When defining a design system for a multi-brand project, how can you leverage Figma's features to isolate and manage brand-specific color palettes while still maintaining a core set of globally applied brand colors?

To effectively manage brand-specific color palettes and a core set of global colors for a multi-brand project in Figma, you leverage Figma's powerful features for organization and reusability. A design system is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled together to build applications. In a multi-brand context, this means having a unified foundation that can be adapted for each distinct brand. Brand-specific color palettes are the unique sets of colors associated with each individual brand. Globally applied brand colors are colors that are common across all brands in the project, forming a foundational identity.

Figma's Styles are the primary mechanism for managing colors. Styles allow you to define a color once and then apply it to multiple elements. When you create a color style, Figma stores it centrally. This means if you update a color style, every element using that style will automatically update across your entire project. This is crucial for maintaining consistency. For globally applied brand colors, you would create a set of color styles within your Figma file that represent these common brand elements. For instance, you might have a global 'Primary Blue' or 'Neutral Gray' style. These would be named descriptively, like 'Global/Primary Blue'.

To manage brand-specific color palettes, you can create separate color styles for each brand. The key to isolation is organization through naming conventions and potentially through Figma's Pages feature. Within your Figma file, you can create dedicated pages for each brand (e.g., 'Brand A', 'Brand B'). On each brand's page, you would define its unique color styles. For example, on the 'Brand A' page, you might have styles like 'Brand A/Accent Red' or 'Brand A/Secondary Yellow'. On the 'Brand B' page, you would have its own distinct set of brand-specific colors, like 'Brand B/Emerald Green' or 'Brand B/Warm Orange'.

When designing components or elements that need to adopt a specific brand's colors, designers would select the appropriate brand-specific color styles from the available options in the right-hand panel in Figma. This ensures that a component intended for Brand A uses Brand A's specific hues, not Brand B's or the global ones, unless that's the intended design. By using a consistent naming convention (e.g., 'Global/', 'Brand A/', 'Brand B/'), designers can easily identify and select the correct color styles. The global styles would be accessible and applicable across all brands, while brand-specific styles remain distinct to their designated brand context. This approach allows for a unified design system foundation while providing the necessary flexibility to cater to the individual visual identities of multiple brands.