What we’re up to, where we’re going, and what gets us excited.

Last winter I joined a web development agency, Basalt, that specializes in Design Systems. Founded by three leaders in the tech industry with more than 30 years of experience between them, Basalt is driven by the belief that Design Systems are...

Basalt as an organization believes it's important to be constantly learning and growing, and as part of that belief, we want to support others in their journey as well. As we continue to grow, we are constantly looking for the right people to join the team. Basalt is pleased to have found this in, a...

Many of us have used the following mantras, or something similar:

“We need to build experiences in the medium they are destined for.”

“Design systems do not exist unless they are in code.”

The groundswell behind design systems is more proof that the industry needs to improve the tools and prac...

Traditionally, the biggest blocker to building a great front-end experience has been back-end development. For most web application platforms, you had to have something to shape into an experience before you could move beyond the basic design compositions. This “something” was typically a bunch of r...

Your team has worked tirelessly developing a vigorous design system and it needs a name. But how do you go about choosing a name for your design system?

As someone new to the world of the design systems, I admit, there is a lot to learn. But one thing that stood out to me right away was the variet...

There are rumors and urban myths out there that have completely shocked me. Whispers of Tom Cruise being an alien, the Slender Man is actually real, or that alligators live in the sewer are just a few. But the one that beats them all? Some people don't drink coffee. Can you believe it? Well, I'm her...

Chicago native, Jeremy John, has recently joined the Basalt team as a senior developer. Jeremy has been in the tech industry for over nine years as a technical architect and brings his expertise in Javascript, React, CSS3, and PHP to the senior team. He excels at juggling various challenges, driving...

The processes surrounding web design and development are undergoing a radical shift. I'm not talking about new JS frameworks claiming to be the "next great thing", or css-in-js, or any other language fad: I'm talking how we approach building the internet. I'm talking about design systems.

Over the...

Design Tokens are a wonderful way to codify all the small decisions in a Design System and help ensure consistency across the code base. Often these take the form of simple variables in our Sass stylesheets, however that limits their use to only that code language; and that hamstrings the potential...

Template literals are one of the easiest parts of ES6 to learn — but what about tagged template literals? They're another beast, with some interesting use cases. Read on to learn how to use them in your javascript code!