Awesome Design Principles

A curated list of good design and experience principles.

Design Principles are a tool for creating better and more consistent designs and experiences. They are high level rules that guide detailed design decisions. They are often written down within bigger style guides, pattern libraries or design systems.

Know a resource that isn’t listed below? Feel free to create a new pull request, or open an issue. Please read the contribution guidelines before contributing.

Contents

• Principles within bigger Design Systems
• Articles about Design Principles
• Other Resources
• Credits and Notes

Principles within bigger Design Systems

• Alibaba Ant Design Principles
• Apple Human Interface Principles
• Atlassian Brand Personality
• Co-op Design Principles
• Firefox Photon Design System Principles
• Google Material Design Principles
• GOV.uk Design Principles
• Harmony Design System Voice & Tone Principles
• IBM Carbon Design Principles
• Lost My Name Design System Principles
• Mailchimp Writing Goals and Principles
• Nachos - Trello’s Design System Principles
• Seek Style Guide Principles
• Shopify Polaris Principles
• U.S. Web Design Principles

Articles about Design Principles

• Design Principles - a Guide - Good introduction and best practices.
• Developing Asanas Design Principles - Inside article on how Asana developed their principles.
• The Core Principles of UI Design - Short excerpt from Fundamental UI Design, an InVision e-course by Jane Portman.
• Design Principles Guide to less shitty Feedback - Short introduction and practical guide on how to set design principles (with examples)

Other Resources

• Built Environment Innovation Design - Lists professional design disciplines associated with built environment ventures and describes their roles (part of an open source project based learning challenge curricula).
• Learn Design Principles - Learn how design principles can be applied from architecture to product design.
• Design Principles FTW - “The biggest collection of Design Principles on the Internet.”
• principles.adactio.com - Huge list with various types of more traditional design principles.
• Principles of User Interface Design - Long list with well explained principles by Joshua Porter
• Principles of Product Design - Long list with well explained principles by Joshua Porter

Credits and Notes

This list is heavily inspired by Awesome Design Systems by Alex Pate. As an UX designer I find myself writing design and/or experience principles quite often. I created this list for reference and to get inspiration for better design principles.