Killing AI Design Slop
20 articles in series
Twenty articles on beating generic AI design — the purple-gradient, Inter-font, four-card median every vibe-coded site ships. How design skills overwrite an agent's default taste before a line of CSS, layer by layer: frontend taste, motion, image and video, AI-product behavior, and the visual feedback loop. Mapped to the curated design skills in the Designs category.
Trust Is a Design Material — and Taste Is Still Yours
Trust is a design material: confidence, citations, transparency, rubrics, guardrails, and handoffs. The series closer — skills set the floor, taste is yours.
System Prompts Are Design: Persona, Tone, Constraints
A system prompt is an interface. Architect it like one — labeled anatomy, important instructions first and last, parameterized templates, and testable constraints.
Designing AI Product Behavior, Not Just Pixels
The next design surface isn't the layout — it's how the product behaves. Context budgeting, turn-taking, generative UI, and frustration repair, in one skill.
Driving Blender and After Effects by Prompt
Direct 3D and motion graphics by prompt. Claude writes the Blender bpy Python and After Effects ExtendScript over MCP while you art-direct the result.
A Video Studio Inside Your Agent
Programmatic video: Claude writes React components, Remotion renders to MP4 — no timeline editor. A heavy kit adds voiceovers, captions and a render-review-fix loop.
Social Graphics as Real Files, Not Flat JPEGs
Build carousels, quote cards and infographics in code so fonts, colors and logos stay correct — exported as crisp PNG/PDF, locked to a reusable weekly template.
AI Images in the Terminal: Creative Direction, Not a Slot Machine
Generate blog headers, thumbnails and mockups without leaving the agent (~$0.04/image), and use a 5-component formula to turn a lazy one-liner into a directed shot.
Generative Backgrounds: Art From Math, Not Stock
Code-driven generative art — flow fields, noise, particles — is unique per render and never looks like stock. The anti-slop move for hero textures.
Brand-in-a-Box: Generating Identity Boards With AI
One-shot identity boards — logo directions, palette, type, mockups — as reference frames you hand to the coding agent for real code.
From Figma to Faithful Code (Without the Riffing)
When a Figma file exists you want faithful translation, not the agent improvising. The Figma MCP bridges design to code that respects your system.
One Token System, Zero One-Off Hex Values
Agents invent a fresh hex per component. A token system generated from one brand color makes consistency automatic instead of accidental.
Auditing Animation: Three Lenses on Motion
A motion auditor blends three conflicting philosophies — restraint, polish, play — weighted to context to catch the tells of generic AI animation.