What's New
This is where you'll find a rundown of the latest Design System additions and developments.
Please contact the Design System team if there are any questions!
June 2026
We have a brand new look for the site. This is the 4th redesign of our documentation site since we started the Design System in 2017. This update refreshes the visual design, layout, and navigation of the 2023 redesign.
New additions and features
- Dark and light mode/theme.
- New navigation item: Design and Development.
- New design toolkits.
October 2025
- New Link Reusable Design.
- New Motion guidelines for micro-interactions and animations.
- New U-M branded PowerPoint template
- New Templates and Themes page for our U-M branded materials in Google and PowerPoint.
- Updates to our guidelines for using bold and italics in Grammar and Style.
- Testing out a new social card image.
- Updates to the design and layouts for our Google Slides Theme Templates
May 2025
- New Icon guidelines for using Material Symbols.
- Completed and shared the 2025 Design System Doc Site Accessibility Evaluation and shared more detailed information on Accessibility and Inclusive Design.
- Updated Google Slide theme templates to improve accessibility and PDF creation by making decorative accents part of the background image in the theme.
March 2025
- Added File Upload, Range, and Search Input as Reusable Designs.
- We've said goodbye and thank you to a member of the team (Thank you, Suvi!)
- We've updated our site tech stack and documentation for contribution.
October 2024
- Added Badges and Tags as Reusable Designs
- Added a new team member to our team! (Welcome, Josh!)
- New script tag for our Web Components.
May 2024
- Added Banners as a Reusable Design
November 2023
- Implemented improvements to the website header and navigation
- Site search
- New utility navigation with links for commonly used resources: color table, Google templates, Figma Toolkit and CodePen.
- Shared 3 updated Google Slide templates with improved contrast for viewing in different environments
October 2023
- Added new Reusable Designs for inputs: Checkbox , Input fields , Radio button and elect
March 2023
- Updated Google Site Guidelines
- Created a Google Site template using the U-M Library Design System
February 2023
After a lot of writing, editing, designing, and building — the new documentation site is live!
This is the 3rd major redesign of our documentation site since we started the Design System in 2017. Our older sites were built around our design language and components. We collaborated with the library's Communication and Marketing department, expanded our scope, and built out a much more robust site rooted in an updated set of foundations.
New features of this site
- Site sections with landing pages: Getting Started, Foundations, Visual Elements, Content, Reusable Designs, and About
- Look and feel essentials in Visual Elements with connections to our Figma Design Library
- CodePen code samples embedded on Reusable Designs pages
- Paths guiding different audiences using the Design System through the site in getting started.
- Extensive Content guidance to support writing for the library across contexts