understanding of design tokens and Penpot’s variant concepts; may have a learning curve for new users.
• Purchase Recommendation: Strong choice for teams prioritizing open-source, scalable design systems with robust variant support.

Product Specifications & Ratings¶

Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5.0/5.0)

Product Overview¶

Penpot’s approach to component variants elevates how design systems are built and maintained. The tool emphasizes token-driven styling, enabling designers to alter a component’s look or state—such as hover, disabled, or pressed—without duplicating components. Daniel Schwarz’s exploration centers on how design tokens can be harnessed to govern components and their variants within Penpot, presenting a workflow that aligns with scalable, consistent design practices.

At its core, the concept is straightforward: define a set of design tokens that represent visual attributes—color, typography, spacing, borders—and apply these tokens to a base component. Variants then become concrete manifestations of that component under different token configurations. This approach benefits teams that need to preserve consistency across multiple projects while still permitting bespoke appearances for specific use cases.

Penpot’s open-source nature is a key driver for adoption in professional environments. It allows teams to implement custom token schemas and variant strategies without vendor lock-in, while still benefiting from a shared design language. The article highlights practical steps to set up tokens, connect them to component properties, and create variant families that cover common UI states and permutations.

From a usability standpoint, Penpot offers a visual interface for defining tokens and linking them to component attributes. The process typically involves creating a token library, assigning tokens to component properties (such as fill color, border radius, or text styles), and then configuring variant boards or scenes that switch token values to reflect different appearances. This system enables designers to iterate rapidly, test accessibility considerations, and ensure that changes propagate consistently through design files and handoffs.

The implications for design systems are significant. Token-driven variants help reduce drift between components and their usage across projects. When applied correctly, teams can introduce new states or themes by simply extending the token set rather than duplicating and modifying components in isolation. The review implies that Penpot’s tooling supports this workflow well, offering a coherent pathway from token creation to variant deployment, with the added benefit of collaborative editing in an open-source environment.

In practice, practitioners can expect a structured pipeline: define a core component, establish a token baseline, create a family of variants by varying token values, and then assemble these variants into design-system catalogs or component libraries. This methodology supports design review, stakeholder alignment, and consistent handoffs to development, especially when tokens can be mapped to CSS custom properties or equivalent theming mechanisms in implementation.

The article’s emphasis on tokens and variants is timely given the ongoing need for scalable, cohesive design systems. By choosing Penpot, teams gain a platform that supports open collaboration, versioning, and the customization necessary for enterprise-grade design languages. The approach also aligns with modern front-end workflows where tokens drive theme systems, enabling designers to influence the final product more directly and efficiently.

In-Depth Review¶

Penpot’s component variant system, centered on design tokens, represents a pragmatic approach to building scalable design systems within an open-source design tool. The review delves into how tokens are defined, how they wire into component variants, and how this structure translates into real-world design workflows.

1) Token-driven architecture: The fundamental idea is to separate visual decisions from component structure. Tokens encapsulate decisions about color, typography, spacing, radii, shadows, and other stylistic attributes. By externalizing these values, teams can adapt appearances, themes, or accessibility adjustments without modifying the base component logic. This separation is crucial for maintaining consistency as products evolve.

2) Variants as expressive states: Variants are not merely cosmetic tweaks; they represent concrete states and configurations a component may assume in different contexts—such as default, hover, active, focus, disabled, or error states. In Penpot, variant sets are organized so designers can quickly switch among them, preview combinations, and ensure that transitions and interactions read well across states. The token-driven approach allows each variant to reference shared tokens, ensuring that a single token change can ripple across all relevant variants.

3) Design tokens workflow: A practical workflow begins with a token library that captures brand and UI system decisions—color scales, typography scales, spacing values, shadows, radii, and opacity. Designers associate tokens with component properties, establishing a mapping that can be reused across multiple components. As the design system grows, tokens can be extended or refined to accommodate new languages or themes (e.g., dark mode, high-contrast variants) without reworking components from the ground up.

4) Open-source advantages: Penpot’s open-source framework invites teams to tailor the token system to their needs. Organizations can contribute to core features, implement custom token schemas, or integrate with other tooling in their stack. This flexibility is particularly valuable for teams that require deep customization, complex theming rules, or bespoke collaboration flows that proprietary tools may not easily accommodate.

5) Collaboration and handoff: In cross-functional teams, designers, product managers, and developers benefit from a common source of truth. Tokens provide a single place to version, review, and discuss visual decisions, while variants expose the exact component presentations used in different parts of the product. When tokens align with implementation assets—such as CSS custom properties or design tokens in a frontend framework—the handoff from design to development becomes more direct and less error-prone.

6) Performance and usability considerations: Token-driven variant systems can be efficient, but they also require careful organization. As token sets expand, it becomes essential to establish naming conventions, documentation, and governance to avoid token duplication or conflicting values. Penpot’s interface should support scalable token management, including searchability, categorization, and inheritance or override rules for variants.

7) Accessibility implications: The token system can support accessibility goals by enabling contrast-checked token combinations and scalable typography. Designers can define tokens that enforce adequate contrast ratios and responsive text sizing across variants, ensuring that accessibility remains a foreground consideration as the design system evolves.

*圖片來源：Unsplash*

8) Practical impact on design operations: Teams can reduce repetitive work by defining a core component once and deriving numerous variants from it. The token-driven approach helps prevent drift in visuals and behavior, which is a common challenge in larger product ecosystems. It also supports iterative design, allowing stakeholders to experiment with themes, color palettes, or typography families without breaking existing components.

9) Limitations and potential caveats: While advantageous, the approach may demand a higher upfront investment in token governance. On-boarding new team members requires education about tokens, their hierarchy, and how variants reference them. Additionally, as projects scale, the complexity of token networks can increase, necessitating robust documentation and governance practices to keep everyone aligned.

Overall, the in-depth assessment suggests that Penpot’s component variants, when coupled with a thoughtful token strategy, offer a robust pathway toward scalable design systems. The combination of token-driven customization, variant orchestration, and open-source flexibility positions Penpot as a compelling option for teams seeking a future-proof design tooling stack.

Real-World Experience¶

In real-world usage, teams adopting Penpot’s component variants with a token-centric workflow often begin with a pilot project—creating a small library of foundational components (buttons, inputs, cards) and a token set that defines core color, typography, and spacing. This starter approach helps verify the practicality of the system before scaling to broader product lines.

1) Onboarding and setup: The initial phase focuses on token definitions and establishing a naming convention. A well-crafted token taxonomy typically includes semantic tokens (e.g., color-primary, font-size-header, radius-small) and scale-based tokens (e.g., color-50, color-100) that map coherently to design decisions. The team aligns on token values and how they propagate to variants. This alignment is essential to avoid mismatches as the variant matrix grows.

2) Creating variants: Designers create a base component and then define variants by altering token values. For instance, a button component might have default, hover, and disabled variants, each referencing the same token family but with different values for background color, text color, and border. This setup enables rapid iteration: tweaking a single token in the library updates all affected variants, preserving visual consistency.

3) Thematic exploration: Token-driven workflows simplify theme exploration. Teams can experiment with alternate color schemes or typography families by introducing new tokens or token groups and applying them to the same set of components. This capability is particularly valuable for brands that support multiple brands or product lines with shared UI primitives but distinct visual language.

4) Collaboration dynamics: Cross-functional teams benefit from a shared, versioned design language. Stakeholders can review token changes, assess how variants reflect those changes, and provide feedback within the same environment. When tokens align with implementation strategies—such as exporting token values for a frontend system—handoff to developers becomes more reliable, reducing rework due to visual drift.

5) Performance in practice: The practical experience indicates that performance remains solid when managing a reasonable number of tokens and variant combinations. As catalogs grow, performance considerations—like indexing, search, and lazy loading of variant sets—become important. Teams that implement governance around naming, categorization, and versioning tend to maintain a smoother workflow.

6) Challenges encountered: Common hurdles include onboarding new designers to token governance, avoiding token proliferation, and ensuring that variant combinations stay purposeful rather than overwhelming. Documentation and governance practices—such as a design-system guide and token catalog—help mitigate these issues.

7) Outcomes: Organizations that commit to a token-centric variant strategy typically observe more consistent UI across products, faster design iterations, and clearer collaboration between design and development. The open-source nature of Penpot adds a layer of adaptability, allowing teams to tailor the workflow to their specific processes and tooling ecosystems.

Overall, real-world usage confirms that Penpot’s component variants, when properly managed with tokens, deliver tangible benefits in consistency, speed, and collaboration. The approach scales well from small projects to larger design systems, provided teams invest in governance, onboarding, and documentation to sustain the practice over time.

Pros and Cons Analysis¶

Pros:
– Token-driven variant management promotes consistency and scalability across components and projects.
– Open-source platform provides flexibility, customization, and vendor independence.
– Clear mapping between tokens and component properties simplifies updates and theming.
– Facilitates collaboration and smoother handoffs to development through a shared design language.
– Supports theme exploration and multi-brand scenarios with minimal duplication of work.

Cons:
– Requires upfront investment in token governance, naming conventions, and documentation.
– Potential learning curve for designers new to token-based systems and variant concepts.
– As catalogs grow, management overhead increases; robust governance is essential.
– Integration with external development workflows may need careful alignment to ensure token values translate accurately.

Purchase Recommendation¶

For teams seeking a modern, scalable approach to design systems, Penpot’s component variants offer a compelling pathway. The token-centric workflow aligns with best practices in UI development, enabling consistent visuals, faster iteration, and clearer collaboration in an open-source environment. Penpot’s flexibility is particularly advantageous for organizations that want to tailor token schemas and variant strategies to their unique branding and accessibility requirements without vendor lock-in.

If your priorities include open-source tooling, transparent governance, and the ability to customize design-system machinery to fit diverse product lines, Penpot stands out as a well-suited choice. It is well-suited for design teams ready to invest in establishing a robust token library and governance framework, with the payoff being a more maintainable, adaptable, and scalable design system across projects.

Conversely, teams with limited resources for governance or those needing a turnkey, enterprise-centric solution out-of-the-box might evaluate whether the trade-offs align with their workflow. In contexts where rapid setup with minimal customization is essential, alternative tools with more prescriptive ecosystems could be considered. However, for organizations prioritizing openness, adaptability, and deliberate design-system discipline, Penpot’s approach to component variants driven by design tokens is a strong match.

References¶

• Original Article – Source: https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/11/how-leverage-component-variants-penpot/
• Supabase Documentation: https://supabase.com/docs
• Deno Official Site: https://deno.com
• Supabase Edge Functions: https://supabase.com/docs/guides/functions
• React Documentation: https://react.dev

*圖片來源：Unsplash*