design-review

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from review. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: design-review
description: "Review a web app or page for visual design quality — layout, typography, spacing, colour, hierarchy, consistency, interaction patterns, and responsive behaviour. Not a UX audit (that checks usability) — this checks whether it looks professional and polished. Produces a design findings report with screenshots. Triggers: 'design review', 'does this look good', 'review the design', 'check the layout', 'is this polished', 'visual review', 'design audit', 'make it look better', 'it looks off'."
compatibility: claude-code-only
---

# Design Review

Review a web app or page for visual design quality. This is not a UX audit (usability, workflow, friction) — this checks whether the design is **professional, consistent, and polished**.

The goal: would a design-conscious person look at this and think "this is well made" or "this looks like a developer designed it"?

## When to Use

- Before showing something to a client or team
- When something "looks off" but you can't pinpoint why
- After building a feature, before calling it done
- Periodic quality check on a shipped product
- After a UX audit — this is the visual companion

## Browser Tool Detection

Same as ux-audit — Chrome MCP, Playwright MCP, or playwright-cli.

## URL Resolution

Same as ux-audit — prefer deployed/live over localhost.

## What to Check

### 1. Layout and Spacing

| Check | Good | Bad |
|-------|------|-----|
| **Consistent spacing** | Same gap between all cards in a grid, same padding in all sections | Some cards have 16px gap, others 24px. Header padding differs from body |
| **Alignment** | Left edges of content align vertically across sections | Heading starts at one indent, body text at another, cards at a third |
| **Breathing room** | Generous whitespace around content, elements don't feel cramped | Text touching container edges, buttons crowded against inputs |
| **Grid discipline** | Content follows a clear column grid | Elements placed freely, no underlying structure |
| **Responsive proportions** | Sidebar/content ratio looks intentional at every width | Sidebar takes 50% on tablet, content is squeezed |
| **Vertical rhythm** | Consistent vertical spacing pattern (e.g. 8px/16px/24px/32px scale) | Random spacing: 13px here, 27px there, 8px somewhere else |

### 2. Typography

| Check | Good | Bad |
|-------|------|-----|
| **Hierarchy** | Clear visual difference between h1 → h2 → h3 → body | Headings and body text look the same size/weight |
| **Line length** | Body text 50-75 characters per line | Full-width text running 150+ characters — hard to read |
| **Line height** | Body text 1.5-1.7, headings 1.1-1.3 | Cramped text or excessive line height |
| **Font sizes** | Consistent scale (e.g. 14/16/20/24/32) | Random sizes: 15px, 17px, 22px with no relationship |
| **Weight usage** | Regular for body, medium for labels, semibold for headings, bold sparingly | Everything bold, or everything regular with no hierarchy |
| **Truncation** | Long text truncates with ellipsis, title attribute shows full text | Text overflows container, wraps awkwardly, or is cut off without ellipsis |

### 3. Colour and Contrast

| Check | Good | Bad |
|-------|------|-----|
| **Semantic colour** | Using design tokens (bg-primary, text-muted-foreground) | Raw Tailwind colours (bg-blue-500, text-gray-300) |
| **Contrast ratio** | Text meets WCAG AA (4.5:1 for body, 3:1 for large text) | Light grey text on white, or dark text on dark backgrounds |
| **Colour consistency** | Same blue means the same thing everywhere (primary = action) | Blue means "clickable" in one place and "informational" in another |
| **Dark mode** | All elements visible, borders defined, no invisible text | Elements disappear, text becomes unreadable, images look wrong |
| **Status colours** | Green=success, yellow=warning, red=error consistently | Green used for both success and "active" with different meanings |
| **Colour overuse** | 2-3 colours + neutrals | Rainbow