Tokens Studio for Figma

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Text (string) ​

Text - Token Type ​

Text Tokens define entire strings of text that change the written copy of your designs when applied to a text layer.

Creating a new Text Token in the Tokens Studio Plugin for Figma.

Design decisions ​

Text Tokens define the written content in your designs and can be applied to text elements.

Useful for:

  • UX writing
  • Creating themes for different languages
  • Capturing translations
  • When your product or brand names are still being iterated on

Text Tokens can be attached to String Variables in Figma.

Possible values ​

Text Token can have any combination of alpha-numeric values and may include emojis.

DANGER

Known Issue

Text Tokens with values that are numeric only are not applying as expected.

Hard-coded string values ​

Hard-coded values of Text Token would be a string of text you define directly.

For example, a Text Token named welcome.message with the hard-coded value of:

"Hello world"

Values that reference another token ​

When trying to reference another Token as the Value for a Text Token, you will see Tokens in the dropdown list that are:

  • Living in Token Sets that are currently active.
    • In the left menu on the plugin's Tokens page, a checkmark is visible next to the Token Set name.
  • Token Type is compatible:
    • The same = text

Nested references

Text Tokens can also reference another Token nested somewhere within the value.

For example, a Text Token with a Name of customer-id with the hard-coded value of:

Jan Six

When referenced within the value of another Text Token with a Name of app.home-page.title:

👋 Welcome back, {customer-id}!

Which would inherit the text content from the customer-id token and have a resolved value of :

👋 Welcome back, Jan Six!

This is a great way to communicate to engineers the design decision to have text content; in this case, the client name comes from a database.

You could even add some notes in the Description of the Token for engineers, like "show the preferred name as the client ID if it exists in the database."

Apply Text Tokens ​

You can apply a Text Token to change the written content of a text layer in Figma when the Token is applied.

With one or more text layers selected in Figma, click on the name of your chosen Text Token in the Plugin to apply its value instantly.

For example, if you select the bounding box that a text layer is in by mistake, the Token is applied to the parent frame and no changes will be made to the text layer as it is a child.

W3C DTCG Token Format ​

Text is not yet an official token type in the W3C DTCG specifications. Tokens Studio has added Text as an unofficial Token Type to support Figma's String Variable.

Transforming Tokens ​

When transforming Text Tokens, there are specific transforms to be aware of.

The preprocessor in the SD-Transforms package will automatically convert the Tokens Studio specific Token Type of text to align with the Style Dictionary compatible Token Type of content.

→ SD-Transforms Read-Me Doc, Using the preprocessor

Resources ​

Mentioned in this doc:

Community resources: ​

  • None yet!

Known issues and bugs ​

Tokens Studio Plugin GitHub - Open issues for Token Type Text

  • Unable to Assign a Numeric Value in the Text Token Type 2470
    • When the value is purely numeric, results are unexpected.

Requests, roadmap and changelog ​

  • None