Resources for the Nonprofit: the Salesforce Lightning Design System

I’m often asked by new(er) Nonprofit Admins for advice on how to begin to wrap their arms around their new role, and one of my recurring answers is: “Know your resources.” Welcome to our “Resources for the Nonprofit” series, where we go into a deep dive on just one of the resources every Salesforce Admin needs to rock their role and thrive!

Designing Everything

Lately it seems “design” is everywhere.  In recent months the Salesforce UX and Strategy Designer certifications have become staples of the certification game, and most events feature at a few presentations on the topic.  As a longtime fan of design principles and in particular the interface of good design and the user experience on a larger scale (think: walkable cities), I’ve applauded this development. 

“Good Design is ninety-nine percent invisible.” – Buckminster Fuller 

I have always loved how Salesforce is just a fundamentally better designed system than its primary competitors.  Especially with Lightning; there are some valid complaints about its speed, and there were many years that went by until we had feature parity… but it’s always looked a whole lot better than Classic, or dare I say Oracle, or for the nonprofit folks, Raiser’s Edge. 

I have a dirty secret to share, though.  A sinner’s confession, if you will. 

One of the hardest things about being a consultant is coming to grips with the reality that you rarely get to do what I call the “final 5%.”  Typically due to budgetary constraints or timeline pressures, you certainly complete all the functional requirements and you also get a lot of great design, but you rarely get to see through all your dreams about tuning the interface to perfection.  Mostly, this is because as someone outside of the organization you can only know so much about the social psychology of your users.  This tends to be work for the Admin to complete, and so I’m here to share with you one of my favorite resources: the SLDS.

What is the SLDS?

The Salesforce Lightning Design System, or SLDS, is a set of assets provided – TO YOU – by Salesforce to help you make your apps and pages more beautiful and functional.  It helps you carry consistent design throughout your configuration, which helps users more quickly understand the interface and get done what they came to Salesforce to do.  

I suspect the SLDS probably began life mostly as assets for Visualforce pages, but over time it has grown to include things like Guidelines for Accessibility, a deep dive into how Salesforce uses color, and the principles behind Salesforce Iconography.  This is all delightfully nerdy fun, but probably best of all in includes a library of Icons you can download and use in your apps!  

Using the SLDS

Have you ever spent WAY TOO LONG staring at this thing?  

It’s the eternal Salesforce conundrum – what Icon to pick for your new tab when all the good ones are taken?  If you’ve ever tried to make your own, downloading some random icon from the internet can be very disappointing.  It just doesn’t look like it… goes.  

Then are the special places where you can load up icons, but Salesforce wants an SVG file (say with Life Events in the new Nonprofit Cloud) and you’re over here thinking… what’s an SVG file? 

Maybe you just want to “spice up your Salesforce org” with some icons, like in this classic banger of Salesforce Ben a post from 2021, but you want something a bit more sophisticated than the Graphics pack?

Never fear, the SLDS icon library is here to save the day!  Packed full of elegant icons for utilities, actions, document types, and more, all yours for the taking.  

Yes, It’s For You

It’s worth mentioning that the majority of the materials on the SLDS site are, well developer-y.  But please don’t let that put you off.  

I will freely admit that a lot of this stuff runs right over my head (what’s Figma?), but the bits that I can use are priceless, so this counts as one of my favorite resources for Admins. They can take you from that “pretty good interface” to that “so good it’s 99% invisible” stage with just a download.

Your Turn

Have you ever used the SLDS?  Tell me all about it!  You can share in the comments or on socials – tag @crmnavigators to join the conversation.