Color variables VS Design specification pages

[CMick (Michael)]

After going through some previous (a few years old) training video courses (YouTube and Udemy) there seemed to have been this process of creating a Page within Sketch and setting up a design specification document.
This Page would contain all of the colours, shadows, font style choices among other preset choices.

Now I am returning to Sketch after a bit of a break and the Sketch 102 course details using colour variables and the Components → Colors tab.

There seems to be a bit of a duplication of functionality (doubling of work required from the designer).

Here’s the question and the answer I expect ‘may’ be subjective: What is the true path to follow here?

• Keep creating these Design specification pages
  OR
• Create Color variables and insert them into the Colors tab of the Components view

Many thanks.

[raulrincon]

Hey there!

The Design specification pages might be a company approach to creating these style guides. I remember back in the day where there used to be a page where all colors, font sizes, styles, etc would be displayed, just for the sake of seeing it all in one place.

With Color Variables as soon as you add them to your document (or Library) they:

• Should be available for use anywhere you have this Library enabled
• They should automatically appear on the Components View (⌃2) in the Color Variables tab (⌘4).

So you don’t really have to insert them at all, they should be added to the list there automatically.