Log In
Back to Resource page

PatternFly

Matt Carrano avatar

Author: Matt Carrano | Last edit: August 22, 2024

About PatternFly

PatternFly is an open source design system that enables teams to create consistent and scalable enterprise products. PatternFly is sponsored and maintained by Red Hat, but is open to all. By using a design system, it is easier to maintain consistency and usability across a wide range of software products. To support the UI and UX needs of Red Hat products, PatternFly provides clear standards, guidance, and resources that help designers and developers work together more efficiently to build better user experiences. 

PatternFly includes reusable React components, design patterns and guidelines, UX writing standards, accessibility guidelines, and other tools to use when designing and developing UIs.

PatternFly design

The PatternFly Design team focuses on the design needs of PatternFly, including visuals, content, and information architecture. Our PatternFly designers focus on enabling UXD product designers to work more efficiently, in order to create more effective and consistent UI solutions. Our team also pushes the evolution of PatternFly, so that the look and feel of our products continues to adapt to users' needs.

We enable our product designers to produce effective and consistent solutions in an efficient manner, while also pushing the look and feel of our products forward to ensure a modern aesthetic.

Our team strategically operates at an intersection of product and brand, marrying the functional requirements of product use cases with the visual requirements of Red Hat's modern and open style. In addition to product teams, we often collaborate with other creative teams at Red Hat, like the brand design and web design teams. Our aim is to:

  • Open the doors to more effective solutions: We can learn from other teams and work together on improvements that push PatternFly forward.
  • Enable designers to work more efficiently: Improving our tools and resources means designers spend less time wrestling with design software and more time doing great things.
  • Guide, support, and collaborate: Our takeaways from product research, testing, and feedback allow us to iterate our guidance and support resources. This keeps our documentation accurate and makes designing easier for all of UXD.
  • Prioritize accessibility: We work with an accessibility-first mindset as much as possible, so that some accessibility considerations are natively incorporated into PatternFly. We also provide guidance and resources, so that product designers and developers are empowered to do the same. 

What we do:  

  • Interaction-focused product design and high-fidelity product design
  • Design and maintain PatternFly tokens, components, patterns, and extensions  
  • Design and maintain the PatternFly design kit in Figma 
  • Provide training, enablement, and consulting to product designers
  • Design and maintain the PatternFly website, including information architecture, front-end design, and documentation 
  • Collaborate with Design Program Office (DPO)

What we DON’T do: 

  • Graphic design work 
  • Convert wireframes to high fidelity for each product group

Collaborating with PatternFly Designers

There are a few ways you can connect with PatternFly designers: 

  • Post a question in the #list-patternfly Slack channel.
  • Join the PatternFly Slack organization, and post a question in #patternfly-design.
  • Join the PatternFly & UXD Design Share every other Monday from 11 AM-12 PM EST, where you can bring product-specific questions and ideas to our PatternFly designers. You can access this meeting using the UXD Design Sharing calendar.

Design team members

Abi Donahue, Manager

Andrew Ronaldson, Design Product Owner

Erin Donehoo, Content Designer 

Lucia Boehling, PatternFly Design Lead

Kayla Chumley, PatternFly Designer

Bekah Stephens, PatternFly Designer

PatternFly development

The PatternFly development team includes a collection of Core and React developers who create front-end components and maintain the PatternFly website and build infrastructure. Core developers take specifications from the design team and turn them into core components with appropriate layout and styling. Core deliverables include HTML and CSS code that can be consumed directly or bundled with React code. React developers take core components and add behavior to deliver fully encapsulated React components. 

Our developers work in a variety of GitHub repositories, within the PatternFly organization.

Collaborating with PatternFly Developers

There are a few ways you can connect with PatternFly developers: 

Development team members

Nicole Thoen, Manager, Release 

Evan Wilkinson, Manager, Build

Michael Coker, Core Lead

Mark Franceschelli, React Developer 

Don Labaj, Release Lead

Titani Labaj, React Lead

Katie McFaul, React Developer & Scrum Master

Matt Nolting, Core Developer 

Eric Olkowski, React Developer

Domenik Petrik, React Intern

Sarah Rambacher, Technical Product Owner

Austin Sullivan, React Developer

Adam Viktora, React Intern

Learn more about PatternFly

If you want to learn more about PatternFly, or how the team works, here are some additional resources:

  • For all the details, visit the PatternFly website at www.patternfly.org. 
  • To hear details on PatternFly releases and learn about upcoming plans, join PatternFly community meetings every fourth Wednesday from 11-12 AM EST. You can access this meeting using the UXD Design Sharing calendar. You can also watch previous PatternFly community meetings on our YouTube channel. 
  • Keep an eye out for new articles and stories on our Medium page.

To receive quarterly updates on PatternFly changes and plans, sign up for the mailing list to subscribe to our newsletter. 

Log in to see this content or request an account on Slack