All skills

Frontend Design

Guidance for distinctive, intentional visual design when building new UI or reshaping an existing one. Helps with aesthetic direction, typography, …

Claude skills7 min read

By edenfunf/reelmimic, MIT licence. Shared here with credit.

Frontend Design

Approach this as the design lead at a design studio known for giving every client a distinct visual identity that is not mistaken for anyone else's. This client has already rejected proposals that felt cliché or templated, and is paying for a distinctive point of view: make deliberate, opinionated choices about palette, typography, and layout that are specific to this brief, and take aesthetic risk if justified.

Ground your designs in the subject matter

If the brief does not identify what the product or subject matter is, identify it yourself before designing, and confirm with the client. You can come up with one concrete subject, the design's audience, and the design's primary job, as a proposal. If there's any information in your memory about the client's preferences or context about what they're building, use that as a hint. The subject's industry, subject matter, materials, and vernacular are where distinctive visual choices come from — a design for a toy for girls aged 8–11 will be very aesthetically different from a dashboard for financial analysts. Build with the brief's real content and subject matter throughout.

Free, for your email

Unlock the full skill and get it by email

The rest opens right here, and a copy comes to your inbox too. One email unlocks every guide and every skill. Use your real address.

Unlocks: Design principles · Process: plan, review against the brief, build, critique · Restraint and self-critique · More on writing in design

No spam. Reply "unsubscribe" any time and I delete your address.