Atomic Design Architecture

The atomic design methodology was introduced by designer Brad Frost to help designers craft reusable UI systems seamlessly.

Let’s deep dive into the more details.

What is Atomic Design?

Atomic Design is a visual identity system methodology that separates the entire process when developing visual systems in a more organized way using.

Basically, Atomic Design is inspired from Chemistry. Everything is a collection of atoms. Atoms combined together create molecules which as a group form Organisms. A group of Organisms in turn form a Template which build up a page of an application or a website.

The gist of the whole concept is to break a webpage into as smaller and meaningful chunks as possible and work up from there to build the whole project.

Let’s understand these sections in more detail:

Atoms:

Atoms are the like the bricks, the basic building blocks in the design. Such as headings, buttons, form inputs, labels. For example:

Molecules:

Molecules are a combination of atoms. Basically, a group of atoms bonded together to create a meaningful section of any component. Here is an example:

In the screenshot shown above, there are 2 molecules. One with heading and a description. Another one with an image and a button.

Organisms:

When molecules are created and kept in a group together to create a usable section of the application, then an Organism is formed.

Atoms: Headings, Image, List content

Molecules: Sections such as Services We Provide, Solutions You Need, Platforms We Use

Organisms: The whole section displayed in the figure above is an Organism.

Templates:

Templates are page-level objects that place components into a layout and articulate the design’s underlying content structure. This is the stage where the design comes to life and the layout comes into action. Templates comprise of the deliverable sections of the application that can be used and tested individually.

Like Contact us Form, Headers, Footers etc.

Pages:

The page stage is essential as it’s where we test the effectiveness of the design system. Viewing everything in context allows us to loop back to modify our molecules, organisms, and templates to better address the real context of the design.

Folder Architecture Example

Benefits of Atomic Design

The first and the crucial benefit of this pattern is the reduced dependency on backend application login for starting the front-end development. Any component can be developed and tested independently. This reduced dependency speeds up the development part and guarantees the faster build process.

The CSS is tied to specific components. So depending on the architecture of your application only component specific CSS is rendered.

With Atomic design, you can see what interfaces that are broken down to their atoms look like, and how, when combined, they create the form of the final product.

To summarize, Atomic Structure is the newest folder architecture in the market. Adopting change is what keeps the software industry alive.

This is the most effective way to build things out of smaller, focused, and independent pieces. It gives you a possibility to shift between abstract and concrete. With Atomic design, you can see what interfaces that are broken down to their atoms look like, and how, when combined, they create the form of the final product.

That’s a wrap! I hope this post helps anyone who’s structuring projects from scratch to be more organised and efficient.