Penpot, the first open-source, collaborative design and prototyping platform by Kaleidos, introduced a suite of new tools today at Penpot Fest that further improve collaboration between designers and developers. The company has also partnered with Tokens Studio, the popular design tokens plugin, to build native Penpot compatibility and an AI engine capable of generating design systems and key design workflows.
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Grid Layout Dashboard (Graphic: Business Wire)
Penpot continues to grow rapidly. Since the company launched General Availability in February, sign-ups have grown by 66% to 400,000 users, with self-hosted deployments doubling. Today, more than 80,000 teams run on Penpot – including Mozilla, Accenture, ByteDance, IBM, Google, and Microsoft.
The company continues to push the boundaries of what is possible for design-to-code workflows with the release of several new features:
- Grid Layout. Grid Layout is the first grid-to-CSS tool built natively into the design workflow. Now, designers will finally have access to the same tools front-end developers enjoy, with the ability to build complex and flexible 2D layouts that will automatically generate production-ready code in HTML and CSS.
- Tokens Studio for Penpot. The popular plugin that allows designers to create repeatable tokens and reduce manual design updates is expanding beyond the Figma ecosystem for the first time and will soon support full Penpot compatibility. Sign up for early access to the new Tokens Studio plugin for Penpot as the beta becomes available in the coming months.
- Advanced Components. Build complex design systems at scale with configurable components.
- New Desktop App. Penpot’s desktop app has launched out of beta on macOS, Windows and Linux. Penpot remains the only design platform with a desktop app and offline support.
“We’re giving designers and developers tools like Flex Layout that they’ve wanted for years, and entirely new features like Grid Layout that they might not have imagined were even possible to have in a design system,” says Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz, CEO and co-founder of Penpot. “We’re also ecstatic to partner with the incredible Tokens Studio team, who share our vision for a harmonious ecosystem that connects design and software development.”
Building an AI Engine for Design Systems with Tokens Studio
As part of Penpot’s new partnership with Tokens Studio, the two companies will work together to develop an AI engine for design systems. Tokens Studio recently previewed that it is building a connected smart graph system and automation workflows into its platform, which is a precursor to this initiative.
“We’ve been working to solve the design and engineering problem for years – it’s a vital mission we share with Penpot,” shares Mike Kamminga, CEO and co-founder of Hyma, the company behind Tokens Studio. “It was never our intention to remain just a plugin. Tokens Studio is quickly becoming a powerful design system and automation platform. Working with Penpot to develop some of these tools together, particularly our AI engine, is going to change how we treat design data and dramatically reduce the manual labor that has been so hard to get away from in design work.”
“Building AI that can support the underlying workflows for building and deploying designs – not just generating fun new images from simple prompts – is a considerable challenge that will be difficult to solve,” says Ruiz Múzquiz. “Tokens Studio is intimately aware of the unique hurdles to bringing AI to design, and we are excited to share what we are working on with them very soon.”
About Penpot
Created by Kaleidos in 2021, Penpot is the first open-source, collaborative design and prototyping platform that brings together designers and developers to build beautiful products. More than 400,000 professionals and 80,000 teams use Penpot for design projects, including Mozilla, Accenture, ByteDance, IBM, Google and Microsoft. Kaleidos’ non-negotiable mission is to generate positive impact in society with open source software and innovation, both through Penpot and Taiga, the project management tool for agile teams. The company is headquartered in Madrid, Spain.
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