I was making a new brand file in Figma and was about to define all the variables and aliases, paths, all that. Took one look at it and just made the 8 colors I needed and went on with the design.
Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
101–110 of 253 posts
Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
#102So let me get this straight (Pretend I'm 50, a developer since childhood, but I can't CSS to save my life) are there shops where developers, even front end developers, have to talk to designers who are't just sketching an idea for a logo or landing page, but designers who run this Figma thing and maintain the entire products "design" in some "style database"? And the idea is that these designers - who aren't develope…
lol yes. At least in agency world, a common approach in the last X years has been that designers create entire pixel-perfect, component-based sources-of-truth in Figma (which evolve! they aren't delivered static and complete) -- these are also what the client sees and approves, or at the very least they see branded deck slides that incorporate the Figma designs. Anyways, front end then re-implements from Figma into C…
Yah you get this inner platform effect where designers start unwittingly creating their own version of css using Figma and it gets really bespoke really fast.
Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> only it was "Photoshop files hold the (design) truth" before You mean Fireworks. Photoshop was for graphic design. Web designers used Adobe Fireworks. Figma is a successor to Fireworks, not Photoshop.
Sure, and also Illustrator sometimes, and Photoshop at other times. Some of the designers I know (very famous for their ui/web work) never touched vector components and just had a ton of layers in Photoshop and air/paintbrushed everything. Hence the meme...
I've even received designs in PowerPoint
Everyone used whatever they were familiar with regardless of the purpose of the application.
Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
#104Basic web development is completely over, and will be automated end to end, product, ux, design, and the code. I have a complicated nextjs webapp, and I havent had to write front end code in six-nine months now.
If it’s used by < 1000 people, it’s not a complicated app
so like 90% of software?
Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
#105I tried yesterday for about an hour to have Claude design make me a simple logo (just the symbol) and didn’t get anywhere good. I’m sure for certain things like UI it’s great, and so is just Claude code, but this Claude Design thing very much to me feels like a demo and not a product. Maybe one day!
You should try the Arrow SVG model by Quiver, should be much better at that sort of thing since it's made for that.
Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
#106So let me get this straight (Pretend I'm 50, a developer since childhood, but I can't CSS to save my life) are there shops where developers, even front end developers, have to talk to designers who are't just sketching an idea for a logo or landing page, but designers who run this Figma thing and maintain the entire products "design" in some "style database"? And the idea is that these designers - who aren't develope…
Yes, Figma is the de facto standard for how designers hand off a UI design to developers in large (and some small) companies.
It's kind of horrible, but I guess it's better than previous alternatives. But, it's not better than a tool that works with code directly and mostly automates away the tedium or translating a visual design into code. I haven't tried Claude Design, but I know I don't find Figma enjoyable (but I'm not much of a designer...I'm more comfortable with code than with pages and pages of options in a GUI).
Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
#107Figma is going to regret not having sold to Adobe.
Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
#108Oh no. Figma has variables and instances and it's hard to debug bad colors. And here I am with Claude Code... That so far generated a 2000-line CSS file for a 7000-line app consisting of literally three web pages [1]. Where almost every single color, component, class and style is duplicated at least two times. Where custom classes are fighting with Tailwind classes (yes, there's also Tailwind ON TOP of custom CSS) th…
Have had similar dramas with CSS. Opus/Sonnet seem to have far less taste and discipline in writing CSS - constantly they are trying to slam in changes with !important or inline styles rather than think through how to do it properly.
Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iterative experience (experimenting with different ideas, deciding what works best) and speed of execution (once I was happy with it, making it happen required almost no work).
Thats fair. Could you have the same iterative experience with an LLM, but starting with a prebuilt base and iterating from there?
Yes. Even without Claude design and just Claude code, it can use existing design and build out new mockups in-app, which is much easier to demo , tweak and then implement the backend (if any) - all through Claude Code (or Codex if you prefer that). We use both and are now leaning more towards Codex over Claude
Re: Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
#110I miss the days of having a native desktop design app with a perpetual license. What Figma achieved technically in the 2010s was amazing. Coded the app in C++ and then used WASM to deliver it as a multiplayer web app. But now it's trying to be too many things. Why did they ever feel the need to add slides and this other stuff. Their MCP is poor (sure, they'll improve it). The app struggles with larger files and perfo…
> I miss the days of having a native desktop design app with a perpetual license.
You can go that route with Affinity Designer [1], owned by Canva, who partnered with Anthropic on Claude Design [2]:
We’ve loved collaborating with Anthropic over the past couple of years and share a deep focus on making complex things simple. At Canva, our mission has always been to empower the world to design, and that means bringing Canva to wherever ideas begin. We’re excited to build on our collaboration with Claude, making it seamless for people to bring ideas and drafts from Claude Design into Canva, where they instantly become fully editable and collaborative designs ready to refine, share, and publish.
[1]: https://www.affinity.studio
[2]: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-design-anthropic-labs