---
title: Design systems and brand
description: "Point the agent at a source of brand truth — a design spec, a site, or a Figma file — instead of asking for 'on-brand', and let it compose the frame."
---

Everything so far was one scene at a time. This level is about videos as systems — design that persists across scenes, edits that don't regress, output that ships. It starts with the most systemic thing a video has: its brand.

"Make it on-brand" is the single vaguest thing you can ask. The agent has no way to know what your brand *is*, so it invents one. The fix is always the same: give it a **source of brand truth** — a design spec, a live site, or a Figma file — and name it in the prompt. Everything on this page is a way to do that.

## Point at a spec, don't describe a vibe

HyperFrames projects can carry a design spec — `frame.md` — whose frontmatter tokens are the machine-readable brand: exact hex values, font families, weight relationships, and the brand's Do's and Don'ts. When one exists, name it:

> Use the palette and type from `frame.md`. Build a 15-second feature announcement.

- ❌ `make it feel on-brand and premium`
- ✅ `pull colors and fonts from frame.md; premium means generous spacing and one restrained accent`

The engine rationale: `on-brand` is a mood the agent guesses at. A spec's frontmatter is normative — the agent quotes the hex and font family verbatim instead of approximating, and reads the prose sections for intent. If your brand lives somewhere else (a PDF brand guide, a screenshot, pasted hex codes), attach it — attachments and pasted tokens are read more reliably than a described impression.

## Brand is truth for color and type — not for layout

A design spec tells the agent what the brand *looks like*; it does **not** dictate how to compose a video frame. Say what's sacred and let the agent stage the rest:

> Colors and fonts are locked to the brand — keep the exact hexes and the display/body pairing. Layout, spacing, and motion are yours to compose for video.

The engine rationale: web-scale brand values don't survive video. A `1px` border with a `0.06`-opacity shadow is invisible after H.264 compression; a web body size vanishes on a 1080p frame. The brand color, background choice (if the brand is a light canvas, keep it light), fonts, and weight relationships are strict — but type sizes, decorative opacity, and border weight get scaled up for the medium. Over-specifying layout from a web design system fights this; pin the palette and typography, delegate the frame.

## Use the site's own palette and fonts

When there's no spec but there is a brand out there, point at it and let the agent extract:

> Match this site's look — pull its palette and fonts — and make a 20-second launch clip: `https://…`

For a well-known brand, naming it is often enough for the agent to research the palette and typography. One caveat worth stating: a single-page-app homepage often returns a near-empty shell, so if the palette comes back thin, point the agent at a blog, press, or docs page instead. This is the same brand-truth move — the *site* is the source instead of a file.

## Bringing in a Figma frame, brand, or logo

If the brand lives in Figma, ask for it directly — the agent imports it rather than eyeballing a screenshot:

> Bring in the brand tokens from this Figma file, then build the intro: `https://figma.com/…`

> Import this Figma frame as the opening scene and this logo as an SVG: `<links>`

The [Figma import](/guides/figma) path freezes each import as a local asset with recorded provenance (so renders stay deterministic) and imports brand variables as composition brand tokens. Two things worth knowing when you phrase the ask:

- **Import tokens before components.** Say "brand tokens first, then the components" — that's what lets imported component colors link to your brand variables instead of baking in duplicate hexes.
- **Storyboard frames are states, not slides.** If you point at a strip of scene frames, ask the agent to *reconstruct the motion between them* — a frame showing an element at four positions is one element animating, not four stills to flip through.

## Keeping a multi-video series consistent

For a series — a launch set, a weekly clip, a per-region cut — consistency comes from a **shared source of truth**, not from re-describing the brand each time:

> All four videos share `frame.md` for palette and type. Only the headline and the stat change per video.

The parts that stay constant come from the one authoring spec (or one set of imported Figma tokens), and the parts that vary become [variables](/prompting/variables-and-templating). When `frame.md` changes, rerun the workflow steps that generate or assemble the affected compositions so the authored HTML picks up the new brand value. For existing compositions that must re-skin at render time, declare the shared brand tokens as composition variables and bind them through CSS custom properties. This is where design systems and templating meet: the brand is shared, the content is parameterized.

## Supplying brand assets by path

Logos, fonts, textures, and product shots are inputs — hand the agent the path, don't ask it to draw them:

> Logo at `assets/logo.svg`, brand font files in `assets/fonts/`, product shot at `assets/hero.png`. Use them; don't invent placeholders.

Prefer an SVG logo (scalable, animatable) over a raster one. State the paths explicitly so the agent wires the real assets instead of generating stand-ins — and so the render is deterministic, with every asset present locally before it starts.

## Supply inputs a workflow accepts — don't fight its preset

The creation workflows (`/product-launch-video`, `/faceless-explainer`, and the rest) each come with a designed look. The productive move is to feed that look your brand inputs, not to override its composition after the fact:

- ❌ `run /product-launch-video, then restyle every scene to my colors afterward`
- ✅ `run /product-launch-video with my palette, fonts, and logo as inputs up front`

The engine rationale: a workflow's preset is a coherent, tested system — colors, spacing, motion, and component treatments that hang together. Supplying brand inputs at the start lets it apply your palette and type *within* that system. Restyling scene-by-scene afterward pulls threads out of a design that was balanced as a whole, and you spend more effort fighting the preset than you'd have spent handing it a spec.

## Related

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Figma Import" icon="figma" href="/guides/figma">
    Import brand tokens, assets, components, and motion from a Figma file.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Variables and templating" icon="sliders" href="/prompting/variables-and-templating">
    Turn brand tokens into variables that re-skin a whole series from one value.
  </Card>
  <Card title="The specification dial" icon="gauge" href="/prompting/specification-dial">
    How pinning exact hexes and type direction removes drift.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Claude Design" icon="message" href="/guides/claude-design">
    Attach a brand guide or screenshot to seed a first draft from your look.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

<Note>
**Capstone thread** — the entire [Level 7 film](/prompting/capstone) obeys a supplied `frame.md` — the real HyperFrames brand. The closing lockup is where the system shows most: ABC Solar Display for the display type and the mint→cyan CTA gradient in its single sanctioned appearance (cut from the film, below).
</Note>

This is the clause in the [full capstone prompt](/prompting/capstone#the-full-prompt-verbatim) that buys the piece — prompt language you can lift for your own video:

> **Design system: the provided `frame.md` is the single source of brand truth — read it first and obey it exactly.** It is the real HyperFrames brand (by HeyGen), dark-first: flat near-black ground […] **mint `#3CE6AC` used sparingly as the single accent — mint means go / primary / active**. The mint→cyan gradient (`#3CE6AC → #00E3FF`) appears in exactly one place in the whole film: the final CTA lockup.

<video controls muted loop playsinline preload="metadata" src="https://static.heygen.ai/hyperframes-oss/docs/images/prompting/capstone-region-render.mp4#t=0.1" style={{ borderRadius: "0.5rem", marginTop: "0.75rem" }}></video>
*That clause paying off, rendered — the closing lockup, where the brand file's display face and its one sanctioned gradient finally appear together.*

*Next: [Variables and templating](/prompting/variables-and-templating) — turn the brand tokens that repeat across a series into named slots you fill per render.*
