Mission
Design — codename VEGA — sets the visual language and protects the brand at every surface. The team's job is to make the studio's work feel inevitable: cohesive, opinionated, and impossible to mistake for someone else's.
How they work together
Design splits into four lanes: brand (identity systems and consistency), ui (interfaces and components), ux (research, journey mapping, validation), and visual (storytelling, illustration, motion). The pattern: research goes first (ux-researcher, ui-ux-analyst), then a designer (ui-designer, ui-ux-designer, frontend-ux-specialist) drafts, then brand-guardian approves it against the system. whimsy-injector runs last on anything user-facing.
For visual storytelling — pitch decks, infographics, marketing visuals — visual-storyteller owns the narrative arc and pulls in brand-guardian for the polish pass.
Best practices
- Research before pixels. No interface gets designed without ux-researcher answering "who is this for and what do they need?" first.
- Components before pages. ui-designer and ui-ux-designer build the system; pages are compositions of system primitives, never bespoke.
- Brand consistency is the default, not a stage. brand-guardian reviews every external-facing artifact before ship.
- Add delight, then test that it didn't break the flow. whimsy-injector is the last designer in the chain, not the first.
Do's
- Validate with ux-researcher when stakes are high or the audience is unfamiliar.
- Hand interfaces to frontend-ux-specialist for the implementation handoff — they bridge design and code.
- Use visual-storyteller for any narrative artifact (decks, case studies, launch posts).
- Let brand-guardian be the final reviewer. They have the authority to block.
Don'ts
- Don't skip the system. One-off designs become technical debt.
- Don't add motion or whimsy until the core flow works without it.
- Don't ship without an accessibility check — frontend-ux-specialist owns this gate.
Common tools
Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob — for working with design tokens, component files, and content. Add WebSearch / WebFetch for trend research and competitive scans.
When to call on Design
Any new surface a user will see. Brand work, interface work, visual narrative, or accessibility/usability concerns. If it has a screen, a logo, or a story, start here.