Design

In everyday life. You judge a poster by looking at it, not by reading about it. Design work is like that. You need to see it, point at what is wrong, and move things around.

What it is

Claude Design makes things people look at: posters, one-page handouts, mockups (pictures of how a screen or web page will look) and clickable prototypes (models you click through to test an idea). It is on every plan, including Free.¹

A design has three parts:¹

• The canvas is the whole work area.
• An artboard is one screen, page or poster on the canvas. A canvas can hold several.
• Layers are the parts on an artboard, such as a title, a picture or a box.

Build one

In the Claude desktop app, ask for a design in any chat, or pick the Design tile in the Artifacts tab. Help Claude with two things:¹

• Your brand. If your company has saved its colors and fonts (styles of letters) in Claude, Claude uses them by itself. This saved style is called a design system.
• Examples. Add screenshots, pictures or old slides that show what you like.

For Brightline:

Design a printable one-page guide for Brightline's suppliers: how to send an invoice, what it must include, and when they will be paid. Make two versions: one plain, one with a simple diagram.

People who use the Code tab can also type /design and a short description.²

Change it

There are three ways. Match the way to the size of the change:¹

• Chat for big changes, such as a new layout.
• A comment for one part. Click the part on the canvas and say what to change.
• Do it yourself for quick fixes. Drag, resize and line things up.

Share it and save a copy

Only you can see a new design. Click Share and choose whether each person can view it, comment on it or change it. To save a copy, export it as a PDF or PowerPoint file, among others. You can also send it to other design apps.¹

Three things to know, because Design is still growing:¹

• It does not keep old versions yet. Before a big change, save a copy as a PDF, so you can see how it looked. You cannot load the PDF back into Claude Design, so to go back you must redo the changes.
• Two people editing at once may not work well. Take turns.
• A comment sometimes does not show. If Claude seems to miss it, type the request in the chat.

Check it before you share it

• Look at it at its real size. Text that looks fine on screen may be too small on paper.
• Read every word. In a picture, it is easy to miss a wrong date or price.
• Check the colors and fonts. Are they really your company's?

In ChatGPT: Sites

OpenAI's help pages do not mention a design canvas like this one. Its closest tool is Sites, but it makes something different:³

• A Claude design shows how something should look. You use it to look, discuss and decide. Even a clickable prototype, or a design exported as a web page, is a model. It does not save what people type or connect to your company's systems.
• A ChatGPT Site is a working web page. People use it: they click, fill in forms and see live information.

So use a design to agree how something should look. Use a site when people need to use it.

1. Make one. In the ChatGPT desktop app, choose ChatGPT, then Work. Describe the web page you want. Use the word "website". ChatGPT shows you a private preview.
2. Change it. Ask for changes. Check the new preview each time.
3. Publish it carefully. When you publish (the button says Deploy), people can see the change right away. So save a version first, check it, and only then publish. Remove anything private before you share.

Sites is on ChatGPT's Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise plans. It is not in the older desktop app, now called ChatGPT Classic.³

Combine it: save your method as a skill

A design system saves how your work looks. A skill saves how you do a job: the steps and rules for Claude to follow. You met skills in Claude 2.0: conversations and artifacts.

Take Brightline's supplier guides. The colors and fonts come from the design system. The rules are a skill, for example:

Every supplier guide gives the payment day, says how to send an invoice and lists what an invoice must include. It never shows a bank account number.

To make the skill, start a chat and say you want a skill for supplier guides. Claude asks about your steps, then writes the skill. Save it and turn it on in Settings. After that, Claude reads the skill's name and description, and uses the skill when a job matches it.⁴ Skills are on every plan, when code execution is turned on.⁵

Still read the first design made with the skill. Anthropic's Design page does not mention skills, and a skill is a written method, not a check. Look for the payment day, and make sure there is no bank account number.

In ChatGPT: skills work in a similar way. You call one by typing @ and its name, as ChatGPT 2.0 showed.

Try it (10 minutes, any plan)

1. Ask Claude Design for a poster for an event, in two versions.
2. Fix one thing by dragging it. Fix one thing with a comment. Fix one thing through the chat.
3. Which way was fastest for each fix?
4. Export your favorite as a PDF.