I had the pleasure of meeting and doing a workshop with Brad Frost and Dan Mall at Artifact Conf back in 2019. One of my discussion points was about the true definition of “atoms” and the necessity of “pages”. Many people argue that styles are atoms while small components like buttons or inputs are atoms. The answer was something along the lines of “do what works best for your product/team”.

I really love your introduction of the styles layer specifically, because “atoms” implies it cant be broken down further. A button can be broken down into styles. I also appreciate the focus here on templates over pages: when we design a system, defining the exact placement and organization of a “page” sort of defeats the purpose of the system itself. The system should be flexible in a way that the “segments” and “templates” can be used multiple ways, such as by different teams on different products under one brand, and still be cohesive.

Thank you for this article! Definitely checking out Atomic Kitchen.