Design tokens are an agnostic way to store information about design, such as typography, colours, spacing, etc. This helps your design system and branding elements be shared across platforms, such as Android, Web, iOS, Design tools, etc.
In a way, design tokens are just 'fancy variables', but this is somewhat reductive. Design tokens enforces a different mindset of thinking about branding and design tooling, similar to the way responsive design is more than just 'media queries'.
Design tokens act as a 'single source of truth' and a shared language that works across disciplines. In an ideal world, with a good design token setup, a rebrand involves just changing tokens, not styles.
Design tokens are a methodology for expressing design decisions in a platform-agnostic way so that they can be shared across different disciplines, tools, and technologies. They help establish a common vocabulary across organisations.
https://design-tokens.github.io/community-group/format/
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