Design terms, in plain words

Short definitions of the words that come up when a startup works on its brand, product and website.

Brand identity

The visual and verbal system a company uses everywhere: logo, colour, type, imagery, patterns and tone, plus the rules for using them together.

Brand book

A document that shows a brand identity and the rules for using it, so anyone can apply it consistently.

Design system

A shared library of components, tokens and rules that keeps a product consistent and lets teams build faster.

Design tokens

Named values for colour, type, spacing and radius that are used in both design files and code, so the two never drift.

Product design

Designing how a product works and looks: the flows, screens, states and components people use to get a job done.

UX design

Designing the experience of using a product, from understanding the problem to the flow, structure and feedback a user gets.

UI design

Designing the visible interface of a product: layout, components, type, colour and motion.

MVP

Minimum viable product: the smallest version of a product that solves the core problem well enough to learn from real users.

Landing page

A single web page built around one goal, such as booking a call or starting a trial, usually the first page a visitor sees.

Conversion rate

The share of visitors who take the action a page is built for, like booking a call or signing up.

Design subscription

A monthly arrangement where a studio handles an ongoing queue of design requests for a flat fee, instead of pricing each project.

Core Web Vitals

Google's three measures of real-user page experience: LCP (loading), INP (responsiveness) and CLS (visual stability).

AEO

Answer engine optimisation: structuring a site so AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity can understand, quote and link to it.

llms.txt

A plain-text file at the root of a site that summarises what the site is and links its key pages, written for AI assistants to read.

Structured data

Machine-readable labels (schema.org JSON-LD) that tell search engines what a page is about, such as an organisation, service, article or FAQ.

Case study

A write-up of a real project showing the problem, the decisions and the result, used to show how a studio works.

Wordmark

A logo made from the company name set in a specific way, often paired with a symbol.

Prototype

An interactive mock-up of a product used to test flows with users or demo the idea before it is built.