Material 3 Expressive rewires how tokens work

Google's Material 3 Expressive restructured tokens around motion and personalisation, not just colour and spacing. It signals where bigger design systems are heading next.

Google's Material 3 Expressive, announced at I/O 2025, restructured how design tokens handle motion, colour dynamics and personalisation — moving beyond static colour and spacing values into more expressive, context-aware variables. It's a genuine shift in how design-systems teams think about tokens, not just a visual refresh. If the system you reference in interviews still treats tokens as fixed values, this is the direction larger systems are moving. You don't need to migrate anything tomorrow, but understanding the token model helps when a design-systems interview asks how you'd structure scalable variables in Figma or Penpot libraries.

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