About

principles.design is a curated, open source collection of design principles from organisations, teams, and individuals around the world.

Design principles are not rules or slogans. At their best, they act as decision-making tools, helping people choose what to do when the right answer isn’t obvious. This site exists to document how principles are written, how they’re framed, and how they’re used to guide real decisions across design, product, technology, architecture, and infrastructure.

The project is maintained by Ben Brignell, an independent design consultant based in the UK. Ben has spent over two decades helping teams make better decisions through design, including supporting organisations to define their principles and use them effectively in practice, through consulting, writing, and field guides.

principles.design was launched in 2017 and has since been referenced widely across the design industry. It is used by designers, product teams, organisations, schools, and universities as a way to understand how principles differ across contexts.

This site focuses on principles themselves: how they are articulated, shared, and communicated publicly.

The collection is open source and community-supported. If you’ve found a public set of design principles, or have authored principles that are openly available, you’re welcome to contribute them to the collection and help keep the resource current and useful.