Part of my approach was to make use of global Swatches for each “Theme”. This is a fantastic way to prototype with a large amount of elements, designs, and color combinations — while instantly seeing how tweaks to a color propagate throughout.

For designing a theme that’s meant to be used in a product or application or illustration, etc, it’s also useful to consider the proportions — the distribution — of each color with respect to the others. And flat colors are just the beginning: The swatches of a theme are also the building blocks of sexy gradients, which can be explored right alongside the palette itself.

Using global Swatches allows for an exploration like this to really become more of a template — where applying an entirely different theme is rather straightforward.