Open design creates better experiences

Red Hatters believe in transparency, collaboration, and inclusion. These principles aren’t just for creating technology — they shape how we design, too.

Open design is built on collaboration.

It's a conversation between diverse voices. It's about listening to what our community needs, taking that feedback, and creating systems that work together, across teams and contexts.

Open design creates helpful and accessible experiences for real people.

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How do you think diverse voices and perspectives make the design process stronger?

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Your willingness to collaborate in your design process, should be equally matched by your inviting of diverse voices and perspectives to this same process. This inherently invites different voices and perspectives to not only collaborate but critique your work.

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Allona Wilkerson

Graphic Designer, Brand Design

Read about Allona

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Red Hat values freedom. The designers on my team are free to exercise their creativity in innovative ways, explore new areas of interests, and break away from the status quo.

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Abigael Donahue

Manager, UXD Content & PatternFly Design

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Inclusivity, open exchange of ideas, and collaboration are the foundations of innovative design and are essential to creating a Red Hat branded experience.

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Jessica Cox

Director, Design, Brand + Creative

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Open design practices connect and align our many teams working together to build a unified experience for Red Hat.

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Rob Chappell

Director, Digital User Experience

What makes designing at Red Hat unique?

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Finding patterns and creating consistency throughout the platform is uniquely challenging.

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Ann Nguyen

Associate Product Designer

Read about Ann

Collaboration is built on shared principles

To keep us aligned and working towards a shared vision, we have design principles. Our principles are the fundamentals that build a strong foundation for open design to thrive.

Start intentionally

Identify the problem well before you start to solve it. Know why you’re designing. If you don’t, ask questions to gain insights. Those answers will lead to better questions or new directions.

Lean on
research

Know who you’re designing for and what they need; talk to them if you can. When you understand their motivations, you’re able to demonstrate real empathy for the user, and the most impactful choices become clear.

Design with bravery

Take risks, even when it’s scary or difficult. Suggest something unexpected, remove something unnecessary, or even know when to try again — facing the challenge results in the best work possible.

Open design means flexible systems, built for change.

Brand standards

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Red Hat Brand Standards

Our brand is the source for our identity, governing all of our experiences. Standards are a vital baseline, changing and evolving for what's next.

Visit our brand standards

Digital design system

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Red Hat Digital Design System

Our digital design system contains tools, guides, and examples for building unified, consistent experiences. It's the foundation of our digital UX.

Visit our digital design system

Product design system

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PatternFly Product Design System

Our open source product design system provides resources for building scalable enterprise applications, from documentation and components to code examples and tutorials.

Visit our product design system

Open Studio Community

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Open Studio Community

A collaborative rooted in open source, our Open Studio Community is a group of all creatives inside (and some outside) of Red Hat—sharing, teaching, and creating together.

Visit our community

Open design needs many voices. Join us.

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Brand and creative

We create Red Hat's visual identity so that people can easily recognize and connect with Red Hat's brand.

We are graphic designers, art directors, animators, and filmmakers.

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Digital design

We create Red Hat's digital presence so that users have easy access to information, support, and services.

We are UX designers, researchers, producers, and front-end developers.

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Product design

We create Red Hat's product interfaces so that users can intuitively navigate and understand our products.

We are researchers, interaction designers, visual designers, content designers, and front-end developers.