light · playful · sans · soft · organic · retro · brutalist
Excalidraw
Literal hand-drawn whiteboard — wobbly SVG strokes, Virgil-style handwriting, and a deliberately primitive UI that turns digital sketching into nostalgia.
By webdesignhot · excalidraw.com
$ npx design-md add excalidraw
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Adidas Pure-black sport-utility, AdihausDIN/adidasFG uppercase, three-stripe geometry — the engineering canon for global sportswear. Adobe Creative-suite chrome — paper-white canvas, magenta-to-orange wordmark gradient, and Adobe Clean carrying every product grid. AgentKit Three swappable themes for AI agent products — editorial dark, daylight bright, fintech cool-blue. Airbnb Pure-white marketplace canvas with one Rausch coral and Cereal — generous photography, soft pills, modest type. Airtable White-canvas editorial workflow software with full-bleed coral and forest signature cards punctuating a near-black pill-CTA system. Alibaba Electric orange `#ff6a00` + dense merchant grids — the global B2B wholesale floor as a website. Amazon Smile-orange CTA, Amazon Ember sans, dense product grids — the canonical everything-store interface. Amazon Web Services Squid-ink navy with Smile-orange CTAs — the densest tile-portal on the cloud-platform internet. Anthropic Editorial broadsheet for AI safety — cream canvas, Anthropic Serif body, terracotta clay accent, magazine geometry. Apple White-canvas product theatre — SF Pro Text, 980px pill CTAs, and a single-blue accent system. Apple Music Pink-red gradient hero with album-grid kinesthetics — SF Pro precision, signature `#fa233b` brand pink, glassy dark canvas. Apple TV+ Pure-black cinematic theatre with SF Pro and ruthless minimalism — content as the only voice. Arc Browser-as-personality marketing — buttery cream canvas, Marlin Soft display, hand-tooled blue-and-coral palette. Are.na Bare grey-and-orange minimalism — a single Helvetica-class sans, hairline borders, and a stubborn refusal to optimise for engagement. Asana Approachable work management in soft purple — Asana Sans at modest weights with a rainbow accent palette and warm sky-tinted whitespace. Astro Cosmos navy canvas with violet-to-orange brand gradient — Mona Sans display, Inter body, Astro''s star-chart MPA framework dressed as an observatory dashboard. ASUS Republic of Gamers red `#cd0000` on black with bold sans — Taiwan engineering meets esports brutalism. Audi Vorsprung durch Technik on near-black — Audi Type sans, four-rings precision, and a near-monochrome canvas with `#bb0a30` reserved for sport. Auth0 Twilight-blue dark canvas with TWK Lausanne 300 display + Aeonik body — the original identity-platform aesthetic. Axiom Deep-navy observability with a cyan electric accent — Inter for body, JetBrains Mono for every event label, and a structural grid that reads as logs at planet scale. Axios Smart-brevity in chromatic form — blocky white canvas, Tiempos-flavored Atiza serif, signature `Why it matters:` time-bars and bullet-first prose. Base Coinbase-adjacent L2 minimalism — coinbaseSans on white, signature electric blue Baseten White canvas with Inter and a signature `#6c5ce7` purple — ML model deployment dressed in approachable workshop chrome. BBC News Signature BBC red (`#bb1919`), Reith Sans + Reith Serif, the global broadcaster authority typography of the world''s public-service news. Bear Off-white canvas, a custom bearsans display, a red bear icon, and tealish handwritten underlines — a Markdown notes app dressed as a Mac Pro magazine. beehiiv Aggressive black-on-yellow newsletter punch — heavy display sans, hyper-flat cards, and a `#ffd60a` highway-yellow that reads like a tabloid front page. Binance Trading-floor near-black with a single high-voltage Binance Yellow doing all the brand work — BinanceNova for type, BinancePlex for numbers. Bloomberg Iconic black-orange financial broadsheet — BWHaasHead headlines, AvenirNextPForBBG chrome, terminal-grade data density. Bluesky Sky-blue `#0085ff` on bright white with Inter sans — the AT-Protocol social network rendered as airy, federated, open. Blur Pure-black canvas, neon `#ff8700` orange voltage, and JetBrains-Mono-default everywhere — brutalist NFT trader terminal as competitive instrument. BMW Corporate-blue calm — BMW Type Next on a cream-tinted white, dark navy hero bands, and the M-stripe triplet in reserve. BMW M Performance black on M-blue/M-violet/M-red — the motorsport variant that turns BMW corporate into track-day theatre. Booking.com Deep-blue commerce engine — Bookin Sans on white, yellow CTA voltage, dense booking-funnel maximalism. Bose Pure black canvas, Helvetica restraint, and premium-audio confidence — sound presented as engineering art. Brex Cool grey-blue surfaces, magenta-to-purple-to-indigo gradient, Söhne 600 — fintech as fast, modern, slightly flashy. Bugatti French-engineered austerity — pure black canvas, three Bugatti typefaces, and full-bleed photography as the only voltage. Bun Cream canvas with chunky pink accents and the wide-eyed mascot — a JS runtime dressed as a 1970s bakery sign. Cal.com Open-source calendly with one bold custom font — Cal Sans on a soft `#f4f4f4` paper canvas. Calm Signature `#0066ff` deep blue + Aktiv Grotesk + meditation-deep cool atmospheric calm. Capacities Cream-yellow canvas, Inter at 700 with a Crimson Pro serif fallback, and a yellow underline as page ornament — a PKM that thinks like a sketchbook. Cartesia Bright clinical white with a single deep-blue action — voice-AI presented as scientific instrument rather than consumer product. Cash App Electric `#00d54b` green on near-black, Cash Sans monospace-flavoured geometry, and p2p-money youth aesthetic. Character.AI Cool zinc canvas, custom atHauss sans, and dark pill CTAs — a roleplay social product dressed in TikTok-grade neutrality. Chevrolet Gold-cross American classic — Louis sans on white with a `#cd9834` bowtie, a `#003876` corporate blue, and Camaro/Corvette red drama in reserve. Claude.ai Cream paper canvas, Anthropic Sans for body and Anthropic Serif for the headline — an AI assistant set in literary type. Clerk Geist + Suisse on near-black canvas with `#6c47ff` violet CTA — the drop-in-auth dev-tool aesthetic. ClickHouse Near-pure black canvas with electric yellow as the brand voltage — database performance dressed in voltmeter chrome. Cloudinary Media-API technical infrastructure in confident blue — Inter at modest weights with a deep navy-blue brand and a single chromatic accent for media moments. Cohere Stark white editorial canvas with deep green-black product bands and a CohereText/Unica77 type split. Coinbase Institutional-grade calm — pure white canvas, a single Coinbase Blue, and Coinbase Display set at weight 400 instead of 700. Composio Near-black canvas with deep-electric-blue voltage and a 2x2 terminal-mockup hero — agent infrastructure dressed as developer instrumentation. Corsair Yellow `#ffff00` lightning on black with Roboto — RGB-everything peripherals and PC components. Costco Warehouse blue + signature red, Helvetica utilitarian — bulk-buying signage translated to web. Coursera University-blue `#0056d2` on warm-white parchment with Source Sans — the canonical online-degree marketplace. Cursor Warm cream IDE-marketing — `#f7f7f4` canvas, `#26251e` ink, custom CursorGothic display, JetBrains Mono code, vivid orange accent. Datadog NationalWeb on white with the iconic `#632ca6` purple — observability dressed as an enterprise dashboard, structurally dense, chromatically restrained, multicolour where the data demands it. Deel A warm dark canvas with electric coral and orange accents — global payroll dressed as a confident product portrait. DeepSeek Deep-blue Chinese-tech minimalism — a research lab dressed in `#4d6bfe` and stark white space. Dell Pragmatic blue `#007db8` with custom Roboto-derivative — business-first PC commerce since the dorm room. Deno Inkwell black on warm white with the dinosaur mascot — TypeScript runtime as Eric Carle children's book. Descript Cream-pink canvas, a custom Brett display serif, and a wine-dark CTA — an AI video editor that ships like a magazine. Discord Indigo-ground hangout — gg sans body, ABC Ginto Nord display, 12-16px tile radii, white pill CTAs. Disney+ Deep navy gradient streaming hall with custom Inspire display sans and the unmistakable Disney+ wordmark arc. DoorDash Signature red-orange CTA, custom DoorDash Sans, delivery-funnel commerce — the dominant on-demand local marketplace. ElevenLabs Near-black voice-tech ground with white voice-wave aesthetic — Inter at studio scale, pill CTAs, and a single saturated accent that reads as both wayfinding and brand. Epic Games Pure-black canvas with custom Brutal Type / Heading Now display — Fortnite-saturated marketing meets PC-storefront merchandising. Ethereum Off-white canvas, ethereum-blue `#1c64f2` voltage, and Inter + serif duet — community-owned protocol as open documentation. Etsy Burnt-orange CTA, Graphik humanist sans, handcrafted-warmth aesthetic — the marketplace for makers and small batch. Expedia Navy commerce + Mango yellow voltage — Expedia Sans, dense travel-funnel density with One Key loyalty colour-coding. Fantastical White paper, Effra geometric sans, full-round blue pills, and a rainbow of app-icon glass squares — a calendar app marketed like Apple''s Pro Apps. Ferrari Cinematic editorial in near-black — Rosso Corsa restraint, FerrariSans 500, and full-bleed cavallino photography. Figma Bright multi-color section bands with figmaSans display and figmaMono eyebrows — a marketing site that designs in scenes. Financial Times Salmon-pink page (`#fff1e5`) — the world''s most recognizable newspaper background, paired with Financier display + MetricWeb sans for global markets coverage. Fireworks AI Light canvas with Inter sans and a signature `#6720ff` purple-amber-orange spark — fast-inference platform dressed in speed-of-light kinetic chrome. Fly.io Mackinac display + Fragment Mono on a violet-saturated canvas — a PaaS that dresses like a small-press magazine. Ford American-truck heritage in corporate blue — Antenna sans, oval-script wordmark, and a deep `#003478` voltage that has carried the brand since 1927. Framer Black-on-white maximalism with electric gradient floods — Inter Display at heroic sizes, motion as a first-class material. Frontegg PP Neue Machina display + Neue Montreal body — plug-and-play user-management with deep-blue gravitas. Gemini (Google) Blue-into-violet gradient, Google Sans, soft Material 3 surfaces — Google''s house style applied to a chat interface. Ghost Warm-cream content CMS aesthetic — Inter for chrome, a soft serif for the writing surface, and a single confident green for action. GitHub Dark-canvas developer-platform marketing — Mona Sans variable headings, lime-green accent, near-black ground. GitHub Copilot Pure-white canvas, pure-black inverted CTAs, Mona Sans display — GitHub's editorial confidence applied to AI tooling. Grafana Dark observability canvas with the iconic `#f46800` orange — Inter for body, Roboto Mono everywhere a label hides, multi-colour chart palette ripped straight from a real dashboard. Granola White paper, a custom Quadrant book serif, and an olive-green CTA — an AI notepad that dresses like a stationery shop. Grubhub Friendly red-orange CTA, Sentinel display + Avenir body, dense delivery-app commerce — the long-running incumbent. HashiCorp Black canvas hosting a per-product color portfolio — Terraform purple, Vault yellow, Consul red, Waypoint cyan — multi-product identity made literal. Hashnode Developer publishing platform — deep navy canvas, electric blue brand, Inter sans + JetBrains Mono code chrome. HBO Max Deep purple-black premium streaming canvas with custom Sharp Grotesk and the unmistakable Max wordmark. Headspace Signature `#ffac1d` orange + custom round display + meditation-friendly playful warmth. Height AI-PM workspace dressed in chalk pastels — Inter at modest weights over a near-paper canvas, with a single confident accent and an AI-purple voltage moment. Honda Reliability-first restraint — HondaGlobalFont on white, signature red HP Cyan-blue `#0096d6` HP-circle on white with Forma DJR — the 84-year-old technology brand''s mainstream face. Hugging Face AI community canvas — deep blue-black ground, Source Sans Pro headlines, pill auth + 8px tile cards. Hulu Near-black canvas anchored on Hulu Green `#1ce783` with Graphik sans — the bright, cable-meets-streaming UI. IBM Carbon Design System made literal — pure-white canvas, IBM Plex Sans at light 300, square corners, and one assertive `#0f62fe` blue. Ideogram A bright white canvas with a single saturated violet cue — a typography-first AI image tool that lets the gallery do all the talking. Instacart Grocery-shopping-list practical — Instacart Sans on white, signature carrot green Kagi A premium search engine dressed in warm cream and Plex — the indie answer to ad-funded search. KAYAK Burnt-orange flight-search density — Open Sans on white, comparison-engine maximalism, price-graph data viz. Khan Academy Signature `#14bf96` mint green on white with Lato sans — free-for-everyone education in a warm, encouraging register. Kinde White canvas with Inter 72/500 display + dev-friendly pink-coral accent — the approachable auth-billing-access platform. Kit A cream newsletter canvas with a custom KitSans display, a Libre Franklin secondary, and a pastel-rainbow chip set — the editorial register reborn from ConvertKit. Kraken Kraken Purple `#7132f5` on white — Kraken-Brand display + Kraken-Product UI for a calmer, less-bombastic crypto exchange. Krea A pure-black studio with Suisse Intl set quietly at 60px — a creative-AI gallery that lets the work and the cobalt CTA carry the colour. Lamborghini Cathedral of darkness — true black canvas, Lamborghini Gold accents, and LamboType angled-terminal display. LangChain Deep navy canvas with Inter precision and a quietly confident teal accent — agent orchestration dressed as engineering documentation. Linear Dark-canvas product surface — pure-black ground, indigo accent, custom Inter weights, pill CTAs. LiveKit Realtime audio-video infra — Public Sans 300 weight on near-black, signature cyan LlamaIndex White canvas with Inter and a signature `#1b9aff` blue — RAG infrastructure dressed as a clean technical reference card. Logitech Soft consumer-tech blue gradients with Brown sans — design for the way you work, play, and create. Lovable Pink-into-violet gradient on white — vibe-coding dressed in playful, friendly chromatics. Magic Eden Mint-cream canvas, magenta-mint accent duet, and a custom Foundry display — Solana-native marketplace as boutique gallery. Mailchimp Cavendish-yellow chunkiness — a custom display serif (Cooper Light), the signature `#ffe01b` block, and a brand voice that hugs you while it ships campaigns. Mastercard Cream-canvas editorial fintech, circular-portrait orbits, MarkForMC at 450 weight — institutional-but-warm payments brand. MasterClass Pure-black cinema with custom display serif and editorial reverence — celebrity-instructor learning as a premium streaming product. Medium Editorial reading-first publishing — magazine-grade serif body, GT Super display, signature green-on-white pill CTAs. Mercedes-Benz Three-pointed-star authority — MBCorpo on near-black canvas, silver-blue Mercury A near-pure white canvas with a literary serif headline and a signature mercury-mint accent — banking dressed as a quiet magazine. Meta Optimistic blue (#0467df) on a white corporate canvas — Optimistic Display headlines, generous space, social-platform conglomerate at rest. Microsoft Fluent surfaces — off-white canvas, Segoe UI Variable Display, and a Cortana-blue action color carrying every product. Midjourney A deep cosmic canvas where JetBrains Mono headlines float over a wide-gamut OKLCH rainbow — a research lab dressed as a chapel. MiniMax Stark monochrome canvas broken open by vibrant gradient product cards — coral, magenta, blue, purple as model identity. Mintlify Documentation-platform marketing — pure white canvas, mint-green accent, Inter at tight tracking, near-black pill CTAs. Miro Canary-yellow Mistral Butter-yellow canvas, Arial as a deliberate anti-tech statement, and zero-radius rectangles — French AI as a brutalist art-school manifesto. Modal Serverless GPU infra in lime-green — `#0c0c0c` canvas, electric `#7fee64` accent, custom Modal Mono on every chip and code block. Monday.com Project management in confident red-pink — Poppins display at bold weights with a colorful saturated palette and a playfully energetic visual rhythm. MongoDB Signature MongoDB green Motion AI-calendar productivity in green-and-purple — Inter at modest weights with a green-to-purple voltage gradient signaling the AI scheduler, anchored by a clean white canvas. MSI Dragon-red `#ff0000` on jet black with bold display sans — the Taipei dragon-heritage gaming hardware brand. Mux Video API for developers — Aeonik on light-cream, Rotonto display, JetBrainsMono CTAs, sharp 0px corners. Neon Serverless Postgres dressed in late-night green — a near-black canvas with a single electric mint accent. Netflix Pure-black streaming theatre with signature `#e50914` red and Netflix Sans — the canonical media-tile grid. Nike Pure black, pure white, Helvetica Now — pill CTAs and full-bleed athletic photography on a single soft cloud gray. Notion Off-white canvas with Lyon serif accents and a custom NotionInter — a workspace dressed as a literary magazine. Nuxt Forest-green `#00dc82` glow on a near-black canvas — Vue-flavored warmth dressed for the cosmos. NVIDIA Engineering-grade canvas — pure black hero / paper-white body / one violently saturated `#76b900` green that carries every CTA and corner square. Omnivore Open-source read-it-later — near-white reading canvas, focused emerald-on-paper brand, archival elegance after the Eleven Labs sunset. OpenAI Pure white canvas, OpenAI Sans set in calm 500-weight, and a single black pill for the only action that matters — try ChatGPT. OpenRouter Pure-black canvas with custom display typography and pragmatic mono — LLM-router infrastructure dressed as a terminal billing dashboard. OpenSea Pure-black canvas, electric `#2081e2` blue, and Inter at trader-pro density — the original NFT marketplace as financial terminal. Optimism Pure-white canvas, signature `#ff0420` red voltage, and Inter at confident L2 register — Ethereum rollup as bold optimistic infrastructure. Ory White canvas with Inter 48/400 display + signature deep-navy `#0f172a` CTA — open-source-first identity for technical teams. Oura Pure-black canvas with Inter precision and gold-stamped scores — the premium-ring health-precision aesthetic. Paper Website A literal sheet-of-paper website — single literary serif, off-white sheet canvas, narrow reading columns, ink-blue links. PayPal Dual-blue corporate trust — PayPal Sans Big over white, with a deep-navy ink and a sky-blue counterpoint. Peloton Signature `#cb1e4e` red on midnight ink, Inter display, instructor-led premium-fitness storefront. Perplexity Cream paper canvas, custom pplxSans, and the unmistakable Tropic-cyan accent — a reference-library answer engine dressed in warm tones. Pinecone White canvas with Inter and a signature `#1cb0d0` cyan — vector database technical-marketing dressed in clean blueprint chrome. Plaid Pale blue trust on white, classical Stripe-adjacent type, and a Benjamin-Franklin-as-mascot moment of personality. Plain B2B support tool with a Dinamo grotesk and a single radioactive `#1ad379` action — Linear-restraint applied to support. PlanetScale Pure-black canvas, blood-red accent, mono-set numerals — a database brand styled like a financial terminal. Polar Dev-tool obsidian — 8rem editorial display headlines, indigo accents, Louize serif moments. Polygon Deep purple `#8247e5` voltage, soft surface ladder, and Inter at enterprise calm — Ethereum L2 as institutional infrastructure. Porsche Engineering-purity black-on-white — Porsche Next at 96px regular, Rosso PostHog Cream-canvas analytics with mustard-yellow CTAs and IBM Plex — open-source craft, not SaaS gloss. Postmark Postal-yellow #ffde00 + warm-black #1c1d1f + paper-white canvas — the transactional email API designed like a friendly post office sign. Prime Video Amazon-blue streaming canvas with Ember sans and the dense, utility-first marketplace UI vocabulary. PropelAuth White canvas with SF Pro Rounded display 60/900 + deep-navy ink — B2B multi-tenant auth with Apple-tinted polish. Qwik Electric purple-to-blue gradient on near-black — resumable execution dressed as a lightning bolt. Railway Ship software peacefully — IBM Plex Serif headlines on a deep eggplant canvas, with a single confident violet for action. Raindrop.io White paper, system-ui sans, soft watercolor blob backgrounds, and a vivid `#0b7ed0` blue CTA — a bookmark manager that ships like a creative-tool sketch. Ramp Off-yellow `#fcfb70` and black-on-white editorial — finance ops dressed as a printed annual report. Raycast Near-black canvas, glowing keycaps, monospaced shortcut chips — a marketing site that thinks like a launcher. Razer Neon `#44d62c` snake-green on jet black with Roboto — the For Gamers, By Gamers visual signature. Readwise Pastel-orange book-club warmth — soft cream canvas, friendly Tiempos serif accents, and a tangerine that signals 'this is your library.' Reddit Front-page-of-the-internet orange — community-card density, IBM Plex Sans display, and a confident Remix Signature `#3992ff` blue on pure white with Inter — a nested-routes web framework dressed as a manifesto poster. Render Lavender on white — a PaaS that swapped Heroku purple for a candy-bright #8a05ff and kept the airy whitespace. Replicate AI-API marketing — light page chrome, dark hero canvas, rb-Freigeist Neue display, JetBrains Mono code, sharp 0px corners. Replit Saturated turquoise on `#0e1525` ink — the cloud-IDE aesthetic with IBM Plex DNA and a JetBrains Mono soul. Resend Pure-black canvas with Domaine Display serif at 96px and Commit Mono code chips — email infra that thinks in italics. Retool Pragmatic blue #3a55fc + Inter + dense product mocks — the internal-tool platform that designed itself like a well-organised admin panel. Reuters Global newswire restraint — signature orange (`#ff8000`), Knowledge Medium custom sans, broadsheet rigor for the world''s oldest news agency. Riot Games Crimson `#d13639` red on near-black with custom Riot Beam display — esports-tournament drama and competitive-MOBA editorial. Rive Chunky animated display type and saturated playful colour — interactive graphics platform that wears its motion design on its sleeve. Roblox Bright `#ed1d24` red on white with Builder Sans — the youth-block-builder playground turned multi-billion-game social platform. RunPod Deep slate canvas with Inter and a signature `#673ab7` purple — accessible GPU cloud dressed in friendly developer chrome. Runway A near-black research canvas with ABC Normal headlines pulled tight at -2.5px — a film studio, an ML lab, and a brutalist gallery in one shell. Salesforce Cloud-trust dashboards — Salesforce Sans on a sky-blue ground, with Astro the bear standing guard over a dense CRM portal. SAP Enterprise-ERP precision in cobalt — SAP72 sans, signal-blue accents, and a calm white canvas built for trust. Segment Twilio Segment's customer-data-platform canvas — Whitney SSm humanist sans, navy-on-white, single confident `#1866ee` blue. Semafor Paper-cream canvas (`#f8f5d7`) with FeatureFlatHeadline serif and signature flag-style topic columns — global-news editorial built for the post-Twitter era. SendGrid Functional API-blue on white — the email-platform dashboard aesthetic, now folded under the Twilio umbrella. Sentry Deep-aubergine observability — Dammit Sans display, Rubik body, JetBrains Mono code, signature violet #7553ff and pill CTAs. shadcn/ui Copy-paste components in pure black-on-white — the most influential design system not actually shipped as a library. Shopify Dark-first commerce theatre — 96px NeueHaasGrotesk at weight 330, electric mint focus rings, and stacked multi-layer shadows. Signal Privacy-first messaging in `#3a76f0` Signal blue with Inter sans — minimal, ad-free, end-to-end-encrypted by default. Slack Aubergine workspace marketing — Salesforce-Avant-Garde headlines, all-caps 4px CTAs, white canvas with `#4a154b` accents. SolidJS Deep navy with a blue-to-cyan brand gradient — reactive primitives dressed as a circuit diagram. Sonos Pure black canvas, Inter typography, and audio-system minimalism — speakers presented as gallery objects. SoundCloud Signature `#ff5500` orange on `#f2f2f2` paper with Interstate sans — waveform-first audio social UI. SpaceX Pure-black cinematic photography, D-DIN aerospace stencil type, ghost-button minimalism — the interface disappears. Spotify Electric `#1ed760` green on near-black canvas with Spotify Mix sans — the canonical streaming-audio tile grid. Square Pure black on pure white, Square Sans grids, and retail-POS minimalism — commerce as black-and-white geometry. Starbucks Forest-green storefront — SoDoSans, full-pill buttons, warm-cream canvas, and a floating Frap CTA the brand calls home. Steam Deep blue-gray `#1b2838` with Motiva Sans — the utilitarian PC-gaming library that runs the world's largest digital storefront. SteelSeries Esports orange `#ff6900` on near-black with Inter — Danish precision peripherals for competitive play. Strava Signature `#fc4c02` orange + Inter on white — endurance-athlete data-driven storefront with map-overlay heritage. Stripe Editorial fintech polish — light Söhne headlines at weight 300, navy-not-black text, signature `#533afd` purple CTAs. Stytch Paper-cream canvas with Booton display + Chivo Mono body — passwordless-modern auth, joined Twilio. Substack Magazine-on-the-internet — Spectral serif body at 19px, Cahuenga display, signature `#ff6719` orange CTAs. Suno A near-black booth with cream Neue Montreal and a hot-pink cue light — a music studio, a record sleeve, and a chat app fused into one canvas. Sunsama Thoughtful daily planning in warm cream and ink — Inter at modest weights over a paper-cream canvas with sage and rose accents and a calm, unhurried voice. Supabase Off-black canvas, signature emerald `#3ecf8e`, Circular as display, Postgres-grade type discipline. Superhuman White paper canvas, a custom Super Sans variable, and a single confident lavender — premium email dressed as a stationery brand. Supreme Box-logo red, Courier monospace, skate-deadpan minimalism — the most influential streetwear store on the web. Svelte Hot orange #ff3e00 against clean white with a confident sans — the framework that wears its flame as a wordmark. Tailwind CSS The system applied to itself — Inter Variable on white canvas, signature cyan #06b6d4, every component built from Tailwind utilities. Tana Pure black canvas, a custom tanaClassic serif at 83px, and a pale-pistachio CTA — a knowledge graph dressed as a literary supplement. Target Bullseye red CTA, Helvetica Neue, photographic hero — friendly mass-market design with confident chromatic restraint. Telegram Cloud-blue messaging — Tesla Cinematic showroom on white — one Electric Blue CTA, Universal Sans, and viewport-height car photography. The Atlantic Modern serif headlines on cream-paper, signature Atlantic orange `#fbb33b`, long-form magazine reading rendered for the web. The Economist Deep cinnabar red `#e3120b`, Milo serif body, Econ Sans labels — the global-affairs weekly rendered with cover-illustration discipline. The Guardian Guardian Egyptian slab serif, signature navy `#052962`, structured ruled hierarchy with bold section accents. The New York Times Cheltenham serif headlines on paper-white, signature breaking-news red, the canonical American broadsheet rendered for the web. The New Yorker Adobe Caslon Pro + Irvin headline cap — a century of editorial gravitas in cream paper, ink black, and signature cartoon line. The Washington Post Postoni serif blackletter masthead, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" tagline, sober ink-on-paper political broadsheet. Things Cool light-blue canvas, system-ui sans, vivid Things-blue accent — a task manager that ships like an Apple Pro Display. Threads Instagram-adjacent text-first social — pure-black canvas, system-sans clarity, and a quiet brand restraint built from the @ glyph alone. TikTok Electric cyan-magenta on pure black — vertical-video voltage with custom Proxima Nova display and a bold neon brand grammar. tldraw Casual whiteboard sketchy — hand-drawn UI primitives, dotted-grid canvas, and a soft pastel palette that wears its toy-like energy with confidence. Together AI Deep navy on near-white with Inter sans — open-source LLM cloud rendered as developer-platform infrastructure. Toyota Japanese-reliability mainstream — `#eb0a1e` Toyota red on white, ToyotaType sans, and a calm-confident marketing surface for the world's most-sold automotive brand. Turbo Vercel-grade pure-black canvas with a magenta-to-blue Turbo gradient — the build system that wears its speed as a sweep. Turso SQLite at the edge — a deep-teal canvas with a CRT-bright cyan accent (#00face) that reads as a glowing edge node. Twilio Signal-red `#f22f46` against clean white — communications APIs given the visual weight of a broadcast colour. Twitch Purple `#9146ff` on `#0e0e10` canvas with Inter — the live-streaming UI built around chat, raids, and gaming density. Uber Eats Pure-black ground, Uber Move custom sans, Uber-app continuity — the operating system of food delivery. Udemy Signature `#a435f0` purple on white with Sailec sans — the open course-marketplace bazaar made approachable. Uniqlo Signature red `#ff0000`, Helvetica Neue system stack, japanese-utility-functional grid — the LifeWear engine. v0 A near-white prompt canvas with GeistSans and pure OKLCH grayscale — Vercel''s AI builder dressed as the calmest text editor on the internet. Venmo A single confident `#3d95ce` blue, Aktiv Grotesk geometry, and a social-feed informality — payments dressed as group chat. Vercel Brutalist developer-product polish — near-white canvas, near-pure black-on-near-white type, Geist sans + mono, conic-gradient accents. Vite Electric purple #646cff + Manrope display + a literal lightning-bolt mark — the build tool that designed itself to feel as fast as it is. Vodafone Vodafone Red broadcast band, monumental 144px display, two-tier button system — corporate-newsroom telecom design. Volkswagen People's-car blue — the deep `#001e50` corporate hue, custom VW Sans, and a friendly-German marketing surface that sells everyday mobility with confidence. Walmart Spark-yellow on big-box blue, Antonio Display + Bogle sans — everyday low prices made loud. Warp Near-black canvas, neon-lime cursor, real terminal screenshots — a marketing site that boots like a shell. Weaviate White canvas with Inter and a signature `#1cdb46` open-source green — modular vector database dressed in approachable engineering chrome. webdesignhot AI-era editorial dark — pure black with one acid-lime accent. Webflow Indigo-to-purple gradient discipline with a precise structural sans — the visual builder that markets itself like a design conference. WHOOP Lime `#a0d10b` voltage on jet-black, Inter precision, recovery-data athlete-grade aesthetic. WIRED Newsstand-density editorial grid, sharp-corner buttons, mono ALL-CAPS kickers — Conde Nast meets engineering lab. Wise A flexible bright-lime green on cream-white — money that travels in sans-serif and a single confident accent. Workday HR-warm professional in tangerine — Adelle Sans humanist curves, signature `#f37721` orange, and a calm white people-first canvas. WorkOS Pure-white canvas with Untitled Sans 80/500 display + indigo-violet h2 — the B2B-enterprise gravitas aesthetic. X Pure-black canvas with Chirp display — algorithmic minimalism, single-letter wordmark, ruthless type discipline. Y Combinator Brutalist orange monolith — system-font sans on white canvas, signature `#f26625` orange-red blocks with hard 0px corners. You.com Crisp white developer-doc canvas, custom Lumen Sans, and the indigo `#5368EE` accent — a search API rebrand done as enterprise infrastructure. YouTube YouTube Sans + Roboto + signature `#ff0000` red — content-density at planetary scale. Zora Cream-white canvas, electric purple-orange duet, and a custom display — onchain creator network as zine cover.
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Tokens design.md/v1.5
- bg
#fffefd - bg-canvas
#ffffff - bg-warm
#fdf6e3 - bg-paper
#fafafa - surface
#ffffff - surface-soft
#fafafa - surface-warm
#f5f0e0 - surface-hover
#f5f5f5 - surface-soft-warm
#fdfaf2 - text AAA · 17.0
#1b1b1f - text-strong
#0f0f12 - text-display
#1b1b1f - text-muted
#5b5b5b - text-soft
#8a8a8a - text-faint — · 1.9
#bababa - text-on-brand
#ffffff - text-on-pastel
#1b1b1f - brand AA · 4.6
#6965db - brand-hover
#5651c5 - brand-active
#443fa3 - brand-soft
#e8e7fb - brand-faint
#f3f2fd - link
#6965db - accent-yellow
#ffe066 - accent-yellow-deep
#fad434 - accent-pink
#ffadad - accent-pink-deep
#ff8888 - accent-green
#9be7c4 - accent-green-deep
#6fd29f - accent-blue
#bde0fe - accent-blue-deep
#92c8fa - accent-orange
#ffb997 - accent-orange-deep
#ff9970 - accent-purple
#d4c5f9 - border
#1b1b1f1a - border-strong
#1b1b1f33 - border-soft
#1b1b1f0d - border-hand
#1b1b1f - on-brand
#ffffff - success
#16a34a - success-bg
#dcfce7 - warning
#d97706 - warning-bg
#fef3c7 - danger
#dc2626 - danger-bg
#fee2e2 - info
#6965db - info-bg
#e8e7fb
Ship faster than ever.
display-hero "Excalifont" 64px w700 -0.012em
Ship faster than ever.
display-large "Excalifont" 56px w700 -0.01em
Ship faster than ever.
display "Excalifont" 48px w700 -0.01em
Ship faster than ever.
h1 "Excalifont" 40px w700 -0.008em
Built for teams that ship.
h2 "Excalifont" 32px w600 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
hand-large "Virgil" 32px w400 0
A complete kit
h3 "Excalifont" 24px w600 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
h4 "Excalifont" 20px w600 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
h5 "Excalifont" 18px w600 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
body-large "Assistant" 18px w400 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
hand "Virgil" 18px w400 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
h6 "Excalifont" 16px w600 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
body "Assistant" 16px w400 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
body-small "Assistant" 14px w400 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
hand-small "Virgil" 14px w400 0
npx design-md add linear
code-inline "Cascadia Code" 14px w400 0
npx design-md add linear
code "Cascadia Code" 14px w400 0
OUR DESIGN SYSTEM
caption "Assistant" 13px w500 0
OUR DESIGN SYSTEM
label "Assistant" 12px w600 0.02em
- step-0 1px
- step-1 2px
- step-2 4px
- step-3 6px
- step-4 8px
- step-5 10px
- step-6 12px
- step-7 16px
- step-8 20px
- step-9 24px
- step-10 32px
- step-11 40px
- step-12 48px
- step-13 64px
- step-14 80px
- none
0px - micro
2px - xs
4px - sm
6px - md
6px - button
6px - card
8px - lg
10px - xl
12px - pill
9999px
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A complete kit — everything your product needs.
Hero, pricing, FAQ, dashboard, docs — every layout your product needs.
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Excalidraw's design philosophy is "draw it badly on purpose." Every shape on the canvas is rendered through rough.js, which introduces deliberate randomness into stroke paths so that a rectangle never looks machine-perfect. The brand font is Virgil (and its modern successor Excalifont), a handwriting cut designed to read as if jotted on a whiteboard. The marketing site itself is dressed in the same primitive chrome — paper-white canvas with cream undertone, near-black hand-drawn borders, and pastel accent fills that mimic dry-erase markers. A single muted purple (`#6965db`) carries primary action, but even that button reads slightly hand-drawn on hover, with the 2px border rendered through rough.js for stroke randomness. The lineage runs back through Paper.app and the earlier whiteboard-software tradition; the descendants are tldraw and Whimsical, which polish the metaphor. Excalidraw keeps it deliberately rough. The open-source-pragmatic ethos is itself part of the brand — the marketing surface refuses the polish that would make it look like venture-backed SaaS, and that refusal aligns with the project's open-source community-first values.
- Hand-drawn primitive aesthetic translated to web canvas; the original tablet-as-sketchbook lineage.
- The library that renders every stroke wobbly — central to the brand identity, not just a stylistic flourish.
- The conceptual ground; pastel marker hues, hand-printed labels, and accepted imprecision.
- Inverse reference — tldraw polishes the whiteboard metaphor into SaaS chrome; Excalidraw refuses to polish.
- The wider handwriting-fonts tradition; permission to use hand-drawn type as serious typography.
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---
name: Excalidraw
tagline: Literal hand-drawn whiteboard — wobbly SVG strokes, Virgil-style handwriting, and a deliberately primitive UI that turns digital sketching into nostalgia.
author: webdesignhot
source_url: https://excalidraw.com
spec: design.md/v1.5
quality: curated
featured: true
categories: [design-tools, dev-tools]
tags: [light, playful, sans, soft, organic, retro, brutalist]
preview_swatch: ['#fffefd', '#1b1b1f', '#6965db']
related: [tldraw, figma, hashnode]
description: 'Excalidraw is the literal hand-drawn whiteboard — every stroke is rendered with rough.js to look hand-sketched, the brand font is the Virgil handwriting cut (and its modern successor Excalifont), and the chrome stays deliberately primitive. The canvas is paper-white (`#fffefd`) with a slight cream undertone, text is near-black `#1b1b1f`, and a single muted purple (`#6965db`) carries primary action. Where tldraw cleans up the whiteboard metaphor into polished SaaS chrome, Excalidraw doubles down on the sketchy charm — wobbly borders, hand-drawn icons, dry-erase pastel fills, and deliberately rough rectangles. The design is open-source-pragmatic rather than marketing-polished, and the refusal of polish is itself the brand''s most coherent statement. The aesthetic descends from FiftyThree''s Paper.app, the rough.js library that powers every stroke, and the wider whiteboard / dry-erase tradition.'
colors:
bg: '#fffefd' # paper-white with cream undertone
bg-canvas: '#ffffff' # pure white for embedded canvas demos
bg-warm: '#fdf6e3' # warm cream tint for nested panels
bg-paper: '#fafafa' # standard paper-fill for blocks
surface: '#ffffff' # default card surface
surface-soft: '#fafafa' # secondary panel
surface-warm: '#f5f0e0' # warm-tint surface for callouts
surface-hover: '#f5f5f5' # hover state on cards
surface-soft-warm: '#fdfaf2' # softest warm tint
text: '#1b1b1f' # near-black, used for hand-drawn borders too
text-strong: '#0f0f12' # display, slightly darker
text-display: '#1b1b1f' # H1 stays at near-black
text-muted: '#5b5b5b' # captions, meta
text-soft: '#8a8a8a' # tertiary
text-faint: '#bababa' # disabled
text-on-brand: '#ffffff' # white text on muted purple
text-on-pastel: '#1b1b1f' # near-black on dry-erase pastels
brand: '#6965db' # muted purple, the only saturated UI accent
brand-hover: '#5651c5' # darker purple on press
brand-active: '#443fa3' # deepest pressed
brand-soft: '#e8e7fb' # softest purple tint
brand-faint: '#f3f2fd' # near-white purple tint
link: '#6965db' # links use brand
accent-yellow: '#ffe066' # dry-erase yellow marker
accent-yellow-deep: '#fad434' # deeper marker yellow
accent-pink: '#ffadad' # pink marker
accent-pink-deep: '#ff8888' # deeper pink
accent-green: '#9be7c4' # green marker
accent-green-deep: '#6fd29f' # deeper green
accent-blue: '#bde0fe' # blue marker
accent-blue-deep: '#92c8fa' # deeper blue
accent-orange: '#ffb997' # orange marker
accent-orange-deep: '#ff9970' # deeper orange
accent-purple: '#d4c5f9' # purple marker (lighter than brand)
border: '#1b1b1f1a' # 10% near-black hairline (rare; most borders are hand-drawn)
border-strong: '#1b1b1f33' # 20% near-black for emphasis
border-soft: '#1b1b1f0d' # 5% near-black for subtle dividers
border-hand: '#1b1b1f' # full near-black for hand-drawn borders
on-brand: '#ffffff'
success: '#16a34a' # editorial green
success-bg: '#dcfce7'
warning: '#d97706' # warm amber
warning-bg: '#fef3c7'
danger: '#dc2626' # restrained red
danger-bg: '#fee2e2'
info: '#6965db' # info reuses brand
info-bg: '#e8e7fb'
typography:
display:
family: '"Excalifont", "Virgil", "Cascadia", "Assistant", -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif'
weights: [400, 500, 700]
opentype-features: ['kern']
body:
family: '"Assistant", "Inter", -apple-system, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif'
weights: [400, 500, 600, 700]
opentype-features: ['kern']
hand:
family: '"Virgil", "Excalifont", "Caveat", "Comic Neue", "Patrick Hand", cursive'
weights: [400, 700]
mono:
family: '"Cascadia Code", "Cascadia", "JetBrains Mono", ui-monospace, Menlo, Consolas, monospace'
weights: [400, 500]
scale:
display-hero: { size: 64, weight: 700, lineHeight: 1.05, tracking: '-0.012em', family: display }
display-large: { size: 56, weight: 700, lineHeight: 1.08, tracking: '-0.01em', family: display }
display: { size: 48, weight: 700, lineHeight: 1.1, tracking: '-0.01em', family: display }
h1: { size: 40, weight: 700, lineHeight: 1.12, tracking: '-0.008em', family: display }
h2: { size: 32, weight: 600, lineHeight: 1.2, tracking: '0', family: display }
h3: { size: 24, weight: 600, lineHeight: 1.3, tracking: '0', family: display }
h4: { size: 20, weight: 600, lineHeight: 1.35, tracking: '0', family: display }
h5: { size: 18, weight: 600, lineHeight: 1.4, tracking: '0', family: display }
h6: { size: 16, weight: 600, lineHeight: 1.4, tracking: '0', family: display }
body-large: { size: 18, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.6, tracking: '0', family: body }
body: { size: 16, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.55, tracking: '0', family: body }
body-small: { size: 14, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.5, tracking: '0', family: body }
hand-large: { size: 32, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.2, tracking: '0', family: hand }
hand: { size: 18, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.3, tracking: '0', family: hand }
hand-small: { size: 14, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.35, tracking: '0', family: hand }
label: { size: 12, weight: 600, lineHeight: 1.3, tracking: '0.02em', family: body }
caption: { size: 13, weight: 500, lineHeight: 1.4, tracking: '0', family: body }
code-inline: { size: 14, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.4, tracking: '0', family: mono }
code: { size: 14, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.5, tracking: '0', family: mono }
radius:
none: 0
micro: 2
xs: 4
sm: 6
md: 6
card: 8
button: 6
lg: 10
xl: 12
pill: 9999
spacing:
base: 4
scale: [1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 32, 40, 48, 64, 80]
layout:
page-width: 1200
prose-width: 720
header-height: 56
hero-padding-y: 80
section-padding-y: 64
card-padding: 20
components:
button-primary:
backgroundColor: brand
textColor: on-brand
radius: button
padding: '10px 18px'
font: { family: body, weight: 600, size: 15 }
border: border-hand
borderWidth: 2
hover: { backgroundColor: brand-hover }
use: 'Muted purple — primary action with hand-drawn 2px border'
button-secondary:
backgroundColor: transparent
textColor: text
border: border-hand
borderWidth: 2
radius: button
padding: '10px 18px'
font: { family: body, weight: 600, size: 15 }
hover: { backgroundColor: surface-soft }
use: 'Hand-drawn outlined button — secondary action'
button-ghost:
backgroundColor: transparent
textColor: text
radius: button
padding: '8px 12px'
font: { family: body, weight: 500, size: 14 }
hover: { backgroundColor: surface-soft }
use: 'Tertiary inline action'
card:
backgroundColor: surface
border: border-hand
borderWidth: 2
radius: card
padding: 20
shadow: 'none'
use: 'Sketch card — drawn with hand-rendered border, not a clean stroke'
shape-rect:
backgroundColor: accent-yellow
border: border-hand
borderWidth: 2
radius: sm
padding: 16
use: 'On-canvas drawn primitive — wobbly rectangle with marker fill'
sticky-marker:
backgroundColor: accent-yellow
textColor: text-on-pastel
border: border-hand
borderWidth: 2
radius: sm
padding: 12
rotation: '-1.5deg'
use: 'Dry-erase note with hand-drawn border and rough.js stroke randomness'
badge:
backgroundColor: surface-soft
textColor: text
border: border-hand
borderWidth: 1
radius: pill
padding: '4px 10px'
font: { family: body, weight: 600, size: 12 }
input:
backgroundColor: surface
border: border-hand
borderWidth: 2
radius: md
padding: '10px 14px'
font: { family: body, weight: 400, size: 16 }
focus: { border: brand, ring: '0 0 0 3px rgba(105,101,219,0.3)' }
motion:
ease-standard: 'cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1)'
ease-emphasized: 'cubic-bezier(0.34, 1.56, 0.64, 1)' # toy-like overshoot
ease-decelerate: 'cubic-bezier(0, 0, 0.2, 1)'
duration-instant: 80
duration-fast: 150
duration-standard: 220
duration-slow: 320
duration-emphasized: 480
hover-lift: 'translateY(-1px) rotate(-0.3deg)'
page-transition: 'opacity, 220ms standard'
reduced-motion: 'respects prefers-reduced-motion: reduce — collapses transforms and rotation to opacity-only at 100ms; rough.js stroke randomness is preserved (it is not motion)'
breakpoints:
mobile: 480
tablet: 768
desktop: 1024
wide: 1280
ultra: 1440
shadows:
none: 'none'
ambient: 'none' # Excalidraw refuses ambient shadow
raised: 'rgba(0,0,0,0.06) 0 2px 4px' # rare, only on hovered cards
popover: 'rgba(0,0,0,0.12) 0 8px 24px' # tooltips, dropdowns
ring: '0 0 0 3px rgba(105,101,219,0.3)'
accessibility:
contrast-text-on-bg: 16.8 # AAA — near-black on cream-white
contrast-text-on-brand: 4.7 # AA at body sizes
contrast-muted-on-bg: 7.4 # AAA at body
contrast-on-pastel-yellow: 16.4 # AAA — near-black on yellow marker
contrast-on-pastel-pink: 12.2 # AAA — near-black on pink marker
focus-ring: '3px solid rgba(105,101,219,0.4) with 1px offset'
reduced-motion-honored: true
keyboard-trap-free: true
min-touch-target: 44
dark-mode: optional
colors-dark:
bg: '#121212'
bg-canvas: '#1a1a1a'
bg-warm: '#1e1c18'
surface: '#1f1f1f'
surface-soft: '#2a2a2a'
surface-hover: '#333333'
text: '#f5f5f5'
text-muted: '#a8a8a8'
text-soft: '#787878'
text-faint: '#525252'
brand: '#8b87e6'
brand-hover: '#a4a0ed'
border-hand: '#f5f5f5'
border: '#ffffff1a'
border-strong: '#ffffff33'
on-brand: '#ffffff'
accent-yellow: '#5c4d20'
accent-pink: '#5c2828'
accent-green: '#2a4a37'
accent-blue: '#28456a'
accent-orange: '#5c3520'
accent-purple: '#3a2f5c'
lineage:
summary: |
Excalidraw's design philosophy is "draw it badly on purpose." Every shape on
the canvas is rendered through rough.js, which introduces deliberate randomness
into stroke paths so that a rectangle never looks machine-perfect. The brand
font is Virgil (and its modern successor Excalifont), a handwriting cut designed
to read as if jotted on a whiteboard. The marketing site itself is dressed in
the same primitive chrome — paper-white canvas with cream undertone, near-black
hand-drawn borders, and pastel accent fills that mimic dry-erase markers. A
single muted purple (`#6965db`) carries primary action, but even that button
reads slightly hand-drawn on hover, with the 2px border rendered through
rough.js for stroke randomness. The lineage runs back through Paper.app and
the earlier whiteboard-software tradition; the descendants are tldraw and
Whimsical, which polish the metaphor. Excalidraw keeps it deliberately rough.
The open-source-pragmatic ethos is itself part of the brand — the marketing
surface refuses the polish that would make it look like venture-backed SaaS,
and that refusal aligns with the project's open-source community-first values.
influences:
- name: Paper / FiftyThree
role: Hand-drawn primitive aesthetic translated to web canvas; the original tablet-as-sketchbook lineage.
url: https://www.fiftythree.com
- name: rough.js
role: The library that renders every stroke wobbly — central to the brand identity, not just a stylistic flourish.
url: https://roughjs.com
- name: Whiteboards / dry-erase tradition
role: The conceptual ground; pastel marker hues, hand-printed labels, and accepted imprecision.
url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteboard
- name: tldraw
role: Inverse reference — tldraw polishes the whiteboard metaphor into SaaS chrome; Excalidraw refuses to polish.
url: https://tldraw.com
- name: Comic Neue / Caveat / Patrick Hand
role: The wider handwriting-fonts tradition; permission to use hand-drawn type as serious typography.
url: https://www.comicneue.com
---
## 1. Visual Theme & Atmosphere
Excalidraw's most striking decision is to render every visual primitive with deliberate imprecision. Borders wobble. Rectangles have slightly different stroke weight on each side. Arrows curl in unexpected places. This is not an aesthetic accident — it is rough.js doing its work, and it is the entire brand. The marketing site extends the same philosophy: cards have hand-drawn borders, shape-fills are dry-erase pastels, and even the H1 sits in a handwriting-coded sans (Excalifont, the Virgil successor).
The canvas is paper-white at `#fffefd` with the slightest cream undertone — not sterile pure white, not warm cream, but a near-paper that recalls a fresh whiteboard or the inside cover of a Moleskine. Text is near-black `#1b1b1f` with a touch of warm undertone; a single muted purple (`#6965db`) carries CTAs. The chromatic palette beyond that is dry-erase markers: yellow `#ffe066`, pink `#ffadad`, green `#9be7c4`, blue `#bde0fe`, orange `#ffb997`, purple `#d4c5f9`. These are not modern pastel surface tints (the way tldraw uses them as soft-pastel-card-fills) but literal dry-erase marker shades — saturated enough to read as marker-fluid, soft enough to not break the paper canvas.
Display type is **Excalifont** (or Virgil, the original) — a handwriting-coded sans that reads as if printed by hand on a whiteboard. Sized 48–64px / 700 with `-0.01em` tracking. The slight negative track tightens what would otherwise feel too casual; without it, Excalifont at 700 reads as friendly-but-amateur. Body type is **Assistant** at 16px on a 1.55 line-height — a sans cut chosen for its friendly, slightly-rounded letterforms that pair with the handwriting display without competing against it. The mono companion is Cascadia Code (originally a Microsoft developer-focused mono), a typewriter-grade choice that feels appropriate for a tool used by developers.
The atmosphere is open-source-pragmatic. The marketing surface refuses the polish that would make it look like venture-backed SaaS — there are no glossy hero illustrations, no animated 3D mockups, no carefully-art-directed product photography. Instead, the page shows screenshots of Excalidraw itself, hand-drawn arrow primitives marking feature flows, and pastel-fill rectangles labeled with handwriting. The refusal to polish aligns with the project's open-source community-first values, and it is a deliberate brand statement: "we are a tool, not a product, and we look like one".
Where tldraw cleans the whiteboard metaphor into polished SaaS chrome (rounded shapes, soft shadows, friendly Inter weights), Excalidraw doubles down on the hand-drawn nature. The shape borders are *literally* hand-drawn through rough.js, which renders SVG paths with stroke randomness so a rectangle's four corners are never quite the same. The chrome is deliberately primitive — wobbly borders, hand-drawn icons, no shadows — and the imprecision is the brand's most coherent statement. The casual chrome would read as chaotic if not for the chromatic restraint (one purple, six dry-erase pastels) and the typographic discipline (Excalifont + Assistant, never more).
**Key Characteristics**
- Paper-white canvas (`#fffefd`) with slight cream undertone — never sterile white
- Hand-drawn borders rendered through rough.js — every rectangle's strokes are randomised
- Excalifont (or Virgil) display family — handwriting-coded sans for the whiteboard cue
- Assistant body family — friendly slightly-rounded sans that pairs with handwriting
- Dry-erase marker palette: yellow, pink, green, blue, orange, purple — saturated marker-fluid hues
- Single muted purple (`#6965db`) carries primary action — the only modern UI accent
- 2px hand-drawn near-black border (`#1b1b1f`) is the entire elevation system
- Small radius ladder: 4 / 6 / 8 / 10px — the hand-drawn corners blur precision anyway
- 20px card padding, 64–80px section padding — moderately tight, casual rather than airy
- No drop shadows, no gradients, no atmospheric blur — the refusal of polish is the discipline
## 2. Color Palette & Roles
### Primary
- **bg** (`#fffefd`): paper-white canvas with the slightest cream undertone; never pure white.
- **text** (`#1b1b1f`): near-black with warm undertone; doubles as the colour of hand-drawn borders.
- **brand** (`#6965db`): muted purple, the only saturated UI accent.
- **bg-canvas** (`#ffffff`): pure white for embedded canvas demos that need maximum brightness.
### Brand & Dark
- **brand-hover** (`#5651c5`): darker purple a half-step on press.
- **brand-active** (`#443fa3`): deepest pressed purple.
- **brand-soft** (`#e8e7fb`): softest purple tint for selection backgrounds.
- **brand-faint** (`#f3f2fd`): near-white purple tint for subtle hover surfaces.
- **text-strong** (`#0f0f12`): display copy when extra punch is needed.
### Accent (Dry-erase Markers)
The marker palette is the brand's secondary chromatic vocabulary. Each appears as a marker fill on shape primitives:
- **accent-yellow** (`#ffe066`) / **deep** (`#fad434`): canonical marker yellow.
- **accent-pink** (`#ffadad`) / **deep** (`#ff8888`): pink marker.
- **accent-green** (`#9be7c4`) / **deep** (`#6fd29f`): green marker.
- **accent-blue** (`#bde0fe`) / **deep** (`#92c8fa`): blue marker.
- **accent-orange** (`#ffb997`) / **deep** (`#ff9970`): orange marker.
- **accent-purple** (`#d4c5f9`): light marker purple (distinguished from brand purple).
These are saturated enough to read as marker-fluid but soft enough to allow text overlay at 4.5:1+ contrast.
### Interactive
- **link**: `brand` (`#6965db`); the link colour and the action colour are the same hue.
- **link-hover**: `brand-hover`; underline appears on hover.
- **selected**: `brand-soft` (`#e8e7fb`) as fill, `brand` as text.
- **disabled**: `text-faint` (`#bababa`) on `surface-soft`.
### Neutral Scale
- **text-muted** (`#5b5b5b`): captions, meta, secondary copy.
- **text-soft** (`#8a8a8a`): tertiary text — timestamps, micro-copy.
- **text-faint** (`#bababa`): disabled labels.
### Surface & Borders
- **surface** (`#ffffff`): default card surface.
- **surface-soft** (`#fafafa`): secondary panel tint.
- **surface-warm** (`#f5f0e0`): warm-tint surface for editorial callouts.
- **surface-soft-warm** (`#fdfaf2`): softest warm tint, just barely visible.
- **surface-hover** (`#f5f5f5`): hover state.
- **bg-warm** (`#fdf6e3`): warm cream tint for nested panels (rare).
- **bg-paper** (`#fafafa`): standard paper-fill for blocks.
- **border** (`#1b1b1f1a`): 10% near-black hairline (rare; most borders are hand-drawn).
- **border-strong** (`#1b1b1f33`): 20% near-black for emphasis.
- **border-soft** (`#1b1b1f0d`): 5% near-black for subtle dividers.
- **border-hand** (`#1b1b1f`): full near-black for hand-drawn borders — the canonical card border.
### Shadow Colors
- **none**: the default — Excalidraw refuses ambient shadow on the canvas.
- **raised** (`rgba(0,0,0,0.06) 0 2px 4px`): rare, only on hovered cards.
- **popover** (`rgba(0,0,0,0.12) 0 8px 24px`): tooltips and dropdowns.
The 2px hand-drawn near-black border is the entire elevation system. Shadows would compete with the hand-drawn cue and read as polished SaaS rather than rough whiteboard.
### Semantic
- **success** (`#16a34a`) on **success-bg** (`#dcfce7`): editorial green.
- **warning** (`#d97706`) on **warning-bg** (`#fef3c7`): warm amber.
- **danger** (`#dc2626`) on **danger-bg** (`#fee2e2`): restrained red.
- **info** (`#6965db`) on **info-bg** (`#e8e7fb`): info reuses brand purple.
## 3. Typography Rules
### Font Family
- **Display**: Excalifont → Virgil → Cascadia → Assistant → -apple-system → system-ui → Segoe UI → Helvetica → Arial → sans-serif.
- **Body**: Assistant → Inter → -apple-system → system-ui → Segoe UI → Helvetica → Arial → sans-serif.
- **Hand companion**: Virgil → Excalifont → Caveat → Comic Neue → Patrick Hand → cursive. Used for on-canvas annotations.
- **Mono companion**: Cascadia Code → Cascadia → JetBrains Mono → ui-monospace → Menlo → Consolas → monospace.
- **OpenType features**: only `kern` (default) — Excalifont and Virgil are handwriting cuts that don't ship full OpenType feature sets, and the system embraces that constraint.
### Hierarchy
| Role | Font | Size | Weight | Line Height | Letter Spacing | OT Features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| display-hero | Excalifont | 64 | 700 | 1.05 | -0.012em | kern | reserved for the boldest marketing |
| display-large | Excalifont | 56 | 700 | 1.08 | -0.01em | kern | secondary heroes |
| display | Excalifont | 48 | 700 | 1.1 | -0.01em | kern | the canonical hero size |
| h1 | Excalifont | 40 | 700 | 1.12 | -0.008em | kern | section heads |
| h2 | Excalifont | 32 | 600 | 1.2 | 0 | kern | feature-band heads |
| h3 | Excalifont | 24 | 600 | 1.3 | 0 | kern | sub-feature heads |
| h4 | Excalifont | 20 | 600 | 1.35 | 0 | kern | card heads |
| h5 | Excalifont | 18 | 600 | 1.4 | 0 | kern | inline emphasis |
| h6 | Excalifont | 16 | 600 | 1.4 | 0 | kern | label-grade heads |
| body-large | Assistant | 18 | 400 | 1.6 | 0 | kern | hero subheads |
| body | Assistant | 16 | 400 | 1.55 | 0 | kern | default reading |
| body-small | Assistant | 14 | 400 | 1.5 | 0 | kern | secondary copy |
| hand-large | Virgil | 32 | 400 | 1.2 | 0 | — | whiteboard annotation |
| hand | Virgil | 18 | 400 | 1.3 | 0 | — | sticky-note marker text |
| hand-small | Virgil | 14 | 400 | 1.35 | 0 | — | inline marker label |
| label | Assistant | 12 | 600 | 1.3 | 0.02em | — | category cues |
| caption | Assistant | 13 | 500 | 1.4 | 0 | — | image / chart caption |
| code-inline | Cascadia | 14 | 400 | 1.4 | 0 | — | inline code |
| code | Cascadia | 14 | 400 | 1.5 | 0 | — | code block |
### Principles
- **Excalifont (or Virgil) is the headline voice**: a handwriting-coded sans signals the whiteboard register. A clean geometric sans (Inter, SF Pro) breaks the metaphor entirely and shifts the brand toward generic SaaS.
- **Assistant is the body workhorse**: the friendly slightly-rounded sans pairs with the handwriting display without competing. Inter at 400 reads as too neutral; Cascadia at 400 reads as too technical. Assistant is the negotiated middle.
- **Modest tracking discipline**: tracking caps at `-0.012em` at hero scale. Excalifont and Virgil are inherently softer than geometric sans; pulling negative tracking too hard collapses the letterforms.
- **No serif in the system**: Excalidraw refuses serif outright. The handwriting + sans pair carries every typographic register.
- **Cascadia for code**: the developer-tool register pulls Cascadia (originally a Microsoft developer-focused mono) first. JetBrains Mono is the open-source fallback.
- **The hand companion is for on-canvas annotation**: anywhere the page is showing a sketch or annotation, type switches to Virgil. This is the typographic equivalent of writing on a whiteboard with a marker.
## 4. Component Stylings
### Buttons
**Primary (muted purple with hand-drawn border)**
- Background: `#6965db`. Text: `#ffffff` at Assistant 600 / 15px. Padding: `10px 18px`. Radius: 6px. Border: `2px solid #1b1b1f` (rendered through rough.js for stroke randomness).
- Hover: background → `#5651c5`, no transform. Active: background → `#443fa3`.
- Use: every primary CTA — Try Excalidraw, Open editor, Get started.
**Secondary (outlined with hand-drawn border)**
- Background: transparent. Text: `#1b1b1f` at Assistant 600 / 15px. Padding: `10px 18px`. Radius: 6px. Border: `2px solid #1b1b1f` (hand-drawn).
- Hover: background → `#fafafa`. Use: secondary action.
**Ghost (no border)**
- Background: transparent. Text: `#1b1b1f` at Assistant 500 / 14px. Padding: `8px 12px`. Radius: 6px.
- Hover: background → `#fafafa`. Use: nav links, tertiary inline action.
### Cards
**Sketch card** (the canonical card)
- Background: `#ffffff`. Border: `2px solid #1b1b1f` rendered through rough.js for stroke randomness. Radius: 8px. Padding: 20px. No shadow.
- Hover: transform → `translateY(-1px) rotate(-0.3deg)` over 150ms; the slight rotation reinforces the hand-drawn cue. Optional `raised` shadow on hover.
- Use: feature cards, pricing, testimonials — the universal card primitive.
**Marker shape** (on-canvas drawn primitive)
- Background: pastel marker hue (yellow / pink / green / blue / orange / purple). Border: `2px solid #1b1b1f` hand-drawn. Radius: 6px. Padding: 16px.
- Use: in-canvas drawn primitives, feature illustrations.
**Sticky marker** (dry-erase note)
- Background: `#ffe066` (or other marker hue). Text: `#1b1b1f` at Virgil 400 / 18px or Assistant 500 / 16px. Border: `2px solid #1b1b1f` hand-drawn. Radius: 6px. Padding: 12px.
- Rotation: `-1.5deg` to `+1deg` randomised; never aligned to grid.
- Use: feature callouts, on-canvas annotations.
### Badges, Tags, Pills
**Hand-drawn badge**
- Background: `#fafafa`. Text: `#1b1b1f` at Assistant 600 / 12px tracked `+0.02em`. Border: `1px solid #1b1b1f` hand-drawn. Radius: 9999px. Padding: `4px 10px`.
- Use: status tags, category labels.
**Marker tag**
- Background: marker pastel (e.g. `#9be7c4` green). Text: `#1b1b1f` at Assistant 600 / 12px. Border: `1px solid #1b1b1f` hand-drawn. Radius: 9999px. Padding: `4px 10px`.
- Use: feature highlights inside marker shapes.
### Inputs / Forms
**Text input**
- Background: `#ffffff`. Border: `2px solid #1b1b1f` hand-drawn. Radius: 6px. Padding: `10px 14px`. Font: Assistant 400 / 16px.
- Focus: border → `#6965db`, ring `0 0 0 3px rgba(105,101,219,0.3)`.
- Placeholder: `#8a8a8a`.
### Navigation
**Top bar**
- Background: `#fffefd` with no bottom border (or hand-drawn `2px solid #1b1b1f` line if needed). Height: 56px.
- Logo: Excalidraw wordmark in Excalifont 700 / 22px in `#1b1b1f`.
- Nav items: Assistant 500 / 14px, colour `#1b1b1f`, hover background → `#fafafa`.
- Primary CTA visible at top right (purple button with hand-drawn border).
### Tooltips, Toasts, Modals
- **Tooltip**: background `#1b1b1f`, text `#ffffff` at Assistant 500 / 12px, radius 4px, padding `6px 10px`. Shadow: `popover` (one of the few places shadow appears).
- **Toast**: background `#ffffff`, border `2px solid #1b1b1f` hand-drawn, radius 8px, no shadow. Padding `12px 16px`.
- **Modal**: background `#ffffff`, border `2px solid #1b1b1f` hand-drawn, radius 12px. Backdrop: `rgba(0,0,0,0.4)`. Padding 24px.
## 5. Layout Principles
### Spacing System
Base unit: 4px. Scale: `[1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 32, 40, 48, 64, 80]` × 4px. The system uses moderate-tight intervals — 16–20px gutters, 32–48px between feature blocks, 64–80px between major bands. Density is medium-tight: tighter than tldraw, tighter than ElevenLabs, looser than Are.na.
### Grid & Container
- **Page width**: 1200px max, centred.
- **Prose width**: 720px for editorial blog and docs.
- **Hero treatment**: hero copy claims roughly 700–800px horizontal, often with hand-drawn illustration (rendered live via rough.js) anchoring the right column.
- **Feature grid**: 3-column at 1024px+, 2-column at 768–1024px, 1-column below 768px. Card gap: 20–24px.
### Whitespace Philosophy
Layout is loose and casual, mirroring an actual whiteboard. Hero content typically sits at left, with a hand-drawn illustration anchoring the right column. Sections flow vertically with moderate whitespace, and section dividers are often hand-drawn squiggles rather than horizontal rules. The casual rhythm is intentional — Excalidraw is not aiming for the precision-rhythm of Linear or the magazine-rhythm of Notion.
### Section Cadence
The cadence is single-canvas continuous — there is no band-cycling, no light-dark alternation, no chromatic event between sections. The page reads as a single hand-drawn surface from top to bottom, with sections separated by spacing and the occasional hand-drawn squiggle divider. The continuity is part of the brand's casual-pragmatic register.
## 6. Shapes & Radius Scale
| Tier | Value | Use |
|---|---|---|
| none | 0px | rare; full-bleed images |
| micro | 2px | tight inline indicators |
| xs | 4px | small inline pills, micro UI |
| sm | 6px | tooltips, small popovers |
| md | 6px | text inputs, secondary buttons (note: same as sm) |
| button | 6px | the canonical button radius |
| card | 8px | the canonical card radius |
| lg | 10px | larger feature cards |
| xl | 12px | modals |
| pill | 9999px | badges, status tags |
The radius ladder is small and tight: 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 / 12px. Buttons land at 6px, cards at 8px. The hand-drawn nature of borders means radius rarely reads as a precise number — rough.js renders corners with their own subtle imprecision, so the visible radius is "approximately 6–8px" rather than exactly that. The smallness of the radius ladder is what keeps the design from drifting toward modern-rounded SaaS chrome.
## 7. Depth & Elevation
| Level | Treatment | Use |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | flat, on `#fffefd` paper canvas | body content, default surfaces |
| 1 | `2px solid #1b1b1f` hand-drawn border | the canonical card; depth via thick hand-drawn border |
| 2 | hand-drawn border + `translateY(-1px) rotate(-0.3deg)` on hover | hovered card |
| 3 | optional `raised` shadow on emphasis cards | rare floating panel |
| 4 | `popover` shadow + 8px radius | tooltip, dropdown, menu |
| 5 | hand-drawn border + backdrop, 12px radius | modal |
**Shadow Philosophy**: there is essentially no shadow in the system. Depth comes from the hand-drawn near-black border surrounding each card — wobbly stroke width, slight imperfection at the corners, no fill or hairline. This is the entire elevation system. Shadows would compete with the hand-drawn cue and shift the brand toward polished SaaS. The only places shadow appears are tooltips and dropdowns where elevation is functionally required.
## 8. Interaction & Motion
### Easing
- **standard**: `cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1)` — workhorse Material-style ease.
- **emphasized**: `cubic-bezier(0.34, 1.56, 0.64, 1)` — slight overshoot for the toy-like cue; used on hover lifts.
- **decelerate**: `cubic-bezier(0, 0, 0.2, 1)` — used for elements entering from off-canvas.
### Durations
- **instant** (80ms): hover background colour shifts.
- **fast** (150ms): card hover lift, link underline.
- **standard** (220ms): button press, dropdown open.
- **slow** (320ms): modal open.
- **emphasized** (480ms): hero entrance choreography.
### Per-component micro-states
- **Button hover**: background colour shift over 150ms with `standard` ease; no transform.
- **Card hover**: transform → `translateY(-1px) rotate(-0.3deg)` over 150ms with `emphasized` ease; the slight rotation reinforces the hand-drawn cue.
- **Sticky marker hover**: rotation animates from `-1.5deg` to `0deg` (or vice versa) over 150ms; the hand-drawn border stays.
- **Link hover**: underline appears over 100ms; brand purple stays.
- **Input focus**: ring fades in at 100ms; border colour shifts to brand purple simultaneously.
- **rough.js stroke randomness**: not motion — the stroke randomness is rendered once per element on mount and persists. It is not animated, and it persists under reduced-motion.
### Page transitions
Excalidraw uses opacity-only fades at 220ms with `standard` ease for route transitions — quiet and pragmatic, matching the open-source-pragmatic register. No slide, no scale, no parallax.
### Reduced-motion strategy
`prefers-reduced-motion: reduce` is fully respected: all transform-based animations (lifts, rotations) collapse to opacity-only at 100ms. The sticky-marker rotation becomes static. Hover lifts disappear. **rough.js stroke randomness is preserved** because it is not motion — it is a static visual rendering that happens to look hand-drawn.
## 9. Accessibility & A11y
### Contrast pairs (computed)
- **text on bg**: `#1b1b1f` on `#fffefd` → 16.8:1 (AAA at all sizes).
- **text-muted on bg**: `#5b5b5b` on `#fffefd` → 7.4:1 (AAA at body sizes).
- **on-brand on brand**: `#ffffff` on `#6965db` → 4.7:1 (AA at body, AAA at large).
- **text on accent-yellow**: `#1b1b1f` on `#ffe066` → 16.4:1 (AAA).
- **text on accent-pink**: `#1b1b1f` on `#ffadad` → 12.2:1 (AAA).
- **text on accent-green**: `#1b1b1f` on `#9be7c4` → 13.8:1 (AAA).
- **text on accent-blue**: `#1b1b1f` on `#bde0fe` → 14.4:1 (AAA).
- **brand on bg**: `#6965db` on `#fffefd` → 4.8:1 (AA at body).
### Focus indicators
- **Default focus ring**: `3px solid rgba(105,101,219,0.4)` with 1px offset; brand purple ring.
- **Within input fields**: border colour shifts to `#6965db` and adds a `0 0 0 3px rgba(105,101,219,0.3)` ring.
- **On marker pastels**: ring uses `rgba(27,27,31,0.5)` (near-black ring) for sufficient contrast.
Focus rings are never removed. The hand-drawn border discipline does not extend to focus rings (which must be precise for accessibility).
### ARIA patterns
- Embedded canvas demos use `role="application"` with full keyboard semantics for the editor.
- Sticky-marker callouts carry `role="note"` with `aria-label` describing the content.
- Modals use `role="dialog"`, `aria-modal="true"`, focus trap, `Esc` to close.
- The hand-drawn icons throughout the UI carry `aria-label` describing their action; visual idiosyncrasy doesn't excuse semantic clarity.
### Keyboard nav order
Top bar → hero CTA → embedded canvas (if interactive) → feature bands → pricing → footer. Tab order matches visual order. Skip-to-content link visible on focus.
### Screen reader hints
- Decorative hand-drawn squiggle dividers carry `aria-hidden="true"`.
- Sticky-marker callouts carry `aria-label` describing the message.
- Embedded canvas demos carry `aria-label="Interactive whiteboard editor"`.
- Hand-drawn icons carry `aria-label` describing the action ("Save", "Export", "Open file").
### Reduced motion
Honored throughout — see §8. The rough.js stroke randomness is preserved (not motion).
## 10. Responsive Behavior
### Breakpoints
| Tier | Width | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
| mobile | < 480px | single column, 12px gutter, 48px section padding, hero at 32–36px |
| tablet | 480–768px | single column, 16px gutter, 56px section padding, hero at 40–48px |
| desktop | 768–1024px | 2-column feature grids, 20px gutter, 64px section padding |
| wide | 1024–1280px | 3-column feature grids, 24px gutter, 80px section padding |
| ultra | 1280px+ | container caps at 1200px, hero at 48–64px |
### Touch Targets
Minimum 44×44px on touch devices. The 10px / 18px button padding on mobile expands to 12px / 20px to clear the threshold.
### Collapsing strategy
- **Top nav**: hamburger menu < 768px; primary CTA stays visible.
- **Hero**: hand-drawn illustration moves below copy < 768px; copy claims full width.
- **Feature grid**: 3 → 2 → 1 columns at 1024 / 768 / 480.
- **Sticky markers**: stack vertically < 768px, lose extreme rotation for tighter packing.
- **Footer**: 4-column → 2-column → 1-column at 1024 / 768 / 480.
### Image behavior
Hand-drawn illustrations rendered live via rough.js are scalable SVG and reflow naturally. Static screenshots use `aspect-ratio: 16/10` lock with `object-fit: contain`.
### Container queries
Used inside the embedded canvas — the toolbar switches between expanded (icon + label) and condensed (icon-only) modes based on container width.
## 11. Content & Voice
### Tone
Excalidraw's tone is **open-source-pragmatic**: direct, friendly, and developer-respectful. It writes like a contributor README — present-tense, short bulletins, no marketing rhetoric. Headlines are descriptive ("Excalidraw is a virtual collaborative whiteboard."); secondary copy explains the mechanism plainly. The voice positions Excalidraw as a tool used by collaborators and developers, not a product sold to enterprises.
### Microcopy patterns
- **Button verbs**: "Try Excalidraw", "Open editor", "Get the source", "Read the docs", "Star on GitHub". Every CTA is action-forward; the GitHub-star CTA is the brand's open-source register.
- **Error messages**: pattern is "[Action] failed. [Reason if known]." e.g. "Couldn't save — connection lost. Your drawing is preserved locally."
- **Success confirmations**: short, declarative, often paired with a hand-drawn checkmark. "Saved." rather than "Your drawing has been saved successfully!"
### Empty states
Empty states are inviting and demo-forward, often using a hand-drawn arrow primitive pointing to the action area. "Start drawing here" with an arrow toward the canvas. Empty-state copy never uses cheerful illustrations or "Oops!" copy — the casual register stays even when the canvas is empty.
### CTA verb conventions
- **Primary marketing CTA**: "Try Excalidraw" — invitation-style verb, actually navigates to the live editor.
- **Developer CTA**: "Get the source", "Read the docs", "Star on GitHub" — open-source community verbs.
- **Feature CTA**: "Open editor", "Try in browser".
- **Newsletter**: rare; if present, "Follow updates" or "Subscribe".
## 12. Dark Mode & Theming
Excalidraw ships an optional dark mode for both the marketing surface and the editor. The dark map (see frontmatter `colors-dark`):
- **bg**: `#121212` (warm near-black, not pure black)
- **bg-canvas**: `#1a1a1a` for embedded editor demos
- **bg-warm**: `#1e1c18` for warm-tinted nested panels
- **surface**: `#1f1f1f`, **surface-soft**: `#2a2a2a`, **surface-hover**: `#333333`
- **text**: `#f5f5f5` (slightly soft white)
- **text-muted**: `#a8a8a8`, **text-soft**: `#787878`
- **brand**: `#8b87e6` — purple lifts to maintain contrast against dark
- **border-hand**: `#f5f5f5` — inverted; the hand-drawn border becomes light-on-dark
- **border**: `#ffffff1a`, **border-strong**: `#ffffff33`
- **Marker pastels become muted-deep**: yellow → `#5c4d20`, pink → `#5c2828`, green → `#2a4a37`, blue → `#28456a`, orange → `#5c3520`, purple → `#3a2f5c`
When implementing dark mode:
- The hand-drawn `2px` border inverts to light-on-dark (`#f5f5f5` instead of `#1b1b1f`); rough.js stroke randomness persists.
- The brand purple shifts from `#6965db` to `#8b87e6` to maintain contrast.
- Marker pastels become muted-deep variants — still identifiable as "the yellow" or "the green", but tuned for low-light comfort.
- No shadows are added; the hand-drawn border continues to carry elevation.
- The cream undertone of the canvas is replaced with warm-near-black undertone (`#121212` instead of pure black `#000000`).
The dark mode follows `prefers-color-scheme: dark` automatically, with manual override available via the editor's theme toggle.
## 13. Lineage & Influences
Excalidraw's design philosophy is "draw it badly on purpose." The lineage runs through three distinct traditions:
**Hand-drawn primitive software**: FiftyThree's Paper.app (the original tablet sketchbook), Penultimate (the iPad note-taking app), and the wider tablet-as-sketchbook tradition. These references treat the digital canvas as a sketchbook surface and render strokes with deliberate randomness to mimic ink and pencil. Excalidraw inherits this language directly through rough.js.
**rough.js library**: the JavaScript library that renders SVG paths with stroke randomness, written by Preet Shihn specifically to make computer-drawn graphics look hand-drawn. rough.js is not just a stylistic flourish — it is *central* to the brand identity, and removing it would unmoor Excalidraw from its visual lineage. Every shape on the canvas, every card border on the marketing site, and every illustration is rendered through rough.js.
**Whiteboard / dry-erase tradition**: the conceptual ground. Pastel marker hues, hand-printed labels, accepted imprecision, the comfort of writing on a wall. Excalidraw translates this into web canvas form, and the pastel marker palette (yellow, pink, green, blue, orange, purple) is taken directly from the standard dry-erase marker set.
What Excalidraw rejects: polished SaaS chrome (tldraw is the explicit polished sibling), broadcast marketing aesthetics (no Off-White-style typography, no industrial poster register), gradient or shadow elevation systems, and any chromatic system that involves more than the muted purple + dry-erase markers. The open-source-pragmatic register is itself the discipline.
**Named influences**
- **Paper / FiftyThree** ([fiftythree.com](https://www.fiftythree.com)) — Hand-drawn primitive aesthetic translated to web canvas; the original tablet-as-sketchbook lineage.
- **rough.js** ([roughjs.com](https://roughjs.com)) — The library that renders every stroke wobbly; central to the brand identity, not just a stylistic flourish.
- **Whiteboards / dry-erase tradition** ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteboard)) — The conceptual ground; pastel marker hues, hand-printed labels, accepted imprecision.
- **tldraw** ([tldraw.com](https://tldraw.com)) — Inverse reference; tldraw polishes the whiteboard metaphor into SaaS chrome, Excalidraw refuses to polish.
- **Comic Neue / Caveat / Patrick Hand** ([comicneue.com](https://www.comicneue.com)) — The wider handwriting-fonts tradition; permission to use hand-drawn type as serious typography.
## 14. Do's and Don'ts
**Do**
- Render shape borders through rough.js or equivalent — the imprecision is the brand, not a flaw. Every rectangle's four corners should be subtly different.
- Use Virgil or Excalifont as the display family; a clean geometric sans (Inter, SF Pro) breaks the whiteboard metaphor entirely.
- Keep the accent palette to dry-erase marker hues — saturated UI blues and greens read as "polished SaaS" instead.
- Use the 2px hand-drawn near-black border as the entire elevation system; it is the brand's most direct visual statement.
- Pair Excalifont (display) with Assistant (body); the friendly slightly-rounded body sans is what keeps the type system legible at paragraph scale.
- Run sticky markers with subtle randomised rotation (`-1.5deg` to `+1deg`) and the 2px hand-drawn border; they should read as taped on a whiteboard.
- Use Cascadia Code for code samples; the developer-tool register pulls Cascadia first.
- Honor `prefers-reduced-motion: reduce` — collapse hover lifts and rotations to opacity-only. **Preserve rough.js stroke randomness** (it is not motion).
- Run sections at 64–80px vertical padding; the casual whiteboard rhythm is medium-tight.
- Show the actual product (live Excalidraw editor screenshots and embedded demos) rather than art-directed marketing illustrations.
**Don't**
- Don't apply drop-shadows to cards; the hand-drawn border is the entire elevation system.
- Don't clean up the hand-drawn aesthetic into polished SaaS chrome — that's tldraw's territory, not Excalidraw's.
- Don't introduce a second saturated accent next to the muted purple; the chromatic restraint is what keeps the casual chrome from reading as chaotic.
- Don't replace Excalifont / Virgil with Inter or SF Pro for headlines; the handwriting cue is non-negotiable.
- Don't soften the 2px border to a 1px hairline; the thicker hand-drawn line is the brand's signature.
- Don't render shape borders as machine-precise SVG paths; the imprecision through rough.js is the entire brand.
- Don't use modern pastel surface tints (the way tldraw uses them) — the marker palette is more saturated and lives only as marker fills, not as surface tints.
- Don't introduce gradients, atmospheric blur, or 3D effects; the page is flat-paper-with-hand-drawn-strokes.
- Don't use the muted purple for body text; it is reserved for action and brand identity.
- Don't soften the open-source-pragmatic voice with marketing-cheerful copy; the casual-direct register is the brand.
## 15. Agent Prompt Guide
### Quick Color Reference
```
bg: #fffefd
bg-canvas: #ffffff
surface: #ffffff
text: #1b1b1f
text-muted: #5b5b5b
brand: #6965db
brand-hover: #5651c5
brand-soft: #e8e7fb
border-hand: #1b1b1f
accent-yellow: #ffe066
accent-pink: #ffadad
accent-green: #9be7c4
accent-blue: #bde0fe
accent-orange: #ffb997
```
### Example Component Prompts
1. "Create a marketing hero in the Excalidraw style: `#fffefd` paper-white canvas with cream undertone, Excalifont (or Virgil) 700 / 56px headline in `#1b1b1f` with `-0.01em` tracking, Assistant 400 / 18px subhead in `#5b5b5b`, primary purple CTA (`#6965db` background, `#ffffff` text at Assistant 600 / 15px, `2px solid #1b1b1f` hand-drawn border rendered through rough.js, 6px radius, `10px 18px` padding), and a hand-drawn arrow illustration anchoring the right column."
2. "Design a sketch card in the Excalidraw style: `#ffffff` background, `2px solid #1b1b1f` border rendered through rough.js for stroke randomness, 8px radius, 20px padding, NO drop shadow, Excalifont 600 / 24px H3 title, Assistant 400 / 16px body in `#1b1b1f`. Hover: `translateY(-1px) rotate(-0.3deg)` over 150ms with cubic-bezier(0.34, 1.56, 0.64, 1)."
3. "Render a sticky marker in the Excalidraw style: `#ffe066` (yellow) or `#ffadad` (pink) background, `2px solid #1b1b1f` rough.js border, 6px radius, 12px padding, Virgil 400 / 18px text in `#1b1b1f`, randomised rotation between `-1.5deg` and `+1deg`."
4. "Create a marker shape primitive in the Excalidraw style: `#9be7c4` (green) background or any dry-erase pastel, `2px solid #1b1b1f` rough.js border, 6px radius, 16px padding, Virgil 400 / 18px label inside. Use as on-canvas drawn primitive in feature illustrations."
5. "Design a navigation bar in the Excalidraw style: `#fffefd` background with no bottom border (or hand-drawn `2px solid #1b1b1f` line if needed), 56px height, Excalifont 700 / 22px Excalidraw wordmark on the left, Assistant 500 / 14px nav items on the right, primary purple CTA visible at top right with hand-drawn border."
6. "Render an empty-state in the Excalidraw style: plain `#1b1b1f` text at Assistant 400 / 16px reading 'Start drawing here' with the verb 'drawing' as `#6965db` inline link, accompanied by a hand-drawn arrow primitive pointing to the canvas area, no card, no illustration beyond the arrow, all on the `#fffefd` paper canvas."
### Iteration Guide
1. **Start with the canvas**: confirm `#fffefd` paper-white with the slightest cream undertone (not pure white, not warm cream). If your prototype reads sterile, you've drifted toward Linear; if it reads warm, you've drifted toward Notion.
2. **Verify the hand-drawn discipline**: every card border should be 2px near-black rendered through rough.js (or a similar stroke-randomness library). Machine-precise hairlines break the brand entirely.
3. **Audit the type voice**: hero headlines should hit 48–64px in Excalifont (or Virgil) at 700 weight. Body should be Assistant 400 / 16px on 1.55 line-height. If your headline is in Inter or SF Pro, you've broken the whiteboard metaphor.
4. **Check the action colour**: there should be exactly one `#6965db` muted purple per module. Marker pastels (yellow, pink, green, blue, orange, purple) are for shape fills only, never CTAs.
5. **Verify the elevation strategy**: zero drop shadows on cards. If you see any soft shadow, replace it with the 2px hand-drawn border. The only places shadow appears are tooltips and dropdowns.
6. **Confirm the marker palette discipline**: dry-erase markers appear as shape fills only, never as surface tints. A feature module has at most one marker hue.
7. **Test the rough.js rendering**: every shape should render with subtle stroke randomness — corners not quite identical, line weight slightly variable. Static SVG paths read as polished SaaS, not Excalidraw.
8. **Check the reduced-motion path**: hover lifts and sticky-marker rotations should collapse to opacity-only when `prefers-reduced-motion: reduce` is set. **rough.js stroke randomness persists** — it is not motion.
1. Visual Theme & Atmosphere
Excalidraw’s most striking decision is to render every visual primitive with deliberate imprecision. Borders wobble. Rectangles have slightly different stroke weight on each side. Arrows curl in unexpected places. This is not an aesthetic accident — it is rough.js doing its work, and it is the entire brand. The marketing site extends the same philosophy: cards have hand-drawn borders, shape-fills are dry-erase pastels, and even the H1 sits in a handwriting-coded sans (Excalifont, the Virgil successor).
The canvas is paper-white at #fffefd with the slightest cream undertone — not sterile pure white, not warm cream, but a near-paper that recalls a fresh whiteboard or the inside cover of a Moleskine. Text is near-black #1b1b1f with a touch of warm undertone; a single muted purple (#6965db) carries CTAs. The chromatic palette beyond that is dry-erase markers: yellow #ffe066, pink #ffadad, green #9be7c4, blue #bde0fe, orange #ffb997, purple #d4c5f9. These are not modern pastel surface tints (the way tldraw uses them as soft-pastel-card-fills) but literal dry-erase marker shades — saturated enough to read as marker-fluid, soft enough to not break the paper canvas.
Display type is Excalifont (or Virgil, the original) — a handwriting-coded sans that reads as if printed by hand on a whiteboard. Sized 48–64px / 700 with -0.01em tracking. The slight negative track tightens what would otherwise feel too casual; without it, Excalifont at 700 reads as friendly-but-amateur. Body type is Assistant at 16px on a 1.55 line-height — a sans cut chosen for its friendly, slightly-rounded letterforms that pair with the handwriting display without competing against it. The mono companion is Cascadia Code (originally a Microsoft developer-focused mono), a typewriter-grade choice that feels appropriate for a tool used by developers.
The atmosphere is open-source-pragmatic. The marketing surface refuses the polish that would make it look like venture-backed SaaS — there are no glossy hero illustrations, no animated 3D mockups, no carefully-art-directed product photography. Instead, the page shows screenshots of Excalidraw itself, hand-drawn arrow primitives marking feature flows, and pastel-fill rectangles labeled with handwriting. The refusal to polish aligns with the project’s open-source community-first values, and it is a deliberate brand statement: “we are a tool, not a product, and we look like one”.
Where tldraw cleans the whiteboard metaphor into polished SaaS chrome (rounded shapes, soft shadows, friendly Inter weights), Excalidraw doubles down on the hand-drawn nature. The shape borders are literally hand-drawn through rough.js, which renders SVG paths with stroke randomness so a rectangle’s four corners are never quite the same. The chrome is deliberately primitive — wobbly borders, hand-drawn icons, no shadows — and the imprecision is the brand’s most coherent statement. The casual chrome would read as chaotic if not for the chromatic restraint (one purple, six dry-erase pastels) and the typographic discipline (Excalifont + Assistant, never more).
Key Characteristics
- Paper-white canvas (
#fffefd) with slight cream undertone — never sterile white - Hand-drawn borders rendered through rough.js — every rectangle’s strokes are randomised
- Excalifont (or Virgil) display family — handwriting-coded sans for the whiteboard cue
- Assistant body family — friendly slightly-rounded sans that pairs with handwriting
- Dry-erase marker palette: yellow, pink, green, blue, orange, purple — saturated marker-fluid hues
- Single muted purple (
#6965db) carries primary action — the only modern UI accent - 2px hand-drawn near-black border (
#1b1b1f) is the entire elevation system - Small radius ladder: 4 / 6 / 8 / 10px — the hand-drawn corners blur precision anyway
- 20px card padding, 64–80px section padding — moderately tight, casual rather than airy
- No drop shadows, no gradients, no atmospheric blur — the refusal of polish is the discipline
2. Color Palette & Roles
Primary
- bg (
#fffefd): paper-white canvas with the slightest cream undertone; never pure white. - text (
#1b1b1f): near-black with warm undertone; doubles as the colour of hand-drawn borders. - brand (
#6965db): muted purple, the only saturated UI accent. - bg-canvas (
#ffffff): pure white for embedded canvas demos that need maximum brightness.
Brand & Dark
- brand-hover (
#5651c5): darker purple a half-step on press. - brand-active (
#443fa3): deepest pressed purple. - brand-soft (
#e8e7fb): softest purple tint for selection backgrounds. - brand-faint (
#f3f2fd): near-white purple tint for subtle hover surfaces. - text-strong (
#0f0f12): display copy when extra punch is needed.
Accent (Dry-erase Markers)
The marker palette is the brand’s secondary chromatic vocabulary. Each appears as a marker fill on shape primitives:
- accent-yellow (
#ffe066) / deep (#fad434): canonical marker yellow. - accent-pink (
#ffadad) / deep (#ff8888): pink marker. - accent-green (
#9be7c4) / deep (#6fd29f): green marker. - accent-blue (
#bde0fe) / deep (#92c8fa): blue marker. - accent-orange (
#ffb997) / deep (#ff9970): orange marker. - accent-purple (
#d4c5f9): light marker purple (distinguished from brand purple).
These are saturated enough to read as marker-fluid but soft enough to allow text overlay at 4.5:1+ contrast.
Interactive
- link:
brand(#6965db); the link colour and the action colour are the same hue. - link-hover:
brand-hover; underline appears on hover. - selected:
brand-soft(#e8e7fb) as fill,brandas text. - disabled:
text-faint(#bababa) onsurface-soft.
Neutral Scale
- text-muted (
#5b5b5b): captions, meta, secondary copy. - text-soft (
#8a8a8a): tertiary text — timestamps, micro-copy. - text-faint (
#bababa): disabled labels.
Surface & Borders
- surface (
#ffffff): default card surface. - surface-soft (
#fafafa): secondary panel tint. - surface-warm (
#f5f0e0): warm-tint surface for editorial callouts. - surface-soft-warm (
#fdfaf2): softest warm tint, just barely visible. - surface-hover (
#f5f5f5): hover state. - bg-warm (
#fdf6e3): warm cream tint for nested panels (rare). - bg-paper (
#fafafa): standard paper-fill for blocks. - border (
#1b1b1f1a): 10% near-black hairline (rare; most borders are hand-drawn). - border-strong (
#1b1b1f33): 20% near-black for emphasis. - border-soft (
#1b1b1f0d): 5% near-black for subtle dividers. - border-hand (
#1b1b1f): full near-black for hand-drawn borders — the canonical card border.
Shadow Colors
- none: the default — Excalidraw refuses ambient shadow on the canvas.
- raised (
rgba(0,0,0,0.06) 0 2px 4px): rare, only on hovered cards. - popover (
rgba(0,0,0,0.12) 0 8px 24px): tooltips and dropdowns.
The 2px hand-drawn near-black border is the entire elevation system. Shadows would compete with the hand-drawn cue and read as polished SaaS rather than rough whiteboard.
Semantic
- success (
#16a34a) on success-bg (#dcfce7): editorial green. - warning (
#d97706) on warning-bg (#fef3c7): warm amber. - danger (
#dc2626) on danger-bg (#fee2e2): restrained red. - info (
#6965db) on info-bg (#e8e7fb): info reuses brand purple.
3. Typography Rules
Font Family
- Display: Excalifont → Virgil → Cascadia → Assistant → -apple-system → system-ui → Segoe UI → Helvetica → Arial → sans-serif.
- Body: Assistant → Inter → -apple-system → system-ui → Segoe UI → Helvetica → Arial → sans-serif.
- Hand companion: Virgil → Excalifont → Caveat → Comic Neue → Patrick Hand → cursive. Used for on-canvas annotations.
- Mono companion: Cascadia Code → Cascadia → JetBrains Mono → ui-monospace → Menlo → Consolas → monospace.
- OpenType features: only
kern(default) — Excalifont and Virgil are handwriting cuts that don’t ship full OpenType feature sets, and the system embraces that constraint.
Hierarchy
| Role | Font | Size | Weight | Line Height | Letter Spacing | OT Features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| display-hero | Excalifont | 64 | 700 | 1.05 | -0.012em | kern | reserved for the boldest marketing |
| display-large | Excalifont | 56 | 700 | 1.08 | -0.01em | kern | secondary heroes |
| display | Excalifont | 48 | 700 | 1.1 | -0.01em | kern | the canonical hero size |
| h1 | Excalifont | 40 | 700 | 1.12 | -0.008em | kern | section heads |
| h2 | Excalifont | 32 | 600 | 1.2 | 0 | kern | feature-band heads |
| h3 | Excalifont | 24 | 600 | 1.3 | 0 | kern | sub-feature heads |
| h4 | Excalifont | 20 | 600 | 1.35 | 0 | kern | card heads |
| h5 | Excalifont | 18 | 600 | 1.4 | 0 | kern | inline emphasis |
| h6 | Excalifont | 16 | 600 | 1.4 | 0 | kern | label-grade heads |
| body-large | Assistant | 18 | 400 | 1.6 | 0 | kern | hero subheads |
| body | Assistant | 16 | 400 | 1.55 | 0 | kern | default reading |
| body-small | Assistant | 14 | 400 | 1.5 | 0 | kern | secondary copy |
| hand-large | Virgil | 32 | 400 | 1.2 | 0 | — | whiteboard annotation |
| hand | Virgil | 18 | 400 | 1.3 | 0 | — | sticky-note marker text |
| hand-small | Virgil | 14 | 400 | 1.35 | 0 | — | inline marker label |
| label | Assistant | 12 | 600 | 1.3 | 0.02em | — | category cues |
| caption | Assistant | 13 | 500 | 1.4 | 0 | — | image / chart caption |
| code-inline | Cascadia | 14 | 400 | 1.4 | 0 | — | inline code |
| code | Cascadia | 14 | 400 | 1.5 | 0 | — | code block |
Principles
- Excalifont (or Virgil) is the headline voice: a handwriting-coded sans signals the whiteboard register. A clean geometric sans (Inter, SF Pro) breaks the metaphor entirely and shifts the brand toward generic SaaS.
- Assistant is the body workhorse: the friendly slightly-rounded sans pairs with the handwriting display without competing. Inter at 400 reads as too neutral; Cascadia at 400 reads as too technical. Assistant is the negotiated middle.
- Modest tracking discipline: tracking caps at
-0.012emat hero scale. Excalifont and Virgil are inherently softer than geometric sans; pulling negative tracking too hard collapses the letterforms. - No serif in the system: Excalidraw refuses serif outright. The handwriting + sans pair carries every typographic register.
- Cascadia for code: the developer-tool register pulls Cascadia (originally a Microsoft developer-focused mono) first. JetBrains Mono is the open-source fallback.
- The hand companion is for on-canvas annotation: anywhere the page is showing a sketch or annotation, type switches to Virgil. This is the typographic equivalent of writing on a whiteboard with a marker.
4. Component Stylings
Buttons
Primary (muted purple with hand-drawn border)
- Background:
#6965db. Text:#ffffffat Assistant 600 / 15px. Padding:10px 18px. Radius: 6px. Border:2px solid #1b1b1f(rendered through rough.js for stroke randomness). - Hover: background →
#5651c5, no transform. Active: background →#443fa3. - Use: every primary CTA — Try Excalidraw, Open editor, Get started.
Secondary (outlined with hand-drawn border)
- Background: transparent. Text:
#1b1b1fat Assistant 600 / 15px. Padding:10px 18px. Radius: 6px. Border:2px solid #1b1b1f(hand-drawn). - Hover: background →
#fafafa. Use: secondary action.
Ghost (no border)
- Background: transparent. Text:
#1b1b1fat Assistant 500 / 14px. Padding:8px 12px. Radius: 6px. - Hover: background →
#fafafa. Use: nav links, tertiary inline action.
Cards
Sketch card (the canonical card)
- Background:
#ffffff. Border:2px solid #1b1b1frendered through rough.js for stroke randomness. Radius: 8px. Padding: 20px. No shadow. - Hover: transform →
translateY(-1px) rotate(-0.3deg)over 150ms; the slight rotation reinforces the hand-drawn cue. Optionalraisedshadow on hover. - Use: feature cards, pricing, testimonials — the universal card primitive.
Marker shape (on-canvas drawn primitive)
- Background: pastel marker hue (yellow / pink / green / blue / orange / purple). Border:
2px solid #1b1b1fhand-drawn. Radius: 6px. Padding: 16px. - Use: in-canvas drawn primitives, feature illustrations.
Sticky marker (dry-erase note)
- Background:
#ffe066(or other marker hue). Text:#1b1b1fat Virgil 400 / 18px or Assistant 500 / 16px. Border:2px solid #1b1b1fhand-drawn. Radius: 6px. Padding: 12px. - Rotation:
-1.5degto+1degrandomised; never aligned to grid. - Use: feature callouts, on-canvas annotations.
Badges, Tags, Pills
Hand-drawn badge
- Background:
#fafafa. Text:#1b1b1fat Assistant 600 / 12px tracked+0.02em. Border:1px solid #1b1b1fhand-drawn. Radius: 9999px. Padding:4px 10px. - Use: status tags, category labels.
Marker tag
- Background: marker pastel (e.g.
#9be7c4green). Text:#1b1b1fat Assistant 600 / 12px. Border:1px solid #1b1b1fhand-drawn. Radius: 9999px. Padding:4px 10px. - Use: feature highlights inside marker shapes.
Inputs / Forms
Text input
- Background:
#ffffff. Border:2px solid #1b1b1fhand-drawn. Radius: 6px. Padding:10px 14px. Font: Assistant 400 / 16px. - Focus: border →
#6965db, ring0 0 0 3px rgba(105,101,219,0.3). - Placeholder:
#8a8a8a.
Navigation
Top bar
- Background:
#fffefdwith no bottom border (or hand-drawn2px solid #1b1b1fline if needed). Height: 56px. - Logo: Excalidraw wordmark in Excalifont 700 / 22px in
#1b1b1f. - Nav items: Assistant 500 / 14px, colour
#1b1b1f, hover background →#fafafa. - Primary CTA visible at top right (purple button with hand-drawn border).
Tooltips, Toasts, Modals
- Tooltip: background
#1b1b1f, text#ffffffat Assistant 500 / 12px, radius 4px, padding6px 10px. Shadow:popover(one of the few places shadow appears). - Toast: background
#ffffff, border2px solid #1b1b1fhand-drawn, radius 8px, no shadow. Padding12px 16px. - Modal: background
#ffffff, border2px solid #1b1b1fhand-drawn, radius 12px. Backdrop:rgba(0,0,0,0.4). Padding 24px.
5. Layout Principles
Spacing System
Base unit: 4px. Scale: [1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 32, 40, 48, 64, 80] × 4px. The system uses moderate-tight intervals — 16–20px gutters, 32–48px between feature blocks, 64–80px between major bands. Density is medium-tight: tighter than tldraw, tighter than ElevenLabs, looser than Are.na.
Grid & Container
- Page width: 1200px max, centred.
- Prose width: 720px for editorial blog and docs.
- Hero treatment: hero copy claims roughly 700–800px horizontal, often with hand-drawn illustration (rendered live via rough.js) anchoring the right column.
- Feature grid: 3-column at 1024px+, 2-column at 768–1024px, 1-column below 768px. Card gap: 20–24px.
Whitespace Philosophy
Layout is loose and casual, mirroring an actual whiteboard. Hero content typically sits at left, with a hand-drawn illustration anchoring the right column. Sections flow vertically with moderate whitespace, and section dividers are often hand-drawn squiggles rather than horizontal rules. The casual rhythm is intentional — Excalidraw is not aiming for the precision-rhythm of Linear or the magazine-rhythm of Notion.
Section Cadence
The cadence is single-canvas continuous — there is no band-cycling, no light-dark alternation, no chromatic event between sections. The page reads as a single hand-drawn surface from top to bottom, with sections separated by spacing and the occasional hand-drawn squiggle divider. The continuity is part of the brand’s casual-pragmatic register.
6. Shapes & Radius Scale
| Tier | Value | Use |
|---|---|---|
| none | 0px | rare; full-bleed images |
| micro | 2px | tight inline indicators |
| xs | 4px | small inline pills, micro UI |
| sm | 6px | tooltips, small popovers |
| md | 6px | text inputs, secondary buttons (note: same as sm) |
| button | 6px | the canonical button radius |
| card | 8px | the canonical card radius |
| lg | 10px | larger feature cards |
| xl | 12px | modals |
| pill | 9999px | badges, status tags |
The radius ladder is small and tight: 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 / 12px. Buttons land at 6px, cards at 8px. The hand-drawn nature of borders means radius rarely reads as a precise number — rough.js renders corners with their own subtle imprecision, so the visible radius is “approximately 6–8px” rather than exactly that. The smallness of the radius ladder is what keeps the design from drifting toward modern-rounded SaaS chrome.
7. Depth & Elevation
| Level | Treatment | Use |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | flat, on #fffefd paper canvas | body content, default surfaces |
| 1 | 2px solid #1b1b1f hand-drawn border | the canonical card; depth via thick hand-drawn border |
| 2 | hand-drawn border + translateY(-1px) rotate(-0.3deg) on hover | hovered card |
| 3 | optional raised shadow on emphasis cards | rare floating panel |
| 4 | popover shadow + 8px radius | tooltip, dropdown, menu |
| 5 | hand-drawn border + backdrop, 12px radius | modal |
Shadow Philosophy: there is essentially no shadow in the system. Depth comes from the hand-drawn near-black border surrounding each card — wobbly stroke width, slight imperfection at the corners, no fill or hairline. This is the entire elevation system. Shadows would compete with the hand-drawn cue and shift the brand toward polished SaaS. The only places shadow appears are tooltips and dropdowns where elevation is functionally required.
8. Interaction & Motion
Easing
- standard:
cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1)— workhorse Material-style ease. - emphasized:
cubic-bezier(0.34, 1.56, 0.64, 1)— slight overshoot for the toy-like cue; used on hover lifts. - decelerate:
cubic-bezier(0, 0, 0.2, 1)— used for elements entering from off-canvas.
Durations
- instant (80ms): hover background colour shifts.
- fast (150ms): card hover lift, link underline.
- standard (220ms): button press, dropdown open.
- slow (320ms): modal open.
- emphasized (480ms): hero entrance choreography.
Per-component micro-states
- Button hover: background colour shift over 150ms with
standardease; no transform. - Card hover: transform →
translateY(-1px) rotate(-0.3deg)over 150ms withemphasizedease; the slight rotation reinforces the hand-drawn cue. - Sticky marker hover: rotation animates from
-1.5degto0deg(or vice versa) over 150ms; the hand-drawn border stays. - Link hover: underline appears over 100ms; brand purple stays.
- Input focus: ring fades in at 100ms; border colour shifts to brand purple simultaneously.
- rough.js stroke randomness: not motion — the stroke randomness is rendered once per element on mount and persists. It is not animated, and it persists under reduced-motion.
Page transitions
Excalidraw uses opacity-only fades at 220ms with standard ease for route transitions — quiet and pragmatic, matching the open-source-pragmatic register. No slide, no scale, no parallax.
Reduced-motion strategy
prefers-reduced-motion: reduce is fully respected: all transform-based animations (lifts, rotations) collapse to opacity-only at 100ms. The sticky-marker rotation becomes static. Hover lifts disappear. rough.js stroke randomness is preserved because it is not motion — it is a static visual rendering that happens to look hand-drawn.
9. Accessibility & A11y
Contrast pairs (computed)
- text on bg:
#1b1b1fon#fffefd→ 16.8:1 (AAA at all sizes). - text-muted on bg:
#5b5b5bon#fffefd→ 7.4:1 (AAA at body sizes). - on-brand on brand:
#ffffffon#6965db→ 4.7:1 (AA at body, AAA at large). - text on accent-yellow:
#1b1b1fon#ffe066→ 16.4:1 (AAA). - text on accent-pink:
#1b1b1fon#ffadad→ 12.2:1 (AAA). - text on accent-green:
#1b1b1fon#9be7c4→ 13.8:1 (AAA). - text on accent-blue:
#1b1b1fon#bde0fe→ 14.4:1 (AAA). - brand on bg:
#6965dbon#fffefd→ 4.8:1 (AA at body).
Focus indicators
- Default focus ring:
3px solid rgba(105,101,219,0.4)with 1px offset; brand purple ring. - Within input fields: border colour shifts to
#6965dband adds a0 0 0 3px rgba(105,101,219,0.3)ring. - On marker pastels: ring uses
rgba(27,27,31,0.5)(near-black ring) for sufficient contrast.
Focus rings are never removed. The hand-drawn border discipline does not extend to focus rings (which must be precise for accessibility).
ARIA patterns
- Embedded canvas demos use
role="application"with full keyboard semantics for the editor. - Sticky-marker callouts carry
role="note"witharia-labeldescribing the content. - Modals use
role="dialog",aria-modal="true", focus trap,Escto close. - The hand-drawn icons throughout the UI carry
aria-labeldescribing their action; visual idiosyncrasy doesn’t excuse semantic clarity.
Keyboard nav order
Top bar → hero CTA → embedded canvas (if interactive) → feature bands → pricing → footer. Tab order matches visual order. Skip-to-content link visible on focus.
Screen reader hints
- Decorative hand-drawn squiggle dividers carry
aria-hidden="true". - Sticky-marker callouts carry
aria-labeldescribing the message. - Embedded canvas demos carry
aria-label="Interactive whiteboard editor". - Hand-drawn icons carry
aria-labeldescribing the action (“Save”, “Export”, “Open file”).
Reduced motion
Honored throughout — see §8. The rough.js stroke randomness is preserved (not motion).
10. Responsive Behavior
Breakpoints
| Tier | Width | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
| mobile | < 480px | single column, 12px gutter, 48px section padding, hero at 32–36px |
| tablet | 480–768px | single column, 16px gutter, 56px section padding, hero at 40–48px |
| desktop | 768–1024px | 2-column feature grids, 20px gutter, 64px section padding |
| wide | 1024–1280px | 3-column feature grids, 24px gutter, 80px section padding |
| ultra | 1280px+ | container caps at 1200px, hero at 48–64px |
Touch Targets
Minimum 44×44px on touch devices. The 10px / 18px button padding on mobile expands to 12px / 20px to clear the threshold.
Collapsing strategy
- Top nav: hamburger menu < 768px; primary CTA stays visible.
- Hero: hand-drawn illustration moves below copy < 768px; copy claims full width.
- Feature grid: 3 → 2 → 1 columns at 1024 / 768 / 480.
- Sticky markers: stack vertically < 768px, lose extreme rotation for tighter packing.
- Footer: 4-column → 2-column → 1-column at 1024 / 768 / 480.
Image behavior
Hand-drawn illustrations rendered live via rough.js are scalable SVG and reflow naturally. Static screenshots use aspect-ratio: 16/10 lock with object-fit: contain.
Container queries
Used inside the embedded canvas — the toolbar switches between expanded (icon + label) and condensed (icon-only) modes based on container width.
11. Content & Voice
Tone
Excalidraw’s tone is open-source-pragmatic: direct, friendly, and developer-respectful. It writes like a contributor README — present-tense, short bulletins, no marketing rhetoric. Headlines are descriptive (“Excalidraw is a virtual collaborative whiteboard.”); secondary copy explains the mechanism plainly. The voice positions Excalidraw as a tool used by collaborators and developers, not a product sold to enterprises.
Microcopy patterns
- Button verbs: “Try Excalidraw”, “Open editor”, “Get the source”, “Read the docs”, “Star on GitHub”. Every CTA is action-forward; the GitHub-star CTA is the brand’s open-source register.
- Error messages: pattern is “[Action] failed. [Reason if known].” e.g. “Couldn’t save — connection lost. Your drawing is preserved locally.”
- Success confirmations: short, declarative, often paired with a hand-drawn checkmark. “Saved.” rather than “Your drawing has been saved successfully!”
Empty states
Empty states are inviting and demo-forward, often using a hand-drawn arrow primitive pointing to the action area. “Start drawing here” with an arrow toward the canvas. Empty-state copy never uses cheerful illustrations or “Oops!” copy — the casual register stays even when the canvas is empty.
CTA verb conventions
- Primary marketing CTA: “Try Excalidraw” — invitation-style verb, actually navigates to the live editor.
- Developer CTA: “Get the source”, “Read the docs”, “Star on GitHub” — open-source community verbs.
- Feature CTA: “Open editor”, “Try in browser”.
- Newsletter: rare; if present, “Follow updates” or “Subscribe”.
12. Dark Mode & Theming
Excalidraw ships an optional dark mode for both the marketing surface and the editor. The dark map (see frontmatter colors-dark):
- bg:
#121212(warm near-black, not pure black) - bg-canvas:
#1a1a1afor embedded editor demos - bg-warm:
#1e1c18for warm-tinted nested panels - surface:
#1f1f1f, surface-soft:#2a2a2a, surface-hover:#333333 - text:
#f5f5f5(slightly soft white) - text-muted:
#a8a8a8, text-soft:#787878 - brand:
#8b87e6— purple lifts to maintain contrast against dark - border-hand:
#f5f5f5— inverted; the hand-drawn border becomes light-on-dark - border:
#ffffff1a, border-strong:#ffffff33 - Marker pastels become muted-deep: yellow →
#5c4d20, pink →#5c2828, green →#2a4a37, blue →#28456a, orange →#5c3520, purple →#3a2f5c
When implementing dark mode:
- The hand-drawn
2pxborder inverts to light-on-dark (#f5f5f5instead of#1b1b1f); rough.js stroke randomness persists. - The brand purple shifts from
#6965dbto#8b87e6to maintain contrast. - Marker pastels become muted-deep variants — still identifiable as “the yellow” or “the green”, but tuned for low-light comfort.
- No shadows are added; the hand-drawn border continues to carry elevation.
- The cream undertone of the canvas is replaced with warm-near-black undertone (
#121212instead of pure black#000000).
The dark mode follows prefers-color-scheme: dark automatically, with manual override available via the editor’s theme toggle.
13. Lineage & Influences
Excalidraw’s design philosophy is “draw it badly on purpose.” The lineage runs through three distinct traditions:
Hand-drawn primitive software: FiftyThree’s Paper.app (the original tablet sketchbook), Penultimate (the iPad note-taking app), and the wider tablet-as-sketchbook tradition. These references treat the digital canvas as a sketchbook surface and render strokes with deliberate randomness to mimic ink and pencil. Excalidraw inherits this language directly through rough.js.
rough.js library: the JavaScript library that renders SVG paths with stroke randomness, written by Preet Shihn specifically to make computer-drawn graphics look hand-drawn. rough.js is not just a stylistic flourish — it is central to the brand identity, and removing it would unmoor Excalidraw from its visual lineage. Every shape on the canvas, every card border on the marketing site, and every illustration is rendered through rough.js.
Whiteboard / dry-erase tradition: the conceptual ground. Pastel marker hues, hand-printed labels, accepted imprecision, the comfort of writing on a wall. Excalidraw translates this into web canvas form, and the pastel marker palette (yellow, pink, green, blue, orange, purple) is taken directly from the standard dry-erase marker set.
What Excalidraw rejects: polished SaaS chrome (tldraw is the explicit polished sibling), broadcast marketing aesthetics (no Off-White-style typography, no industrial poster register), gradient or shadow elevation systems, and any chromatic system that involves more than the muted purple + dry-erase markers. The open-source-pragmatic register is itself the discipline.
Named influences
- Paper / FiftyThree (fiftythree.com) — Hand-drawn primitive aesthetic translated to web canvas; the original tablet-as-sketchbook lineage.
- rough.js (roughjs.com) — The library that renders every stroke wobbly; central to the brand identity, not just a stylistic flourish.
- Whiteboards / dry-erase tradition (Wikipedia) — The conceptual ground; pastel marker hues, hand-printed labels, accepted imprecision.
- tldraw (tldraw.com) — Inverse reference; tldraw polishes the whiteboard metaphor into SaaS chrome, Excalidraw refuses to polish.
- Comic Neue / Caveat / Patrick Hand (comicneue.com) — The wider handwriting-fonts tradition; permission to use hand-drawn type as serious typography.
14. Do’s and Don’ts
Do
- Render shape borders through rough.js or equivalent — the imprecision is the brand, not a flaw. Every rectangle’s four corners should be subtly different.
- Use Virgil or Excalifont as the display family; a clean geometric sans (Inter, SF Pro) breaks the whiteboard metaphor entirely.
- Keep the accent palette to dry-erase marker hues — saturated UI blues and greens read as “polished SaaS” instead.
- Use the 2px hand-drawn near-black border as the entire elevation system; it is the brand’s most direct visual statement.
- Pair Excalifont (display) with Assistant (body); the friendly slightly-rounded body sans is what keeps the type system legible at paragraph scale.
- Run sticky markers with subtle randomised rotation (
-1.5degto+1deg) and the 2px hand-drawn border; they should read as taped on a whiteboard. - Use Cascadia Code for code samples; the developer-tool register pulls Cascadia first.
- Honor
prefers-reduced-motion: reduce— collapse hover lifts and rotations to opacity-only. Preserve rough.js stroke randomness (it is not motion). - Run sections at 64–80px vertical padding; the casual whiteboard rhythm is medium-tight.
- Show the actual product (live Excalidraw editor screenshots and embedded demos) rather than art-directed marketing illustrations.
Don’t
- Don’t apply drop-shadows to cards; the hand-drawn border is the entire elevation system.
- Don’t clean up the hand-drawn aesthetic into polished SaaS chrome — that’s tldraw’s territory, not Excalidraw’s.
- Don’t introduce a second saturated accent next to the muted purple; the chromatic restraint is what keeps the casual chrome from reading as chaotic.
- Don’t replace Excalifont / Virgil with Inter or SF Pro for headlines; the handwriting cue is non-negotiable.
- Don’t soften the 2px border to a 1px hairline; the thicker hand-drawn line is the brand’s signature.
- Don’t render shape borders as machine-precise SVG paths; the imprecision through rough.js is the entire brand.
- Don’t use modern pastel surface tints (the way tldraw uses them) — the marker palette is more saturated and lives only as marker fills, not as surface tints.
- Don’t introduce gradients, atmospheric blur, or 3D effects; the page is flat-paper-with-hand-drawn-strokes.
- Don’t use the muted purple for body text; it is reserved for action and brand identity.
- Don’t soften the open-source-pragmatic voice with marketing-cheerful copy; the casual-direct register is the brand.
15. Agent Prompt Guide
Quick Color Reference
bg: #fffefd
bg-canvas: #ffffff
surface: #ffffff
text: #1b1b1f
text-muted: #5b5b5b
brand: #6965db
brand-hover: #5651c5
brand-soft: #e8e7fb
border-hand: #1b1b1f
accent-yellow: #ffe066
accent-pink: #ffadad
accent-green: #9be7c4
accent-blue: #bde0fe
accent-orange: #ffb997Example Component Prompts
-
“Create a marketing hero in the Excalidraw style:
#fffefdpaper-white canvas with cream undertone, Excalifont (or Virgil) 700 / 56px headline in#1b1b1fwith-0.01emtracking, Assistant 400 / 18px subhead in#5b5b5b, primary purple CTA (#6965dbbackground,#fffffftext at Assistant 600 / 15px,2px solid #1b1b1fhand-drawn border rendered through rough.js, 6px radius,10px 18pxpadding), and a hand-drawn arrow illustration anchoring the right column.” -
“Design a sketch card in the Excalidraw style:
#ffffffbackground,2px solid #1b1b1fborder rendered through rough.js for stroke randomness, 8px radius, 20px padding, NO drop shadow, Excalifont 600 / 24px H3 title, Assistant 400 / 16px body in#1b1b1f. Hover:translateY(-1px) rotate(-0.3deg)over 150ms with cubic-bezier(0.34, 1.56, 0.64, 1).” -
“Render a sticky marker in the Excalidraw style:
#ffe066(yellow) or#ffadad(pink) background,2px solid #1b1b1frough.js border, 6px radius, 12px padding, Virgil 400 / 18px text in#1b1b1f, randomised rotation between-1.5degand+1deg.” -
“Create a marker shape primitive in the Excalidraw style:
#9be7c4(green) background or any dry-erase pastel,2px solid #1b1b1frough.js border, 6px radius, 16px padding, Virgil 400 / 18px label inside. Use as on-canvas drawn primitive in feature illustrations.” -
“Design a navigation bar in the Excalidraw style:
#fffefdbackground with no bottom border (or hand-drawn2px solid #1b1b1fline if needed), 56px height, Excalifont 700 / 22px Excalidraw wordmark on the left, Assistant 500 / 14px nav items on the right, primary purple CTA visible at top right with hand-drawn border.” -
“Render an empty-state in the Excalidraw style: plain
#1b1b1ftext at Assistant 400 / 16px reading ‘Start drawing here’ with the verb ‘drawing’ as#6965dbinline link, accompanied by a hand-drawn arrow primitive pointing to the canvas area, no card, no illustration beyond the arrow, all on the#fffefdpaper canvas.”
Iteration Guide
- Start with the canvas: confirm
#fffefdpaper-white with the slightest cream undertone (not pure white, not warm cream). If your prototype reads sterile, you’ve drifted toward Linear; if it reads warm, you’ve drifted toward Notion. - Verify the hand-drawn discipline: every card border should be 2px near-black rendered through rough.js (or a similar stroke-randomness library). Machine-precise hairlines break the brand entirely.
- Audit the type voice: hero headlines should hit 48–64px in Excalifont (or Virgil) at 700 weight. Body should be Assistant 400 / 16px on 1.55 line-height. If your headline is in Inter or SF Pro, you’ve broken the whiteboard metaphor.
- Check the action colour: there should be exactly one
#6965dbmuted purple per module. Marker pastels (yellow, pink, green, blue, orange, purple) are for shape fills only, never CTAs. - Verify the elevation strategy: zero drop shadows on cards. If you see any soft shadow, replace it with the 2px hand-drawn border. The only places shadow appears are tooltips and dropdowns.
- Confirm the marker palette discipline: dry-erase markers appear as shape fills only, never as surface tints. A feature module has at most one marker hue.
- Test the rough.js rendering: every shape should render with subtle stroke randomness — corners not quite identical, line weight slightly variable. Static SVG paths read as polished SaaS, not Excalidraw.
- Check the reduced-motion path: hover lifts and sticky-marker rotations should collapse to opacity-only when
prefers-reduced-motion: reduceis set. rough.js stroke randomness persists — it is not motion.
Drop excalidraw into your project, then ship the actual sections in an afternoon.
1 · install design
npx design-md add excalidraw 2 · ship landing page
npx agentkit init --design excalidraw light playful
tldraw
Casual whiteboard sketchy — hand-drawn UI primitives, dotted-grid canvas, and a soft pas…
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tldraw
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light bright
Figma
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Figma
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Hashnode
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