UCD Coach

daily design digest

Penpot's design system tooling is catching up

Published 16 July 2026 · Source dated 28 November 2024

A walkthrough of Penpot's plugin system, template library and learning centre shows open-source tooling is building out real design-system support, not just basic shapes. Worth a look if you're on Figma + Penpot.

Penpot has added a plugin system, a template library and a learning centre with ready-made design systems — plus direct CSS/HTML/SVG inspection built in, no plugin needed. That's a meaningful step for a tool that started as "just" an open-source canvas. It's not at Figma's component/variant maturity yet, but for junior designers building your own design-system literacy, comparing how Penpot structures tokens and components against your Figma setup is a genuinely useful exercise — it forces you to understand *why* your current system is structured the way it is, not just how to use it.

Coach

Open Penpot's template library this week and compare one component's token setup against your current Figma design system — write down what's missing.

Source: youtube.com ·