Douyin (抖音) DESIGN.md

Overview

Visual Theme & Atmosphere

Douyin is dark-first, and not as a theme option — the dark surface is the product. Video is the content, so the chrome gets out of its way: near-black #161823 canvas, panels a step lighter at #252632, and text that is almost never a solid colour but white at a stated opacity — rgba(255,255,255,.75) for body, .34 for tertiary.

Against that, one colour: #fe2c55, the Douyin red, declared as --color-primary.

The token set gives away what the product actually is. Alongside the ordinary background and text families sit gift-* (19 properties) and pk-* (18) — virtual gifts and livestream battles, two mechanics with no equivalent in a Western social product and enough design weight to earn their own token families. A -ucenter suffix marks a distinct user-centre layer with its own light-mode values.

Primary tasks

• Watch video with chrome that never competes with it.
• Read overlaid text at several opacities against unpredictable video frames.
• Operate livestream mechanics — gifts, PK battles — that have dedicated visual vocabulary.

Brand Narrative

Launched by ByteDance in September 2016, Douyin is the Chinese short-video platform whose international sibling is TikTok. Its interface has been dark-first from early on, and its economics run on livestreaming — virtual gifting and PK battles between creators. That the token set carries dedicated gift-* and pk-* families is the clearest evidence in this reference of what the product actually monetises.

Principles

• The chrome is a frame. Dark, low-contrast, never competing with video.
• Opacity is the hierarchy. One white ink at graded alpha.
• Name what you monetise. Gifting and PK earn their own token families.

Personas

Not researched. No persona claim is made from a UI capture.

Colors

Measured 2026-09-22 via getComputedStyle on douyin.com. Douyin's token name follows each role. Values are given as hex where the token resolves to an opaque colour.

Brand

• Douyin Red (#fe2c55) — --color-primary and --color-primary-default-ucenter; resolves as rgba(255,44,85,1).
• Brand Hover (#d21b46) — --color-primary-hover / --color-primary-hover-ucenter, rgba(210,27,70,1).

Dark surfaces — the default

• Canvas (#161823) — --color-bg-b0, rgba(22,24,35,1). Also gift-color-bg-2.
• Surface (#252632) — --color-bg-base-b1, rgba(37,38,50,1). Painted 47 times, the most common fill on the page. Also pk-color-bg-0, gift-color-bg-4 and im-shareList-bg-start — one step reused across livestream, gifting and messaging.
• Surface Raised (#33343f) — --color-bg-toast-ucenter.
• Surface Hover (#2e2f3b) — --audience-color-hover-bg-0.
• Surface Secondary (#292b35) — --color-bg-rs, --comment-bg, --gift-color-bg-3.
• Surface Deep (#20212c) — --small-bg-color.

Text — opacity, not colour

Douyin's text tokens are white at fixed alpha, so a single ink works over video of any brightness:

• --color-text-t2 / --color-text-1 rgba(255,255,255,.75) — body.
• --name-list-text-0 rgba(255,255,255,.9) — names.
• --color-text-close rgba(255,255,255,.8).
• --color-text-t4 / -t5 / pk-color-text-1 rgba(255,255,255,.34) — tertiary.
• --color-const-text-white60 rgba(255,255,255,.6).

Foreground (#f9f9f9) is the rendered near-white, painted 795 times. The -ucenter layer inverts: --color-text-t2-ucenter is rgba(22,24,35,.75) — dark ink for a light surface.

Light layer and accent

• Light Canvas (#f9f9fa) — --color-bg-b1-ucenter. The user-centre surface is light.
• Text Secondary (#f2f2f4) — --color-secondary-default-ucenter.
• Accent Cyan (#00f3e9) — rendered once; recorded as an observed accent, not a role.
• On Brand (#ffffff) — the sign-in button's label colour, measured on the control.

Typography

Font Family

The body stack computes -apple-system. Douyin publishes no font-family token among its 424 properties, so tokens.typography.family is absent: the platform system face is not promoted to a brand typeface.

Scale

16px carries 63% of the page. Like Weibo, hierarchy comes from opacity and enclosure rather than from size.

Layout

• Dark canvas, lighter panels. #161823 under #252632, a single step of separation.
• 12px is the radius. 81 of the page's rounded corners.
• One ink at many opacities rather than a grey ramp, so text stays legible over video.

Responsive Behavior

Not measured. Desktop 1440×900 only. Douyin is primarily a mobile application and the web surface is a secondary view of it.

Elevation & Depth

Not measured. No shadow or elevation token appears among the 424 properties. Douyin separates layers by background step, not by shadow.

Motion & Easing

Not measured. No transition or duration token appears among the 424 properties.

Tier 1 sources: https://www.douyin.com/ (live production home — 424 custom properties read via getComputedStyle, including the gift-*, pk-* and -ucenter families that are specific to Douyin's livestream and user-centre surfaces, 2026-09-22); https://open.douyin.com/ (Douyin Open Platform — a second brand-owned regional source; its chrome is a separate palette and is not cited for product tokens, see the verification notes)

Components

No component is declared.

The one control the logged-out home exposes is the sign-in button: #fe2c55 fill, 12px radius, 38px tall, 15px/500 — and it does not change on hover, press or focus. Everything else is behind a sign-in wall.

Douyin declares --color-primary-hover (#d21b46) and --color-secondary-hover (rgba(242,242,244,.12)), so the interaction contract exists in the token set. This capture did not find a control rendering it, so no component state is claimed.

Radius

--radius-small_1-ucenter 4px · --radius-large_1-ucenter 12px · --radius-large_2-ucenter 16px are published. Rendered, 12px dominates at 81 occurrences, with a 72px pill used 5 times. Two asymmetric values — 12px 0 0 12px and 0 12px 12px 0 — appear once each, the halves of a split control.

States

None observed. The sign-in button does not react to hover, press or focus, and it is the only control the logged-out surface exposes. --color-primary-hover and --color-secondary-hover are recorded as colour tokens, not as component states.

Do's and Don'ts

Do

• Build dark-first: #161823 canvas, #252632 panels.
• Express text hierarchy as white at .9 / .75 / .34 alpha, not as grey values.
• Reserve #fe2c55 for the primary action.
• Use 12px radius as the default.

Don't

• Don't take open.douyin.com's palette — #1c5cfb, #1ff17f, #692cea are a developer portal's colours, not the product's (§ verification notes).
• Don't convert the alpha text tokens into opaque greys; the alpha is what makes them work over video.
• Don't invent hover states for components — the declared hover tokens exist but this capture observed none rendering.

Voice & Tone

Terse and mechanical in the chrome — 登录 (sign in) and little else. The product's personality lives in its content and its livestream mechanics, not in interface copy.

Agent Prompt Guide

Quick Color Reference

#fe2c55 brand · #d21b46 brand hover · #161823 canvas · #252632 surface · #33343f raised · white at .9 / .75 / .34 for text

Example Component Prompts

• "A dark video card: #252632 panel on #161823, 12px radius, title white at 90%, metadata white at 34%, one #fe2c55 action."