design-md — 74 brand design-system references
A curated set of DESIGN.md files distilled from well-known brand websites. Each one
captures a real design system in AI-readable form: color palette with semantic roles,
typography hierarchy, component rules, layout principles, and depth / elevation. Hand
one to a coding agent and it can generate UI that matches that brand's look.
Source content: voltagent/awesome-design-md (MIT). This skill is a thin index + workflow layer over that library.
When to use this skill
- The user asks for UI / a landing page / a component in a named brand's style ("like Linear", "make it feel like Stripe", "give it an Apple vibe").
- You need to pick a design direction from real systems instead of inventing one.
- You want a concrete set of design tokens (colors / type scale / component rules) as a
starting point before handing off to
frontend-design/tailwind-design-system.
Workflow
- Pick a brand — scan the index below by mood + primary color and choose the closest match to the brief.
- Load its DESIGN.md — read
<library>/design-md/<brand>/DESIGN.md, using the slug from the index (e.g.linear.app,x.ai,bmw-m). - Follow it — treat the color roles, type scale, components, and elevation as a
hard spec. For a visual reference, open the sibling
preview.html/preview-dark.html. - (optional) Hand off to
frontend-design→tailwind-design-system→shadcn→design-reviewto turn the direction into production components.
Locating the library (<library>)
<library> is a local clone of the awesome-design-md repo. Resolve it in order:
The
DESIGN_MD_DIRenvironment variable, if set.Common locations:
~/Developer/awesome-design-md,~/dev/awesome-design-md,~/awesome-design-md, or anawesome-design-md/folder in the current project.If none exist, clone one (shallow is fine):
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/voltagent/awesome-design-md.git ~/Developer/awesome-design-md
Brand files always live at <library>/design-md/<brand>/DESIGN.md.
The index below (primary color + one-liner) is enough to pick a direction on its own. Read the full DESIGN.md only when you need the complete token detail.
The 74 brands (primary color + one-liner)
AI & LLM
- claude
#cc785c— Warm cream canvas, coral CTAs, serif display; humanist where most AI brands go cool blue. - x.ai
#ffffff— Near-black canvas broken only by white pill outlines; minimal, cold frontier-AI. - cohere
#17171c— Enterprise AI: white editorial space, deep green-black product bands, mineral surfaces, rounded media cards. - mistral.ai
#fa520f— Signature sunset gradients (mustard / orange / deep red) over mountain photography. - minimax
#0a0a0a— Black-pill CTAs on stark white marketing, paired with vivid gradient product surfaces. - together.ai
#000000— AI infra: near-black hero bands with a three-color orange-magenta gradient. - replicate
#ea2804— Warm-cream indie ML-playground aesthetic with a confident hot-orange accent. - runwayml
#000000— Cinematic reel: dark, editorial, full-bleed video is the UI. - elevenlabs
#292524— Voice AI that reads like a quiet editorial print magazine. - ollama
#000000— Defiantly minimal; the home page looks like a Markdown README. - composio
#0007cd— AI-agent tooling: dark, technical, a single deep-electric-blue voltage. - voltagent
#00d992— Dev-focused AI agent platform: relentless near-black + one neon green. - lovable
#f7f4ed— Warmth through restraint on a soft cream canvas (AI app builder).
Developer tools & platforms
- cursor
#f54e00— AI code editor with a warm-cream editorial canvas instead of the usual dark IDE, plus warm orange. - vercel
#171717— Black-and-ink duet on near-white, blown open at hero scale by a multi-color mesh gradient. - linear.app
#5e6ad2— The deepest near-black canvas in the set + a single lavender-blue accent; software-craft luxury. - framer
#ffffff— Pure-black artboard, GT Walsheim white type with aggressive negative tracking. - webflow
#080808— Visual web builder: deep near-black against a generous white canvas. - figma
#000000— Black-and-white editorial frame interrupted by oversized hand-cut pastel color blocks. - warp
#f7f5f0— Agentic terminal on a warm near-charcoal canvas (a tint warmer than pure black). - raycast
#ffffff— Marketing site that reads like one extended product screenshot. - opencode.ai
#201d1d— Terminal-native: the entire page set in Berkeley Mono. - expo
#000000— React Native platform styled as a quietly-confident infrastructure brand. - sentry
#150f23— Deep purple-violet midnight canvas, electric-lime accents, slightly subversive illustration. - posthog
#f7a501— Playful warm-cream canvas with hand-drawn hedgehog mascots as marginalia. - hashicorp
#000000— Near-black ground with per-product accents (Terraform purple, Vault yellow, Consul pink). - sanity
#0b0b0b— A nocturnal command center: dark, precise, deeply structured dev-content platform. - mintlify
#0a0a0a— Docs infra: atmospheric sky-gradient marketing heroes + clean white docs, dual-mode. - supabase
#3ecf8e— Open-source database: clean white / near-black with a single signature emerald CTA. - mongodb
#00ed64— Dark deep-teal hero bands with bright MongoDB-green CTAs + stark white docs. - clickhouse
#faff69— High-performance database on near-pure black with electric-yellow voltage. - ibm
#0f62fe— Faithful to Carbon: white surfaces, IBM Blue accent, deliberately flat-square aesthetic. - resend
#fcfdff— Near-pure black canvas, off-white text, a deep editorial-serif Domaine headline mark (dev email). - clay
#0a0a0a— Claymation-meets-data for a GTM orchestration platform; vibrant and playful.
Productivity & collaboration SaaS
- notion
#5645d4— All-in-one workspace: deep-navy hero band decorated with brand illustration. - miro
#1c1c1e— AI visual workspace anchored by a canary-yellow wordmark; confident, a little playful. - airtable
#181d26— Sober editorial workflow software with full-bleed signature cards (coral / dark green / peach). - cal
#111111— Calendar-software-first: white canvas, black primary CTAs, custom Cal Sans display. - slack
#4a154b— Deep aubergine primary, cream-lavender hero gradients, blue inline links. - intercom
#111111— Customer-service editorial: soft cream-white, Saans type, a single confident Fin blue. - zapier
#ff4f00— Workflow automation: warm-cream neutrals with a deep-orange accent. - superhuman
#1b1938— Fast email split between a deep-indigo editorial hero and a violet-sky atmosphere.
Finance & crypto
- stripe
#533afd— Deep-navy ink, electric-indigo primary, and a recurring atmospheric mesh gradient. - coinbase
#0052ff— Institutional-grade exchange styled as a quietly-confident financial-services brand. - binance
#fcd535— Deep near-black canvas with the iconic Binance yellow on every CTA. - kraken
#7132f5— Clean, trustworthy crypto exchange with commanding purple on white. - revolut
#494fdf— Stark black canvas, cobalt-violet brand, a wide palette of saturated product colors. - wise
#9fe870— Global money transfer: unusually heavy near-black display type (900 @ 64–126px) + bright green. - mastercard
#eb001b— Warm editorial magazine built from soft stone and signal orange-red.
E-commerce, consumer & mobility
- airbnb
#ff385c— Warm marketplace: clean white canvas + Airbnb Rausch coral as the single voltage. - shopify
#000000— Cinematic commerce platform running two parallel design tracks. - nike
#111111— Photography-first commerce with towering uppercase Futura burned into campaign imagery. - pinterest
#e60023— Photography-first discovery: Pinterest-red CTA, masonry pin grid, soft warm-cream chrome. - starbucks
#006241— Warm retail flagship wearing storefront-apron green across every surface. - uber
#000000— Transportation super-app: black-and-white duet framed by a custom geometric display. - meta
#0064e0— Hardware commerce (Quest, Ray-Ban Meta) + brand surfaces with a product-merchandising voice.
Media & entertainment
- apple
#0066cc— Photography-first interface that turns marketing into a museum gallery. - spotify
#1ed760— Near-black immersive player where album art is the color, plus Spotify green. - theverge
#3cffd0— A Condé Nast magazine wired to a chiptune soundboard; neon. - wired
#000000— Flagship tech magazine: strict black wordmark on white, editorial duet. - playstation
#0070d1— Black / white / PlayStation-blue chapters scrolling like a console launch trailer.
Automotive
- tesla
#3e6ae1— Radical subtraction: the product is everything, a single electric blue. - ferrari
#da291c— Luxury supercar brand rendered as cinematic editorial. - bmw
#1c69d4— Measured, settled corporate-automotive (distinct from BMW M's bombast). - bmw-m
#ffffff— Motorsport engineering: near-black canvas, white BMW Type Next in confident uppercase. - lamborghini
#ffc000— A cathedral of darkness: jet-black stage, the machine under a spotlight. - bugatti
#ffffff— Austere luxury: near-pure black, white letterspaced uppercase, full-bleed photography. - renault
#ffed00— The 2021 flat-line diamond mark, stark black-and-white, signature Sunlight Yellow.
Enterprise, hardware, telecom & aerospace
- hp
#024ad8— White-paper enterprise-consumer system with HP Electric Blue as the lone signal CTA. - nvidia
#76b900— Engineering-grade: black hero / paper-white body dual mode + NVIDIA green. - vodafone
#e60000— Telecom super-brand: editorial photography heroes with massive uppercase display. - spacex
#000000— Mission-oriented aerospace: pure black with full-bleed rocket / Mars video heroes.
Retro (90s–00s)
- dell-1996
#e91d2a— Catalog-era enterprise web: literal black page frame + flat color-block ribbon cards. - nintendo-2001
#e60012— Brushed-periwinkle "console chrome" where every panel is a beveled metal plate.
Picking hints
- Warm / humanist: claude, cursor, warp, posthog, lovable, zapier, pinterest, starbucks, mastercard
- Dark / high-contrast tech: linear.app, vercel, x.ai, sanity, clickhouse, spacex, resend, together.ai
- Minimal / product-first: tesla, apple, bugatti, raycast, ollama, uber
- Single bold accent: supabase (green), stripe (indigo), binance (yellow), airbnb (coral), kraken (purple), spotify (green)
- Editorial / magazine: elevenlabs, wired, theverge, ferrari, mastercard, cohere
- Racing / luxury black: lamborghini, bmw-m, ferrari, bugatti
When unsure about color, don't invent a palette — copy the semantic color roles straight from the chosen brand's DESIGN.md.