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Week / Day 2 · Thu Aug 6 / Design systems with AI
Studio · taught

Design systems with AI

Three deliberate choices, then feed the design into the codebase itself.

Open this session's deck →
13:15
start
30m
duration
2
exercises
3
things you leave with
Welcome

Design is not decoration, it is choices: one font pairing, one palette, one layout skeleton. You will generate three genuinely different directions with AI, pick one like a founder, and then do the move most people miss: feed the chosen direction back into Kimi Code so your live product actually adopts it.

You walk out with
✓A style card you chose deliberately
✓A product that looks designed, live
✓The design-to-code reflex
Why this session exists

Products that feel good are chosen on purpose. A design system means every new feature you build this week automatically looks like YOUR product, not a template.

The arc, minute by minute
13:15
Taste: good vs half-good, side by side
13:20
The style card = your design SYSTEM: font pairing, palette, one adjective, one spacing rule
13:27
Generate 3 genuinely different directions, pick one like a founder
13:33
The consistency prompt: apply the system across EVERY screen
13:38
Exercise: style card + consistency prompt, live on your app
Exercises
01
Direction generation
Three directions with names, palettes and feelings. If two look the same, regenerate.
02
The feedback loop
Style card into Kimi Code: 'apply this direction across the app'. Watch your product become yours.
prompt · give this to the room verbatim
My product: [thesis]. My user: [person]. Generate 3 genuinely different visual directions: font pairing, 5-color palette (1 accent + 4 neutrals), and the feeling each gives. Then, for the direction I pick, write the instruction I should give my coding agent to apply it across the whole app.
Tools in play
ClaudeIdeogram or RecraftKimi Code
Materials to prep
Style card templates
The checkpoint · nothing counts unless it is live
By 14:30 the live URL looks designed, and every screen obeys the same system.
The handoff · what the next session assumes
Leave withYour style card: font pairing, palette, adjective, spacing rule
DecidedThe design direction: locked, nobody relitigates it later
Bring nextThe 13:45 build block applies it, then a redeploy so the URL shows the new look
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