Do Open Design projects all end up looking similar, or am I prompting it wrong?

[scysys]

Hi everyone,

I've been experimenting with Open Design recently and wanted to hear about other people's experiences.

In my tests, I've deliberately given Open Design quite a bit of creative freedom. Rather than specifying layouts, colors, or visual styles, I've asked it to come up with a unique, project-specific design from scratch, something that genuinely fits the purpose, audience, and identity of each individual project.

However, I've noticed that the results tend to look surprisingly similar, even when the projects themselves are completely different.

It feels like Open Design keeps falling back on the same general design patterns, layouts, and visual language instead of exploring genuinely different creative directions.

So I'm wondering:

• Has anyone else noticed this? Do your generated designs also tend to share a recognizable visual style?
• Is this a prompting issue? Am I simply not providing enough detail, or should Open Design be capable of developing distinct visual concepts without extensive design instructions?
• Has anyone found a reliable way to encourage genuinely original designs rather than variations of the same familiar templates?

For context, I'm not expecting perfect results from a single prompt. But I do expect a tool focused on design to demonstrate some independent creative direction when explicitly asked to do so.

At the moment, based on my own experiments, I don't feel Open Design is a comparable alternative to Claude's design capabilities yet, particularly when it comes to visual originality and creating distinct identities for different projects.

That said, I'm genuinely interested in whether others have had better results. I'd be happy to learn that I'm simply approaching it the wrong way.

Would love to hear your experiences, examples, or prompting techniques.

[evachxji]

You are not necessarily prompting it wrong. “Make it unique” states the desired outcome, but it does not tell the model which design decisions should be different.

In the current OpenDesign workflow, the selected coding agent/model generates the design, while the active design system supplies a brand contract. OD Next also chooses a direction and freezes it in a Design Spec before building. Those mechanisms are useful for coherence, but they do not automatically create diversity—especially if different projects reuse the same design system, template, references, or very open-ended briefs.

A workflow that should give you more meaningful variation:

1. Separate exploration from implementation. Ask for several art directions first, not several recolored implementations.
2. Supply real material. Provide the actual copy, content structure, audience, assets, and constraints. Generic content tends to produce generic layouts.
3. Use references precisely. Explain which characteristics matter—grid, typography, imagery, density, tone—rather than just naming a product or saying “make it like this.”
4. Define anti-patterns. Explicitly list the layouts and visual devices you do not want.
5. Turn the selected direction into a concrete Design Spec. If you will reuse it, a custom design system is more reliable than asking for “something unique” again.

For example, start with:

Do not build yet. Propose three genuinely different art directions for [project], aimed at [audience] and optimized for [primary goal].

For each direction, describe:

• the concept and emotional tone;
• two references and the specific traits worth borrowing;
• grid, composition, and information density;
• display/body typography;
• color, materials, and imagery;
• one signature interaction or visual device;
• patterns it deliberately avoids.

The three directions must differ in composition and typography, not merely in color. Do not use a centered hero followed by a rounded-card grid in all three. Use the real copy and assets below: [content].

Stop after the directions so I can select one.

Then select one and ask for the implementation using that direction's concrete rules. When comparing originality across projects, avoid sharing the same active design system; its purpose is to make those projects visually consistent.

Finally, if you compare OpenDesign with another design tool, try to keep the underlying model and inputs equivalent. Otherwise the comparison mixes the tool's workflow with differences between models.

[karenrebecag]

Adding to the answer above with what the code actually does. I read the agent's system prompt in this repo, and the convergence you're seeing is mostly by design. It's not your prompting.

1. Without a brand or design system, the agent picks from 5 built-in directions and copies their tokens verbatim.

Discovery has two branches. If you don't provide a brand spec, reference site, screenshot or active design system, it goes to Branch B: "pick the best-matching direction yourself from the Direction library below and bind it without asking" (discovery.ts#L126-L128).

That library has five entries (directions.ts#L59-L164):

• editorial-monocle
• modern-minimal
• human-approachable
• tech-utility
• brutalist-experimental

The binding instruction is explicit: "Replace the seed template's :root block with the chosen foundation's palette and font stacks verbatim — do not improvise" (directions.ts#L295).

So "come up with something unique" still resolves to one of five fixed palette/type pairs. Two unrelated projects that land on the same direction share colors and fonts exactly.

2. Structure is constrained too.

• For landings the persona rule is "One hero, 3–6 sections, real copy, one decisive flourish" (discovery.ts#L185).
• The agent is told to copy the skill's assets/template.html seed and paste skeletons from references/layouts.md instead of writing CSS from scratch (discovery.ts#L188).

That's a deliberate quality floor, but the same seed plus the same layout skeletons means the same page shape.

There's also an anti-slop checklist (discovery.ts#L196): no purple gradients, no emoji icons, no Inter as a display face, and so on. It removes the worst defaults but doesn't add identity. Every project avoids the same things, so they converge on the same "tasteful" middle.

3. What actually changes the output

• Give it a brand source. Attach a brand guide, a screenshot or a reference URL, or answer the brand question with "I have a brand spec". That triggers Branch A: the agent extracts real values from your source into brand-spec.md (six OKLch color tokens, display/body/mono stacks, 3–5 layout posture rules) before building (discovery.ts#L109-L123). This is the single biggest lever.
• Or activate a design system. With an active design system, its DESIGN.md becomes the visual direction and the built-in library is skipped. Its tokens.css is pasted verbatim into the first <style> (system.ts#L698-L708). You can import one with od design-systems import-github <url>, import-local <path> or import-shadcn <ref>.
• Ask for variations explicitly. The prompt defaults to "2–3 differentiated directions on the same brief" only when you're exploring (discovery.ts#L211). Say so, and compare.
• Pin structure in the brief. Since the seed and layouts set the page shape, list your sections and their layout yourself, and say what to drop ("no testimonials, no feature grid"). One caveat: with an active design system, its palette and typography win over anything in the brief (discovery.ts#L31-L35). In that case, change type and color in the design system and keep the brief to structure and content.

Quick way to tell which lever you need: put two outputs side by side.

• Same colors and fonts: you're on the same built-in direction. Give it a brand source or a design system.
• Different colors but the same block order: it's the seed and layout skeletons. Pin the structure in the brief.

Example brief that sets the levers instead of asking for originality:

Landing page for a small independent bookshop that runs evening reading events. Brand reference attached (photo of the shop sign + their printed flyer).

• Structure: 1) event of the week, date as the largest element, 2) staff picks as a numbered list (no cards), 3) a short paragraph about the shop in a narrow column, 4) map and opening hours. No testimonials, no feature grid.
• Type: high-contrast serif for display, clamp(48px, 9vw, 120px) with tight leading; plain grotesk for body at 17px.
• Color: warm paper background, near-black text, one red accent used only for dates and the main link (keep it at 4.5:1 against the background).
• Imagery: one black-and-white photo of the interior. Nothing else.

Hope it helps!