Watch: tuning transition timing

Edge lines deserve more attention than they usually get. A thin, slightly darker line along the bottom edges grounds each block, and a lighter line on the top edge suggests a highlight. Using currentColor for those lines means a single colour change on the wrapper restyles every outline in the scene.

Edges and highlights

Stacking order is the part that trips people up. In a flat layout, later elements paint on top. In a tilted scene, a block that is further back must paint first, even if it appears later in the markup. Either sort your markup by depth or give each block a z-index derived from its row and column.

Before we publish any illustration we run it through a short review. Is the light direction consistent? Does every block sit on the grid? Is the art hidden from screen readers where it is decorative? Does it survive forced colours mode? It takes five minutes and catches most of the problems we used to fix after launch.

Design tokens keep the whole team in step. We name colours by their role, such as face-top, face-left and face-right, rather than by hue. When we switched the site to a violet accent for a campaign, only the token values changed. Every illustration, button and chart followed without anyone opening a single component.