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Design guide

Social app design

User content leads; the UI is alive but never competes with it.

Typography
Typeface ·
System humanist sans (SF Pro, Roboto) — fast, familiar
Hero ·
title via weight, ~20–28px
Body ·
15–17px
Numerals ·
Proportional (counts read inline)
Corner personality

Soft → pill — playful, avatars fully round

Pick one and apply it to every card, button, input, and modal. Mixing sharp and round corners is the #1 tell of un-designed UI.

Color

Energetic, warmer accent — appears for likes, mentions, online dots. Still one accent.

Density

Medium, content-led. Avatars and media drive layout; chrome is minimal.

Typography

Names bold, timestamps tiny/tertiary, body readable. Let content lead.

Motion

Pulse (alive) for likes (like-burst), live dots (pulse-beat), new content (stagger-cascade).

Patterns

Feed list, avatar + name + time row, like/comment/share, bottom-sheet composer, story rail.

Avoid in social & community

  • heavy chrome over content
  • slow feed entrance (kills scroll)
  • engagement-bait colors
  • inconsistent avatar shapes

Build it with StyleSeed

StyleSeed bakes this judgment into 74 rules your AI reads automatically. For social & community, start from the Arc skin and the pulse motion seed.

Make your AI design social & community right
Open source design engine for Claude Code, Codex & Cursor. MIT.
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