Who are you building for?
Drop the demographics and general persona overview for this weekend. Focus on answering the following questions:

1. On the level from 0 to 10 what is their level of tech knowledge for the technology you are building on? (your tech mentors have 10)
2. If not your solution, what are they most likely to use? How do they handle things now, without your solution? What frustrates them, what is the cost? If your audience is among the attendees, do NOT guestimate — go talk to people. 8 interviews will give you all the info you need for this weekend.
   
3. Are you using terms that your users know? Or are you using professional jargon in UI? Define the vocabulary gap between your dev team and your audience and bridge it in your micro-copy.

Follow www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22

Use webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker in web, for Figma get Stark plugin

Remember that not everyone sees colors as most of us. Stark plugin will help you simulate colors in Figma, for web simulations use color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator

The best advice: find design mentors. This will save you time.

Check out decentpatterns.xyz/library a pattern library by Simply Secure, a US-based nonprofit supporting the usability of safety and privacy tools. All design patterns are licensed CC-BY.

 Ready to use design systems and UI kits 

finity.polygon.technology
github.com/ConsenSysMesh/rimble-ui
designsystems.com/open-design-systems — a huge directory of open design systems. Not adapted for dapps, but will shortcut the frontend for you.
(more links are coming)

 Fonts 

If you don’t have a designer on your team, use Manrope, Inter or Hack.
If you are a designer, here are a few links:
www.are.na/iryna-nezhynska/open-source-and-free-fonts - most of them have web fonts
velvetyne.fr/ and http://collletttivo.it — open source fonts type foundries.

 Backgrounds / images 

Get a helping hand from AI and algorithmic design:
DALL-e — for the overall concept. If you don’t have an account, find me and let’s use mine.
doersino.github.io/uji — a minimalist generator – press the buttons and play with the sliders.
play.ertdfgcvb.xyz — ASCII / type animated backgrounds
mutable.gallery — randomly generated b&w artworks. Give author credits when using them.

 Generally on branding 

Give your project a strong name. Don’t do “intentional” spelling mistakes — this will cause troubles with product promotion, or you will need to rename it.

If you are behind the schedule, just skip visual branding. Focus on UX, microcopy and good-looking UI.

If you have time, if your designer has time, ping me on martix channel: @eirena:matrix.org

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