Something that's always irked me about Atomic Design is the hubris of the metaphor.
Atomic.
That's atom level shit that's confusing.
I tend to interpret metaphors literally, or, rather—...more interpreting, expanding, or feeling for the metaphor's bounds & margins.
So, designing atoms.
That's god-level sort of design.
It's a bit too BIG for me, to consider myself as a designer.
It's why I lean more into an Organic Design metaphor.
Atoms vs. Elements
Atoms are elements. But there are smaller things to atoms than elements. Designing all possible chemical compositions are incomprehensible, when applied to design at any scale we work on.
I'd rather think at a Planetary Scale, how all the things work together...rather than the Atomic Scale.
I can't think up everything that a name like Atomic Design implies.
Atoms vs. Ecosystems
Atomic Design introduced the concept of...design at scale. Or at the very least, applied the principles of graphic design, branding guidelines, and specifications to the web.
Color used to be ink. Now, it's pixel-cheap.
Publishing used to be expensive. Now, it's clicks away.
Words used to be inaccessible. Still are, to an extent, but nowhere near before.
Dan Mall talks about design as ecosystems—well, design systems, but atomic design posits that everything is a system...thus the specificity of the specific design practice is relevant.
Ecosystems are an organic process.
They develop via instinctual or thoughtful things of being.
Ordered Structure vs. Emergent Chaos
Atoms exist. They are.
Organisms emerged. We became.
By having a more organic approach, the metaphor strengthens.
It encompasses the random set of events to get to this moment—just as much as it envelops the acts of intentional or unintentional, creative iteration.
Atoms have literal arrangements that are the only way of existing.
Organic existence is so strange, weird, and diverse—organic life exists in so many, unimaginably different forms; plants, animals, us.