Designing for UI screens
Across landing pages, social posts, videos, decks and more, Slack UI screens are used to show both how Slack functions and how it makes work simpler, more pleasant and more productive. As such, it's incredibly important to stay accurate to our product.
Please use the templates and resources we’ve provided on this page. You can abstract items to draw focus or scale up items for legibility, but don’t introduce functions, features or behaviors that don’t actually exist. Default to featuring the aubergine sidebar, as it is one of our most recognizable product elements.
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Universal design elements
Source from these product elements for all UI.
Personas
When you're showing people working in Slack, please use our library of personas. The personas are available in both photo and illustration formats, complete with names and localized for different regions. Please don’t mix photographic and illustrative styles within a UI or create your own personas.
Emoji
Emoji are used within messages and as reactions to messages. Please use our licensed Joypixel emoji pack only to avoid any legal issues.
Product font
When creating UI screens, use Lato; for Japanese, use Noto. Please don’t use any other fonts.
Use Lato when creating UI screens. Please don’t use any other fonts.
Types of UI screens
UI screen design is driven by its purpose—whether it needs to educate people on how to use Slack, drive brand awareness or tell a story. Our UI screen types vary in the level of detail they show: high fidelity, simplified and abstracted. To choose between types, determine which would bring the most clarity around the concept or message you need to convey.
High fidelity
Simplified
Abstracted
High fidelity
High fidelity UIs offer an in-depth, highly detailed view of Slack. Use these to show people how to navigate and use our product, rather than simply represent it.
When creating high fidelity UI:
- Stay true to the full product experience, with complete messages, a full sidebar and rich details like emoji, time stamps and avatars
- Show multiple messages and/or integrations
- Show the full composer and formatting options
Resources
Get ready-made UI screens or build your own with the following resources for high fidelity UIs.
Media kit product screenshots
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Simplified
Simplified UI screens allow you to zoom in on specific features, while still providing enough detail to help someone unfamiliar with Slack to understand what’s happening. Use these to focus on a single message, conversation or feature.
When creating simplified UI:
- Design around one product component that highlights the central idea, feature or message you're trying to convey
- Show fewer channels, messages and microcopy
- Remove details that aren't critical to understanding
Resources
Get ready-made assets to create your own abstracted UIs.
Abstracted
Abstracted UI screens illustrate bigger ideas or concepts by relying on paired-down visual representations of our product UI. Use these to create easy brand recognition, especially in contexts with minimal space or time to interact with them.
When creating abstracted UI:
- Design around one product component that highlights the central idea, feature or message you're trying to convey
- Abstract non-essential details based on the message or concept you need to convey
- Keep copy very minimal or omit altogether
Resources
Get ready-made assets to create your own abstracted UIs.
Writing for UI
UI copy, like all copy at Slack, should be clear, concise and human. In this case, extremely human, as we are showing how humans work together in Slack. The conversations should feel believable and real. Here are a few pointers:
- Brevity is key—don’t try to communicate a rich story with only UI
- Keep conversations to one or two lines
- Feel free to customize conversations to be relevant to the target customer, but be mindful not to alienate broader audiences with jargon
- For web or print, streamline copy to highlight a single product feature or benefit
- For videos, keep copy short and concise so the audience is able to fully digest the narration and UI all at once
Don’t forget to:
- Add timestamps to all messages
- Acme Inc. as a default, if you aren’t highlighting a specfic company
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