Make it look premium — not AI-built.

AI-built doesn't have to look AI-built. It looks cheap when the structure is wrong, not when a robot made it. Premium is a consequence of right structure, not three hours on a gradient. This is the checklist that gets you there — and it's pulled straight from Anthropic's own engineering guidance, which they never connect to your brand or your price. That part's on you.

What it is

The difference between a build that looks paid-for and one that looks auto-generated.

When to use it

Before you say "apply my brand," and again before you ship. A pre-flight check.

The core idea

Silence in your design system = Claude fills it with slop. Specify, or it defaults.

Pretty got cheap. Structure is the premium. The prompt is downstream of it.

The AI-slop tells — what gives it away

Overused fonts

Inter, Roboto, Arial, raw system fonts. Anthropic names these directly — AI converges on them. The instant "a robot made this" signal.

Cliché color

Purple gradients on white. Generic blue. Equal-weight rainbows where nothing dominates.

Predictable layout

Centered everything. Three equal cards. An accent stripe under every title. No hierarchy, no surprise.

No point of view

Cookie-cutter, context-free. If you could swap it onto any other brand and it'd "work," it's slop.

What "the brand" actually means — define each before you build

★ Colors — exact hex with roles (primary, accent, ink, paper). Not "blue." #c8511c. Grab them from Canva: click a color, copy the hex.
★ Fonts — 1–2 real typefaces + a type scale. Anything but Inter / Roboto / Arial. The font choice alone reads premium or cheap.
Voice + tone — how it sounds. Calm? Punchy? The words you use and the ones you ban.
Emojis + icons — do you use them? Which? Or line icons, signage-style symbols, none at all?
Imagery — photos, illustration, texture, signs. The visual feel beyond color.
Spacing + shape — tight or airy? Sharp corners or rounded? The rules that repeat on every element.
Logo + assets — upload once. Wordmark, marks, lockups.

The moveAnswer all of these once, then save it as a Skill. Now "apply my brand" is one click on any file — in Chat or Cowork, both work. ★ = the two that matter most

The 3 strategies that produce premium (from Anthropic's cookbook)

Guide each dimension on purpose

Don't say "make it nice." Direct typography, color, motion, and background as separate choices. Specificity is the whole game.

Name a reference, loosely

Point at design inspirations by name without being prescriptive. "Calm-authority like a $5k/mo CFO firm" beats "professional."

Call out the defaults to avoid

Explicitly tell it: no Inter/Roboto/Arial, no purple gradients, no accent stripes. The "avoid this" line is what stops the slop.

Paste this design-direction block into any build

DESIGN DIRECTION — follow this, do not default: TYPOGRAPHY: [your 1-2 typefaces + scale]. Do NOT use Inter, Roboto, Arial, or system fonts. COLOR: [your named hex with roles — primary / accent / ink / paper]. No purple gradients on white. One color dominates; one sharp accent. LAYOUT: clear hierarchy, generous whitespace, vary the structure. No centered-everything, no accent stripe under titles, no three-equal-cards filler. VOICE: [calm / punchy / etc]. AVOID THE AI-SLOP DEFAULTS: generic on-distribution choices, cliché gradients, predictable component patterns, anything that would look identical on a different brand. Build to THIS, not to your defaults. If a choice isn't specified above, ask me — don't guess.

Pre-ship check — would a stranger know AI made it?

★ Is the font anything other than Inter / Roboto / Arial / system?
★ Does one color clearly dominate, with a real accent — not an equal-weight rainbow?
Is there real hierarchy — your eye knows where to go first?
Is there enough whitespace, or is every inch filled?
No accent stripes under titles, no decorative edge bars?
★ If you dropped this onto a different brand, would it obviously NOT fit? (Good. That means it has a point of view.)

The honest partAnthropic ships this exact guidance in their engineering docs — they just never tie it to a brand or a price tag. Structure is the premium. Your taste and your brand are what they can't give you. That's the part you charge for.