Style utilities: how can it revolutionize Drupal Core rendering

After SDC in 2023 for UI Components and the Icon API in 2024, having an API to make Drupal understand and use style utilities is in continuity of making Drupal a design system native CMS.

In design systems, styles may have many names:

• styles
• utilities
• helpers
• fundamentals

Most of the time, a style is a CSS class to apply to any element but it can be applied with other ways.

There are multiple contrib modules allowing to declare and apply classes, for examples:

• Style Options
• Block Style Plugins
• Layout Builder Styles
• UI Styles

Some have chosen to declare styles with code, others in config. Some covers specific usage: Block only, Layout Builder only, etc. The ecosystem is fragmented and a lot of efforts are duplicated to cover the different usages.

This is the occasion for improvements for frontend developers, backend developers and site builders:

• frontend developers will be able to declare the styles they provide and document how to use it
• easier usage in Twig
• a style library to instantly see the styles available
• remove friction, why some styles are available with one contrib module and not with another one. And no more need to enter classes manually
• styles can have a lifecycle and be deprecated