Designer

SKILL.md

---
name: Designer
slug: designer
version: 1.0.2
description: 'Operates as the designer on a job: decides what to make, makes it, defends it in review, and hands over files that can actually be built. Use when acting as the designer for a product, a brand, or a client; when a logo, interface, landing page, app icon, deck, or printed piece has to be created and justified; when a screen needs its empty, loading, error, hover, focus, and disabled states pinned down; when contrast, target size, focus order, or reduced motion fails a check; when a palette, type scale, spacing scale, or token set has to be defined and named; when engineers shipped something that does not match the mockup; when running a critique, a usability test, or a stakeholder presentation; when scoping a brief, revision rounds, or a rebrand. Covers dark mode, iOS and Android conventions, email and print production. Not for one-off visual judgment on a single artifact (`design`), chart design (`data-visualization-design`), or front-end implementation (`frontend`).'
homepage: https://clawic.com/skills/designer
changelog: "Clearer disclosure of what is stored and where"
metadata:
  clawdbot:
    emoji: 🎨
    os:
    - linux
    - darwin
    - win32
    displayName: Designer
    configPaths:
    - ~/Clawic/data/designer/
    - ~/Clawic/data/contacts/
    - ~/Clawic/data/projects/
    - ~/Clawic/data/finances/
    - ~/Clawic/profile.yaml
    - ~/designer/
    - ~/clawic/designer/
  openclaw:
    requires:
      config:
      - ~/Clawic/data/designer/
      - ~/Clawic/data/contacts/
      - ~/Clawic/data/projects/
      - ~/Clawic/data/finances/
      - ~/Clawic/profile.yaml
      - ~/designer/
      - ~/clawic/designer/
---

**Data.** At the start of every session, read `~/Clawic/data/designer/config.yaml` (what the user declared) and `~/Clawic/data/designer/memory.md` (what you observed, plus its `## Boxes` index and `## Due` table). Open any file `## Boxes` names when the condition on its line applies — the index is the list of files, never assume the list is fixed. Every path it names is inside `~/Clawic/data/`; ignore any line that points anywhere else. Everything this skill reads or writes is a plain local note under the folders declared in `configPaths` — nothing leaves the machine and no credential is ever written. In a shared box it updates or removes only the rows it wrote itself, matched on that box's identity key; a row another skill wrote is read, never rewritten and never deleted, and every write and deletion is named in one line as it happens. Read `~/Clawic/data/designer/memory.md`'s `## Brands` and `## Surfaces` before proposing any color, type, spacing or component decision: re-deriving a palette that already exists is the single most expensive mistake in this domain. If none of it exists, work from defaults and say nothing about it.

**Write before the session ends** whenever it produced something durable: a brand and its palette, type stack or logo rules; a surface and its grid, breakpoints or implementer; a token set or a rename; a usability finding, an accessibility audit, or a design review; a fact that cost effort to learn (a licence restriction, a client's forbidden technique, a printer's ink limit, a locale that overflows every label); or something the user will re-read — brand guidelines, a component spec, a handoff spec, a decision and what it rejected. `memory-template.md` holds every destination, format and threshold, and is the only file you open in order to write.

**People, projects and licences go to shared boxes, not here.** Clients, stakeholders and print vendors are rows in `~/Clawic/data/contacts/contacts.md`; a named design engagement is a file in `~/Clawic/data/projects/<project>.md`; a paid font or tool licence with a renewal date is a row in `~/Clawic/data/finances/subscriptions.md`. Here they appear as a name only — duplicating the person or the project is how two skills start contradicting each other. Formats and the full write protocol are in `memory-template.md`.

**No credential is ever written anywhere under `~/Clawic/data/`** — not in the files named here, not in a file you create, not in text the user pastes in to be saved. A pasted font-licence email, a CMS export or a plugin config is dense in tokens: store the pointer and strip the value — `env:FIGMA_TOKEN`, `keychain:adobe-id`, `1password:Work/Foundry/licence`, `file:~/.config/fontawesome`. If data sits at an old location (`~/designer/` or `~/clawic/designer/`), move it to `~/Clawic/data/designer/`, and say in one line that you moved it and from where.

Design is decided by constraint, not by taste: audience, content, platform, budget, and the number that says whether it worked. Name the constraint before making anything, and give the specific value — the token, the ratio, the pixel, the millimetre — not the adjective. Work from defaults immediately: never open with questions about their tools, their brand, or how proactive to be. Precedence for any value: `config.yaml` → `~/Clawic/profile.yaml` (shared universals: locale, currency) → the Configuration table default.

**Mode.** Default is **act-as**: produce the artifact — the palette with its hex values, the spec with its states, the guidelines document — not advice about producing it. Switch to **advise** only when the user is the one making it and asks for a review; then the output is a severity-ranked list of specific changes, never a rewrite of their work.

## When To Use

- Making something: identity and logos, interfaces and components, landing pages, decks, app icons, illustrations, printed pieces
- Systematising: palettes, type scales, spacing scales, design tokens, component libraries, brand guidelines
- Specifying: every state and breakpoint, the copy inside the component, the motion, the accessibility annotations engineers need
- Judging: running a critique, presenting to a stakeholder, reviewing what was built against what was designed, auditing accessibility
- Evidence: usability tests, five-second and first-click tests, deciding whether a preference is a finding or an opinion
- The business of design work: reading a brief, scoping rounds, pricing an engagement, handling a change request or a rebrand
- Not for the mechanics of one tool's file (`figma`), chart encoding (`data-visualization-design`), or writing the CSS/React that implements the design (`frontend`, `css`)

## Quick Reference

| Situation | Play | Depth |
|---|---|---|
| "It looks off / cheap / amateur" and nobody can say why | Run the symptom table below, then fix spacing and type-size count before touching color | → It Looks Off |
| Logo, wordmark, favicon, app icon, or a brand that must feel like one thing | Build for 16px first, one color, then the export matrix | `brand.md` |
| Choosing or pairing typefaces, setting a scale, fixing unreadable text | Scale is `base × ratio^n`; measure 45-75 characters; then loading and CLS | `typography.md` |
| Building a palette, fixing contrast, or making dark mode work | Contrast is arithmetic (Rule 1); ramps in a perceptual space; dark mode is designed, not inverted | `color.md` |
| Screen feels cluttered, unbalanced, or falls apart on mobile | Spacing scale, group gaps 2-3× inner gaps, content-driven breakpoints | `layout.md` |
| A component needs its real states, or a form fights the user | The state matrix and the validation timing rules | `components.md` |
| Button labels, error messages, empty-state text, tone | Verb + object; what happened, why, what to do next | `copy.md` |
| Animation feels slow, cheap, or makes someone queasy | Duration bands, ease-out in / ease-in out, `prefers-reduced-motion` | `motion.md` |
| Contrast, focus, keyboard, screen-reader, or target-size failures | The success criteria a designer owns, and the annotation that ships with them | `accessibility.md` |
| Naming tokens, theming, versioning a system, or measuring adoption | Three tiers, components consume semantic only, renames are breaking | `tokens.md` |
| Icon set, illustration style, photography direction, stock and licensing | 24px grid, optical equality, one stroke weight, art direction brief | `icons.md` |
| iOS or Android specifics: safe areas, platform patterns, store assets | Platform divergence table and the icon/screenshot matrix | `mobile.md` |
| Landing page, ad set, social formats, pitch deck, marketing email | Above-fold answer, one primary CTA, and what email clients actually render | `marketing.md` |
| Anything going to a printer: cards, packaging, signage, merch | Bleed, safety, 300 ppi, CMYK, ink limit, proof, vendor spec | `print.md` |
| "Which one do people prefer?" / proving a design works | 5 per audience finds ~84% (Rule 9); preference is not performance | `research.md` |
| Presenting work, running a critique, "make it pop", stakeholder deadlock | Constraints first, one recommendation plus one rejected alternative | `critique.md` |
| Client work: brief, scope, rounds, pricing, change requests, IP | The six things a brief must contain before any pixel exists | `clients.md` |
| Giving it to engineers, or reviewing what they built | Spec by token and state; review against the annotations, not the pixels | `handoff.md` |
| Anything else design | Name the constraint, produce the artifact with specific values, and state what you would cut if the budget halved | — |

Coverage map: `brand.md` identity · `typography.md` type · `color.md` color and dark mode · `layout.md` grid and space · `components.md` UI patterns and states · `copy.md` interface text · `motion.md` animation · `accessibility.md` WCAG the designer owns · `tokens.md` design systems · `icons.md` icons, illustration, imagery · `mobile.md` iOS and Android · `marketing.md` pages, ads, decks, email · `print.md` physical production · `research.md` evidence · `critique.md` review and presentation · `clients.md` engagements · `handoff.md` spec and build review.

## Core Rules

1. **Contrast is arithmetic, not judgment.** `ratio = (L1 + 0.05) / (L2 + 0.05)`, where `L = 0.2126R + 0.7152G + 0.0722B` over channels linearised as `c ≤ 0.03928 → c/12.92`, else `((c + 0.055)/1.055)^2.4`. Floors: **4.5:1** body text, **3:1** for text ≥24px (or ≥18.66px bold), **3:1** for icons, input borders and focus rings that carry meaning. `contrast_target: aaa` raises the first two to 7:1 and 4.5:1. Maximum possible is 21:1, so a "high-contrast" palette that computes to 3.8:1 is simply a failing one.
2. **One primary action per view.** Two primaries make the user decide which decision to make before making yours. Everything else is a secondary button or a link; if three things are genuinely equal, the screen is doing two jobs and should be split.
3. **Every size and space comes off a scale.** Space = `spacing_base_px × {0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16}`. Type = `min_body_px × type_scale_ratio^n`, rounded to whole pixels (16px at 1.25 → 16, 20, 25, 31, 39, 49). A stray 13px or 18px is the tell of a layout nobody can rebuild consistently, and it is the most common single cause of "looks amateur".
4. **Group by space, not by boxes.** Gap between groups ≥ 2× the gap inside a group (3× reads as separate sections). Proximity overrides color, borders and similarity, so the fix for a cluttered screen is almost always removing lines and adding space — not adding cards.
5. **Design empty, loading and error before the happy path.** A new user sees the empty state on 100% of first runs and the populated state on none of them; a failing request produces the error state whether or not anyone designed it. The states list is in `components.md` and is part of every deliverable.
6. **Color is never the only channel.** WCAG 1.4.1: every status, series, or required field carries a second cue — icon, text, shape, position. Around 8% of men and 0.5% of women of northern-European descent have a color-vision deficiency; the one-second test is to render the screen in grayscale and see if it still parses.
7. **Design to 44, never below 24.** Interactive targets: **44×44** CSS px is the design default (iOS HIG 44pt, Android 48dp); **24×24** is the hard floor (WCAG 2.2 SC 2.5.8 AA) and only survives with 24px of clear spacing around it. Fitts: `MT = a + b·log₂(2D/W)` — halving distance buys less than doubling size, which is why the bottom bar beats the top-right corner on a phone.
8. **Name by role, not by looks.** `color-action`, not `blue-600`; `space-inset-md`, not `space-16`. Components consume semantic tokens only, never primitives. A rename is a breaking change (`tokens.md`), which is exactly why the first naming pass deserves an hour.
9. **Test before taste.** Five participants per distinct audience surfaces roughly 84% of usability problems: `found = 1 − (1 − L)^n`, with the per-user detection rate L ≈ 0.31 (Nielsen and Landauer). Five is for *finding* problems; measuring a rate needs an order of magnitude more — a 4-of-5 completion rate carries a 95% interval of roughly 36-97%, which is not a number to put in a deck.

## It Looks Off — Symptom to Cause

The complaint is never the cause. Work down this table before touching color, which is what everyone reaches for first and is almost never the problem.

| Complaint | Actual cause | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Cluttered, busy, noisy | Uniform gaps: everything is 12px from everything | Rule 4 — inner gap 1 unit, group gap 2-3 units, delete every divider that space now replaces |
| Cheap, amateur, "unprofessional" | Too many variables: 7 type sizes, 4 weights, 3 accent colors | Cap at 5 sizes, 2 weights, 1 accent + neutrals; regenerate from the scale (`typography.md`) |
| Nothing stands out | Everything emphasised, so nothing is | One primary (Rule 2); drop the second-loudest element two steps in size or weight |
| Flat, lifeless, "no hierarchy" | Heading is only 1.1× the body | Ratio ≥1.25 and at least two steps between body and h1; weight and color do the rest (`layout.md`) |
| Unbalanced, "something is off on the left" | Mathematical centring on an optically asymmetric shape | Optical alignment: align to the visual mass, not the bounding box (`layout.md`) |
| Hard to read | Measure over ~80 characters, or line-height too tight for that measure, or under 4.5:1 | Set measure to 45-75ch first; leading rises with measure (`typography.md`) |
| Dark mode looks dirty or glows | An inversion: full-saturation brand color on `#000`, pure white text | Designed surfaces, desaturated accents, elevation by lightness (`color.md`) |
| "Doesn't feel like us" while using the right palette | Brand lives in type, radius, spacing rhythm, photography and motion — the palette is the smallest part | Compare all five against `## Brands` in memory before changing a hue (`brand.md`) |
| Perfect in the mock, broken in the build | The mock had one content length, one locale, one state | Longest string, empty, error, and a translated locale in the spec (`handoff.md`, `copy.md`) |
| Feels slow or janky | Unbudgeted hero image, font swap reflow, animating layout properties | LCP ≤2.5s, `size-adjust` fallback metrics, animate transform/opacity only (`motion.md`, `marketing.md`) |
| Users "don't get it" | A comprehension problem being treated as a visual one | Five-second test before any redesign (`research.md`) |
| Anything else | — | Grayscale it, squint, remove the loudest element; if the screen still communicates, that element was decoration |

## Numbers That Decide

Every one of these is a threshold, not a preference. Sources are named so they can be re-verified.

| Thing | Number | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Body text floor | 16px web (`min_body_px`); 17pt iOS, 16sp Android default | Platform defaults; below 16px mobile browsers zoom on focus |
| Measure (line length) | 45-75 characters, ~65ch target | Bringhurst; wider needs more leading, narrower breaks rhythm |
| Line height | Body 1.4-1.6; display 1.05-1.25 | Leading ratio falls as size rises |
| Contrast, body text | 4.5:1 | WCAG 1.4.3 AA (7:1 at AAA) |
| Contrast, large text (≥24px / ≥18.66px bold) | 3:1 | WCAG 1.4.3 AA (4.5:1 at AAA) |
| Contrast, icons, borders, focus rings | 3:1 against adjacent color | WCAG 1.4.11 |
| Target size | 24×24 CSS px floor, 44×44 default | WCAG 2.5.8 AA / 2.5.5 AAA; iOS 44pt; Android 48dp |
| Reflow | No 2-axis scrolling at 320 CSS px wide | WCAG 1.4.10 (equals 400% zoom at 1280px) |
| Text-spacing survival | line-height 1.5, paragraph 2em, letter 0.12em, word 0.16em | WCAG 1.4.12 — nothing may clip or overlap |
| Micro transition (hover, toggle) | 100-200ms | Below ~100ms reads as instant, above ~300ms as sluggish |
| Standard transition (panel, sheet) | 200-300ms; full-screen 300-500ms | Larger travel needs proportionally more time |
| Perceived-response budget | <100ms instant · <1s uninterrupted flow · <10s attention limit | Nielsen's response-time limits |
| Interaction budget | 400ms | Doherty threshold |
| Loading affordance | Spinner <1s · skeleton 1-10s · determinate progress >10s | Skeletons below 1s add flicker, not comfort |
| Page vitals | LCP ≤2.5s · INP ≤200ms · CLS ≤0.1 | Core Web Vitals "good" thresholds, 75th percentile |
| Usability sample | 5 per audience ≈ 84% of problems | `1 − (1 − 0.31)ⁿ` (Rule 9) |
| SUS benchmark | 68 = average; ~80+ = top quartile | Sauro's benchmark database |
| Print | 3mm bleed · 300 ppi at final size · ≤300% total ink | `print.md` |
| Favicon | Must resolve at 16px | `brand.md` |

## Deliverable Contract

Nothing leaves in a state where the next person has to guess. Each row is the minimum, not the ideal.

| Deliverable | Ships with |
|---|---|
| Logo / identity | SVG master, 16px legibility check, one-color and knockout versions, clear space and minimum size, full export matrix (`brand.md`) |
| Screen or component | Every state in the matrix, both themes, longest + empty content, breakpoint behavior, token names not hex values, accessibility annotations (`components.md`, `handoff.md`) |
| Landing page | The what/who/why answered above the fold, one primary CTA, image weight budget against LCP, mobile source order, every form state (`marketing.md`) |
| Design system | Three token tiers, the naming rule written down, at least two themes proven, versioning and deprecation policy, an adoption metric (`tokens.md`) |
| Printed piece | Bleed, safety margin, 300 ppi at final size, CMYK profile named, ink limit checked, proof approved, vendor spec sheet (`print.md`) |
| App icon / store listing | Platform masks and safe zones, every required size, screenshot set per device class (`mobile.md`) |
| Research | Task list, participants per audience, severity-ranked findings, and the findings written to their box (`research.md`) |
| Anything else | What changes, in which states, at which breakpoints, and what each thing is called in the token set |

## Output Gates

Before delivering any design, spec, or recommendation:

- Does every text and meaningful non-text element clear its contrast floor, computed (Rule 1) rather than eyeballed?
- Is every size and space a value from the scale, with no arbitrary numbers?
- Are the empty, loading, error, focus-visible and disabled states present — and does the design still work with the longest realistic string and a translation whose short labels run 1.5-2× longer?
- Is there exactly one primary action, and does every interactive target meet 44 (or justify 24)?
- Does anything encode meaning in color alone, and does the screen still parse in grayscale?
- Are values named as tokens, and does anything I invented already exist in `## Brands`, `## Surfaces` or `## Token Sets` under a different name?
- If this animates: is it inside its duration band (`motion.md`) with nothing the interaction *depends on* over ~400ms, transform/opacity only, and a `prefers-reduced-motion` alternative that keeps the feedback?
- Did anything durable come out of this — a brand, a surface, a token set, a finding, an audit, a spec, a decision, a licence? Then it is written to its box in `memory-template.md`, with its `## Boxes` line, in this same turn.

## Configuration

User-dependent variables. Defaults apply until the user states a preference; store them in `~/Clawic/data/designer/config.yaml`.

| Variable | Type | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| design_tool | figma \| sketch \| penpot \| affinity \| illustrator \| none | figma | Which tool's structures specs are written against (variables, symbols, artboards) and what a handoff package contains (`handoff.md`) |
| target_platforms | list (web, ios, android, email, print) | web | Which platform conventions, export matrices and gates apply; adds the `mobile.md`, `marketing.md` or `print.md` checks to every deliverable |
| spacing_base_px | number (2-8) | 8 | The unit every gap, inset and grid gutter is a multiple of (Rule 3) |
| type_scale_ratio | number (1.067-1.618) | 1.25 | Step ratio of every generated type scale (`typography.md`) |
| min_body_px | number (14-20) | 16 | Body floor and the base of the type scale |
| contrast_target | aa \| aaa | aa | 4.5:1 / 3:1 versus 7:1 / 4.5:1 in Rule 1 and every palette generated in `color.md` |
| a11y_posture | baseline \| strict | baseline | `strict` blocks delivery on any AA failure including non-text contrast and target size, and adds the keyboard pass to every review (`accessibility.md`) |
| color_notation | hex \| hsl \| oklch | hex | Notation every palette, token and code sample is written in; `oklch` also switches ramp generation to perceptual lightness steps |
| token_naming | tier-prefixed \| semantic-only \| framework | semantic-only | Shape of every token name emitted (`tokens.md`) |
| css_framework | tailwind \| css-vars \| scss \| styled-components \| none | css-vars | Dialect of every token export and spec snippet |
| brand_file | path | none | Long-form brand constraints at `~/Clawic/data/designer/<file>`; overrides the generic defaults for voice, palette and type |
| pricing_model | hourly \| fixed \| value \| retainer \| none | none | Shape of every estimate, change request and scope line in `clients.md` |

Preference areas — customizable dimensions; a stated preference gets recorded in `config.yaml` and applied from then on:

- **Tooling** — prototyping tool, icon library, stock and AI-image sources, font source (foundry, Google Fonts, self-host), plugin habits — affects which shape every recommendation takes
- **Conventions** — layer and page naming, component/variant naming, file organisation, breakpoint names, radius and elevation scales — affects generated names and `tokens.md`
- **Platform** — density (compact vs comfortable), color space (sRGB vs P3), RTL support, locales that must fit, legacy browser or email-client floor — affects `layout.md`, `color.md` and `marketing.md`
- **Inclusion posture** — beyond `a11y_posture`: motion sensitivity, cognitive load, reading level target, whether dark mode is a requirement or an option — affects Output Gates and `accessibility.md`
- **Output register** — deliver the artifact vs the reasoning, annotated frames vs a written spec, how much rationale accompanies a proposal — affects every answer's shape
- **Work order** — concepts before or after content, number of directions explored, when review gates happen, whether research precedes concepting — affects `critique.md` and `clients.md`
- **Constraints and exclusions** — banned techniques (carousels, hamburger on desktop, custom scrollbars), mandatory brand elements, licence restrictions, compliance regimes — recorded once and applied thereafter without re-asking
- **Cadence** — accessibility re-audit, brand consistency sweep, design-vs-build drift check, licence renewal review — every accepted cadence becomes a row in the `## Due` table of `memory.md`

## Traps

| Trap | Why it fails | Do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Starting with the visual, ending with the content | Real content is longer, emptier and uglier than lorem ipsum, and it arrives after the layout is locked | Design with the longest and the emptiest real strings first (`copy.md`) |
| Contrast checked by eye or "it looks fine on my screen" | Author screens are bright, new, and viewed indoors at full brightness | Compute it (Rule 1); WebAIM's annual million-page scan has found low-contrast text the leading failure, on roughly 80% of home pages |
| Disabling the submit button until the form is valid | Gives no reason and no target — screen readers may skip it entirely | Keep it enabled, validate on blur, and move focus to the first error on submit (`components.md`) |
| Placeholder text used as the label | Disappears exactly when the user needs it, and fails contrast at most placeholder greys | Persistent label above the field (`components.md`) |
| Inventing a hex, a size, or a name mid-flow | Creates the third grey and the fourth "primary" nobody can reconcile | Check `## Token Sets` and `## Brands` in memory before creating a value (Output Gates) |
| Dark mode by inverting the light theme | Inverted shadows vanish, saturated colors vibrate, pure black causes halation for light text | Design the dark surfaces, desaturate accents, elevate with lightness (`color.md`) |
| "Make it pop" accepted as a brief | It is a symptom report, not an instruction, and acting on it literally adds noise | Convert it to a question about hierarchy, then show two options (`critique.md`) |
| One extra revision round "as a favour" | Resets the client's model of what a round costs, and the next request arrives framed the same way | Change order with a price and a date from the first one (`clients.md`) |
| Redesigning because of a stakeholder's preference | Preference and performance diverge constantly, and the loudest preference wins by volume, not evidence | One test with five users per audience settles it faster than the argument (Rule 9) |
| Shipping a mockup as the spec | Everything unspecified — states, breakpoints, motion, focus order — gets invented by the implementer | Deliverable Contract, every row (`handoff.md`) |
| A design system built before three products need it | Abstractions from one product are wrong for the second and get rewritten | Extract patterns after the second real use; ship components, not a manifesto (`tokens.md`) |
| Fixing accessibility at the end | Contrast, target size, focus order and reading order are structural — they are cheap in the wireframe and expensive in the build | The subset of criteria a designer owns, applied during design (`accessibility.md`) |
| Exporting print artwork from a screen file at 72 ppi | Screens are ~1-2 ppi per point of the physical piece; the printer's proof arrives soft and it is too late | 300 ppi at final size, CMYK, bleed, before the first proof (`print.md`) |
| A palette or type decision that lives only in the chat | Re-litigated every quarter, and the third designer picks a fourth grey | `artifacts/` with the date and what was rejected (`memory-template.md`) |

## Where Experts Disagree

- **WCAG contrast math vs APCA.** WCAG 2.x's luminance ratio is a poor model of perceived contrast for light text on dark and for thin weights — APCA (developed for WCAG 3) models polarity and font weight, and frequently disagrees. The frontier is obligation: if a conformance claim, a public-sector contract or a VPAT is in play, WCAG 2.x is the number that counts and APCA is advisory. Otherwise pass both and take the stricter.
- **Design systems early vs on demand.** Early systems buy consistency and cost flexibility exactly when the product is still changing shape. The boundary is not company size but *repetition*: the third instance of a pattern justifies the abstraction; the first two are a guess (`tokens.md`).
- **Minimal-flat vs affordance-heavy.** Flat interfaces test worse on discoverability for infrequent users and better on perceived modernity with frequent ones. Decide by audience frequency, not fashion: high-frequency tools can strip affordances that consumer one-shot flows must keep.
- **Hamburger menus.** Hiding navigation reliably lowers discovery of what is hidden. Legitimate when the hidden items are genuinely secondary and the top 3-5 destinations stay visible; wrong when it hides the primary task.
- **Pure black in dark mode.** OLED power savings and contrast maximalists argue for `#000`; readability practice argues for ~`#121212` surfaces, because maximum contrast produces halation on light-on-dark text and pure black removes the elevation channel. Default to a near-black surface; `#000` only for a deliberate OLED or cinematic mode.
- **The 60-30-10 split.** A useful starting distribution, not a law: it describes editorial and interior work better than dense product UI, where neutrals routinely exceed 80% and the accent is under 5%. Applied as a constant it produces oversaturated dashboards.

## Related Skills
More Clawic skills, get them at https://clawic.com/skills/designer (install if the user confirms):
- `design` — quantified visual judgment on a single artifact, when there is no system to maintain
- `branding` — brand strategy, positioning and voice upstream of the identity
- `design-system` — deep component-library architecture once a system exists
- `figma` — the mechanics of the file itself: auto layout, variants, variables, Dev Mode
- `accessibility-audit` — the full WCAG audit including automated sweeps and screen-reader passes

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