4 min read
Design Taste
Kevin's design taste is operational: visual specificity, token-first systems, motion restraint, fast-feeling interactions, and rendered proof instead of generic AI UI.
Open this page for product, UI, website, portfolio, demo, dashboard, or frontend work where Kevin's preferences should affect the result. Use Design System Map for the design category map and Sigil Building for the specific Sigil/Reticle project context.
Taste Defaults
| Preference | Operational meaning |
|---|---|
| Specific over generic | Avoid stock SaaS layouts, undifferentiated gradients, vague cards, and AI-generated sameness. |
| System over vibes | Use tokens, components, constraints, and DESIGN.md-style specs when visual choices should persist. |
| AI product representation, not AI gloss | Use AI to build scalable product imagery, but preserve exact product identity and constrain outputs through references, material/lighting/camera direction, reusable studios, and a rejection pass for generic AI artifacts. |
| Fast-feeling UI | Interactions should feel resolved in about 100ms; loading states should preserve perceived control. |
| Dense but readable | Operational tools should scan well; marketing composition should not invade dashboards. |
| Fewer colors | Primary UI should use at most three colors unless the project system justifies more. |
| No visible scrollbars | Preserve clean surfaces and hide scrollbars without breaking scroll. |
| Short copy | Active voice, short labels, minimal tooltips, no product tours. |
| Proof | Check real rendering, responsive behavior, hover/focus states, text fit, and accessibility. |
Current Design Anchors
- Sigil UI: opinionated design language and token-driven React components.
- Reticle Design System: structural grammar with rails, frames, hatching, bands, and dense operational panels.
- PortfolioMon Showdown: gamified portfolio surface and proof of non-generic identity work.
- Princeton Tower Defense and PawPointClicker: game UI and campus-specific product taste.
- Design System Map: current router for design articles, references, systems, and proof workflow.
Agent Use
Load design skills before building UI. A clean page can still be wrong if it has no point of view. For high-stakes UI, verify with screenshots or browser inspection and use design-review skills rather than relying on static code inspection.
Design Rounds
- Report three finished picks per question, in the judges' order, each with its idea in one line and in every format the piece ships in. Give the full sheet as one path. When Kevin asks for volume, draw many and still report three. Source: gt-cloud/design-round-three-picks.md, 2026-10-30
- Keep every exploration round live as a frozen snapshot with its own route, and keep one page that shows all rounds side by side. Source: gt-cloud/act-on-feedback-now.md, 2026-10-19
- Take qualities from a reference, such as scale, crop, restraint and material. Its layout and signature devices stay out. Brief agents with a list of banned devices and a "closest reference, and why it is not a copy" test. Source: gt-cloud/references-are-not-templates.md, 2026-10-28
- When Kevin criticizes a round, keep its look and change only what he named. A restart from abstract concepts read as silly to him. Source: gt-cloud/references-are-not-templates.md, 2026-10-28
- AI judges reward rule compliance and small-size legibility, and Kevin judges energy, intent and beauty at full size. Anchor every judge on his past picks and rejects, ask whether a candidate would sit beside the ones he kept, and invent no guards he did not state. Judge 16 and 32 px as a separate cut. Source: gt-cloud/marks-judge-calibration.md, 2026-10-28
- A picture of a person passes first when that person would be glad to see it. Brand texture such as dither goes on the ground and frame around a face, and the face stays clean. Judge faces by eye at full size and at 2x, because coverage metrics passed on faces that looked bad. Source: gt-cloud/people-pictures-rule.md, 2026-10-26
Timeline
- 2026-10-30 | Added Design Rounds: three finished picks, live rounds, references as qualities, judges anchored on Kevin's picks, and pictures of people, moved from Claude memory. Source: memory notes cited inline, 2026-10-30
- 2026-07-13 | Added Kevin's preference for AI-generated product representations when they are controlled by product invariants and a reusable photographic system, with Kive as the current reference and anti-slop prompting as a required quality gate. private page
- 2026-07-01 | Refreshed design taste against the new design system map and current Sigil/Reticle/project evidence. Source: User request, 2026-07-01; Design System Map
- 2026-05-31 | Design taste documented from USER and career-profile. Source: public wiki expansion, 2026-05-31