A new long-form guide puts Claude through real design workflows — landing pages, marketing sites, dashboards, and component libraries — and arrives at a split verdict.
For first-draft work, Claude is exceptional: it nails layout, typography defaults, and visual hierarchy faster than any incumbent. The model handles brand prompts, reference images, and Figma-style instructions with surprising fidelity.
The trouble starts at the second iteration. Token burn climbs sharply on long design sessions, and the model drifts from established design systems unless tokens, spacing scales, and component conventions are re-injected on every turn. The guide concludes Claude is a phenomenal sketch partner but not yet a drop-in production design tool.