aiEDU Design System · working review
Internal · for design review · 08.25.2026
aiEDU Design System · working review
Internal · for design review · 08.25.2026
We turned the August design-system deck into machine-usable rules and tokens, then pressure-tested them by rebuilding real documents. Everything below is labeled by where it came from: SOURCE = printed in your PDF · DECIDED = a gap you left open that Alex K closed (all logged). The second tab shows the test lab — the NVIDIA concept note, page by page, through every iteration. Open questions for you are at the bottom of this page.
Working rules from the deck: the six 500s are the header-text set (WCAG at 22px+ Bold); teal switches value by ground (500 on white, Brand Teal on navy); Green 300 is highlighter-only; 100-tints are printed “#XXX” so we never use them (Q3). Our one amendment: below large-text size on screens, colored type drops to the 600 step or navy — the 500s don’t clear AA small (Q7). Green’s 400 duplicates 500 in the deck (Q2), and its 200/300 are chartreuse-family, which breaks tint logic (Q14).
| Role | Specimen | Deck px | Letter px | Rules |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | Aa | 163 | 69 | title slides only · Bold |
| Header L | Header large | 67 | 28 | leading 0.9 |
| Header S | Header small | 43 | 18 | max 2 lines |
| Body L | Lead-ins & card headers | 34 | 14.5 | card header = Bold + accent |
| Body | Standard body copy | 27 | 12.5* | 1.3 deck · 1.4 letter |
| Body S | Long lists · EYEBROWS | 22 | 9.5 | eyebrow = Bold caps .08em |
| Caption | Captions & sources | 18 | 8 | |
| Folio | 14 / 15 | 14 | 8 | Bold · bottom-right |
Poppins only, 1.25 Major-Third scale, “Do not use text sizes other than these values.” In-sentence emphasis = Medium, never Bold (stated repeatedly); Extra Bold reserved for number badges. The letter column is our derived ×0.425 scale — with one decided exception: *body at 12.5px/1.4 for readability (Q6/Q10 are yours to bless). Display numerals may scale freely between Title and Header sizes.
12 columns × 6 flexible rows · 56px margin · 36px gutter (1920×1080); letter docs run 24px / 15px. Kicker rail lives in columns 1–2, content indents to column 3 — but card and tile rows span all 12 columns (decided after your p64 sample; it kills right-heavy layouts). Everything left-aligned, ragged right. Boxes align by their edges, interior text inset one gutter — deliberately not flush with outside text.
Header, badge, and shadow share one accent. Solid fills never take shadows.
students reached in 2025
Your deck left real gaps — charts, tables, buttons, document registers, spacing numbers. Alex K closed them through six decision rounds (every choice logged with date + rationale). This is the working set; nothing here overrides the PDF, it extends it.
Grey/tint fill · 500 header · matching shadow
| Milestone | Amount |
|---|---|
| On execution | [$XX,XXX] |
| Mid-year memo | [$XX,XXX] |
| Final report | [$XX,XXX] |
Navy axis text · baseline only · direct labels · single-series may go solid Brand Teal · maps run borderless, never cropped
Every colored element in a section shares its hue (charts exempt). Addendum pages count as sections; sibling trios may hue-differentiate like TOC chips.
Program 1 · Teacher leadersIcon-only mark top-left at 43px on every interior page; section pill below with 16px above / 12px below; caption top-right; Bold folio bottom-right.
| Surface | Register |
|---|---|
| Slide decks | Dark keynote (navy + Brand Teal) |
| Letter documents | Light-first, section-coded |
| Proposals | Bold impact (mixed rule) |
| MOUs / SOWs / legal | Formal: navy + teal only, table-forward, no cards or shadows |
| Variant | Where |
|---|---|
| Full + tagline | Covers, closings, formal docs |
| Simplified | Everyday chrome, co-branding |
| Stacked | Square spaces, social |
| Symbol | Interior chrome, favicons, hero-scale |
⚠ Current PNGs ship on padded square canvases — we size by artwork; tight-crop exports would help (Q12).
| Round | What was decided |
|---|---|
| R1 · 8/24 | Section-coded accents · mixed card register · chart marks (tint + 500 stroke) · navy-zebra tables · web hybrid (rounded + pills on interactive only) · navy-pill buttons · 12.5px letter body · duotone icons |
| R2 · 8/25 | Asset libraries folded in: illustration palettes exempt inside artwork · legacy library grandfathered · badge kit + 500-recolors · SVG patterns as working format · world posters = editorial heroes |
| R3 · 8/25 | Dark keynote is the deck default · card rows run full-width · formal register for legal documents · bold-impact proposals confirmed |
| R4 · 8/25 | Three-reviewer audit reconciled everything: navy text on Brand Teal at any size (see Q11) · shadows always the 500 step · print-scale defined · text links Mandarin 600 · one canonical open-questions register |
| R5–R6 · 8/25 | Live-document iterations (tab 2): the 24/15/12/8 letter rhythm · 43px chrome mark · pill clearance · addendum pages as sections · sibling-trio hues · borderless maps |
| ID | Question | Our fallback until you rule |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Teal 500: #02A39F (both palette pages) or #00A6A1 (headline demo)? | #02A39F |
| Q2 | Green 400’s true hex — the deck duplicates 500’s #2DA635 | Don’t distinguish; use #2DA635 |
| Q3 | The six 100-level tints print as “#XXX” | Never invent; use the 200s |
| Q4 | Typos: “27 Regular” twice in the ramp; “Poppins 45 Medium” on one page | Read as 27 / 34 Medium |
| Q5 | Logo clear-space & minimum sizes are unspecified | Generous optical space |
| Q6 | Letter-document scale = deck ×0.425 (our derivation) | In use; needs your blessing |
| Q7 | “WCAG at 22px+” claim doesn’t survive scaling down | Small colored text → 600 step or navy |
| Q8 | Missing files: aiedu14, some spot-cutout numbers | Work with what shipped |
| Q9 | Pattern 006’s orange was a CMYK artifact (#EF481B) — we normalized to Mandarin 500 | Normalized SVGs in use |
| Q10 | Bless the letter scale + the web “hybrid” (rounded corners + pills on interactive) | In use as decided |
| Q11 | Your samples set white on Brand Teal (~1.8:1 contrast). We build navy on Brand Teal — confirm, or give us a display-text exception | Navy on Brand Teal at any size; white logos exempt |
| Q12 | Logo PNGs ship on padded square canvases — tight-cropped exports? | We size by artwork (~3.8× target height) |
| Q13 | Number-badge “three fixed sizes” are never specified | Glyphs snap to the type scale; circle ≈2.2× glyph |
| Q14 | Green’s 200/300 are chartreuse — no true green tint for soft cards or chart fills | Chart-6 = white fill + Green 500 stroke; green sections use Light Grey cards |
Left = the note as the team shipped it. Right = where it landed after five working passes with Alex K reviewing every page. The logs quote his notes verbatim so you can see exactly which calls were his. Three pages he chose to keep untouched — they’re marked. Global passes that touched every page: Pass 1 system audit · Pass 2–4 Alex’s three note rounds · Pass 3 included the uniform 24/15/12/8 rhythm, machine-verified on every page · Pass 5 icon + pill clearance sizing. Under each pair, the Every version strip shows the page at each pass — reconstructed render-for-render, including the one pass Alex rejected (kept for honesty).
good.
good.
add more colors here; make the define / deliver / catalyze diferent colors→ the trio went teal / blue / mandarin — which later became a rule (sibling trios may hue-differentiate).
more padding around ‘about aiEDU’ and all the subsequent tag pills on below pages→ the pill spec (7×16 interior; outside clearance doubled in Pass 5).
add more spacing between the sections it’s too crowded. original has better spacing→ opened up (and fed the global rhythm).
change ‘In this note’ to ‘Table of Contents’ and add ‘Page…’ in smaller sentence case italics below→ done.
make the thumbnail grid of 4 and keep them; use the grid to extend to the full page. and add more spacing between sections→ thumbnails restored as a full-width 2×2 grid. Then:
good.
use blue 500 for this→ Program 1 is now the blue section (tiles, pill, shadows).
I like the color treatment here; change ‘in underserved’ to in ‘rural & Indigenous communities’ ok if it goes to two lines→ headline updated.
good. more spacing. make sure spacing between text blocks and the colored blocks (incl. those with drop shadwo and those without) is consistent on *every page*… I like the spacing in the original better. apply it to every page consistently.→ this became the global 24/15/12/8 rhythm, machine-verified on all pages.
use purple 500 for this→ Program 2 is now the purple section.
add more spacing here. get rid of the ‘ETS’ and ‘Bellwether’ text; just use their logos→ partner logos, carried from the original, are now the card headers.
i prefer the original→ kept unchanged, suggestions parked.
get rid of the drop shadow in the box around the map in fact get rid of the box around the map altogether. keep the us map from the original; the proposed one cuts off.
get rid of grey border around the us map. get rid of the ‘Including nvidia’s emerging engagement..’ sentence and shorten the three boxes so that we can accomodate the global spacing rules.
center the map on the page and make it 10% smaller→ the rule now reads: maps sit borderless, full, never cropped.
i prefer the proposed.
get rid of the ‘next steps’ pill. also, make sure the logo in the top left is larger… the same on every page… matched to the size of the icon logo in the ORIGINAL page 1→ pill dropped; one mark, one size, every page.
increase the size of the aiEDU icon in top left by 30% on every page→ the 43px chrome spec.
keep the text size from original but colors in the proposed→ stat headlines back at display size (numeral exemption), unified color kept.
use different colors for each section in the addendum so that each of them are clearly differentiated→ the sequence: 10 teal · 11 blue · 12 mandarin · 13 purple · 14 green. Now a rule: addendum pages count as sections.
i prefer the spacing in the original→ loosened, then absorbed into the global rhythm.
keep original→ parked.