How to Organize Design Tokens

Understanding how to organize design tokens determines whether a token system remains manageable or becomes an unmaintainable sprawl. Proper organization enables teams to find tokens quickly, understand their relationships, and extend the system predictably. Without thoughtful organization, token collections become fragmented, duplicative, and difficult to govern.

What Is Design Token Organization

Design token organization refers to the structural approach used to categorize, group, and store tokens within a design system. This encompasses both the logical taxonomy that defines token relationships and the physical file structure that houses token definitions. Effective organization creates a mental model that team members can internalize and apply consistently.

Organization strategies vary based on system complexity, team size, and platform requirements. Some systems organize primarily by token type (colors, spacing, typography), while others prioritize by usage context (component tokens, theme tokens, global tokens). Most mature systems combine multiple organizational dimensions.

How Design Token Organization Works

Token organization typically operates at three distinct levels: categorical organization, hierarchical tiers, and file structure.

Categorical organization groups tokens by their fundamental type. Color tokens, spacing tokens, typography tokens, and elevation tokens each form distinct categories. Within each category, further subdivisions create meaningful clusters. Color tokens might subdivide into background colors, text colors, border colors, and icon colors.

Hierarchical tiers establish relationships between tokens at different abstraction levels. A three-tier system commonly includes primitive tokens (raw values), semantic tokens (purpose-driven aliases), and component tokens (context-specific applications). Primitive tokens like blue-500 feed into semantic tokens like color-primary, which component tokens like button-background may reference.

File structure translates these logical groupings into actual source files. A typical approach creates directories for each category and files for each subcategory. Color tokens might live in tokens/color/background.json, tokens/color/text.json, and tokens/color/border.json. This physical organization makes navigation intuitive and enables granular access control.

Build systems combine these distributed files during compilation, allowing teams to maintain logical separation during development while producing consolidated outputs for consumption. This separation supports parallel editing and reduces merge conflicts in version control.

Key Considerations

• Organization should reflect how teams think about and search for tokens
• Flat structures work for small token sets but collapse under scale
• Deep nesting can obscure tokens and complicate tooling integration
• Theme-specific tokens benefit from parallel directory structures
• Platform-specific overrides should follow consistent organizational patterns
• Documentation should mirror the organizational structure
• Refactoring organization becomes expensive once tokens have widespread adoption
• Migration paths should be planned when reorganizing existing systems

Common Questions

Should tokens be organized by type or by usage?

Both approaches have merit, and most effective systems combine elements of each. Organizing by type (all colors together, all spacing together) creates intuitive groupings that match how designers think about design attributes. Organizing by usage (all button tokens together, all form tokens together) aligns with how developers consume tokens.

A hybrid approach often works best. Global primitive and semantic tokens organize by type, providing a foundational vocabulary. Component-specific tokens, when necessary, organize by usage context. This layered approach serves different access patterns without sacrificing coherence. Teams typically start with type-based organization and add usage-based groupings as component-level token needs emerge.

How granular should token files be?

File granularity involves tradeoffs between maintainability and complexity. Very granular files (one token per file) create excessive filesystem overhead and make relationships difficult to perceive. Very coarse files (all tokens in one file) become unwieldy and create merge conflicts when multiple contributors edit simultaneously.

A practical middle ground creates files at the subcategory level. All background colors in one file, all text colors in another. This approach keeps related tokens together while limiting file size. Files typically remain manageable when they contain between ten and fifty tokens. When files grow beyond this range, further subdivision usually improves maintainability.

How should themes affect token organization?

Themes introduce variations that multiply across the token system. Organization strategies for themes include parallel file structures, where each theme has its own token hierarchy, and overlay structures, where theme-specific tokens override base definitions.

Parallel structures provide clarity but create duplication. A dark theme might duplicate the entire semantic token layer with different primitive references. Overlay structures minimize duplication but can obscure the complete picture of any single theme.

Many systems use a base-plus-overlay approach. Core tokens live in theme-agnostic files, while theme-specific directories contain only the tokens that change. Build processes merge these layers, producing complete theme-specific outputs. This approach balances clarity with maintainability.

Summary

Organizing design tokens requires deliberate decisions about categorization, hierarchy, and file structure. Effective organization combines type-based groupings for foundational tokens with usage-based groupings where component context demands specificity. File structures should mirror logical organization, creating predictable locations that teams can navigate intuitively. Investment in thoughtful organization pays dividends as token systems scale.