Adham Dannaway Breaks Down Top Design Systems

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Designer Adham Dannaway reviews established design systems, including IBM Carbon and the Atlassian Design System, examining how they implement elevation tokens, colour palettes, and composite UI patterns.

Key points

  1. Design systems act as a single source of truth to ensure consistency, scalability, and seamless handoff between design and engineering.
  2. IBM's Carbon Design System indicates elevation using colour rather than drop shadows: colours get progressively lighter in dark mode and alternate between white and grey in light mode.
  3. Carbon documents high-level UI patterns, such as authentication flows and filtering mechanics (e.g. multi-select dropdowns versus persistent sidenav filters), rather than just isolated components.
  4. While broad interaction conventions remain consistent across systems, significant discrepancies persist in colour models, elevation, and component architecture.

Why it matters

Studying production design systems helps teams solve recurring interface challenges without reinventing core concepts like elevation hierarchy or complex pattern documentation.

Analysis

Dannaway highlights where prominent enterprise design systems diverge, particularly in how they convey depth and elevation. Carbon's decision to avoid drop shadows in favor of alternating background tones highlights how simpler, token-friendly approaches can handle high-density layouts effectively.

Original post

Adham Dannaway

@AdhamDannaway · 12 September 2026

🔥 My breakdown of the best design systems out there right now. From Adobe to Atlassian, I dive into how they actually handle things like elevation tokens, transparency, and components, so you can learn from the best. → t.co/XG3Y6h0zWH t.co/RAwhHosEL3

297 likes4 replies489 bookmarks18.7k views

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More posts in the thread (3)
  1. @uihasan2828 Thanks, hope it helps 😃
  2. @Mike_Andreuzza I learned a lot from Carbon 👍
  3. @gregoriombp I was just sharing my learnings from some of my favourite design systems, what aer you building?
Selected replies (5)
  • @gregoriombp @AdhamDannaway wait, are we building the same thing?? we should work together lol t.co/BYJtqRpfuZ
  • @uihasan2828 @AdhamDannaway Design system breakdowns like this are pure gold. Thanks for sharing!
  • @Mike_Andreuzza @AdhamDannaway Carbon ❤️
  • @gregoriombp @AdhamDannaway oh, sorry, I got it totally mixed-up. I'm building Auis. I ship UI in the product in real time now. Figma’s barely in the loop
  • @MozerLeandro @AdhamDannaway O love lot of atlasian. My reference …

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Summary generated by AI (Gemini 3.8 Flash, 27 September 2026). It may contain errors – the original source is authoritative.

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