CT Logomark
Work

AuthZed Brand & Design System

Identity
Design systems
Web Design
Campaigns
Illustration
Print
Event

AuthZed builds authorization infrastructure for AI and modern applications. Its open source database, SpiceDB, is based on Google's Zanzibar and gives teams fine-grained permissions that scale, from startups to companies like OpenAI, Netflix and Workday.

The AuthZed mark on a dark ground, at the center of a warm gradient line crossed by fine vertical ticks. The line fades out behind the mark.

The Challenge

I joined AuthZed in August 2024 as the only designer. The first things to work on were taking inventory of existing branding and beginning the process of uniformity and updating outward facing materials.

2021

The authzed.com homepage in 2021: a light page headed The platform to store, compute, and validate application permissions

2023

The authzed.com homepage in 2023: muted purple waves behind A managed permissions database for everyone

July 2024

The authzed.com homepage in July 2024: a dark page with a hex-wrapped planet and the headline Authorization That Scales
Homepage evolution. From the Wayback Machine.
The customer stories page in August 2024, with a teal and red gradient banner and outlined story cards The pricing page in August 2024, with three plan cards under the logo The blog in July 2024, with post cards for the Series A and two new developer tools The docs home in January 2024, with a sidebar and a node graph in muted red and gray
Customer stories, pricing, the blog and the docs in 2024.

The Solution

A big rebrand or launch didn't make sense. There was nothing to tie it to, and it would have added unnecessary constraints and removed our ability to easily course correct as it was built. The first thing was getting a proper design system established. So I built Sandworm, our design system named for the worm on Arrakis that comes whenever you need, and rolled it out one surface at a time as the work came up.

The Sandworm system

See the full system ↗

AI Moves Fast.
Permissions Must Keep Up.

The Authorization Platform for AI and Modern Applications

The homepage headline
Seven families with fifteen even perception-based stops
AGENT APP LLM DATA DATA DATA
The AuthZed docs site, in its dark theme: the Writing Relationships page with the sidebar, a schema code block and a table of contents
The Base Layer show cover: base layer in large monospace type, split by a warm gradient line, from AuthZed
  • Base Layer guest card: Zachary Smith, Datum
  • Base Layer guest card: Emilie Schario, Kilo Code
  • Base Layer guest card: Spencer Kimball, Cockroach Labs
  • Base Layer guest card: Taylor Dolezal, Dosu
Live applications and evolutions using the Sandworm design system.

One spec, thirteen specific guides

See the repo ↗
web-ui product-ui components typography palette logo-brand animation dataviz diagrams slides social print accessibility DESIGN.md PEOPLE AI TOOLS

DESIGN.md

Read by people and their AI tools

  • web-ui
  • product-ui
  • components
  • typography
  • palette
  • logo-brand
  • animation
  • dataviz
  • diagrams
  • slides
  • social
  • print
  • accessibility
The file names are the real ones in the repo.
The SpiceDB page, an interactive RAG demo and a diagram for our product Materialize.

Campaigns, events and swag

The same system carries off the screen: launch campaigns, our fifth birthday, booths, a book, dinners and the swag we bring to events. Permission to Launch started as one CLI line that comes back true, and Zanzibar+ is Google's paper republished with our notes in the margins and a foreword by Kelsey Hightower.

Permission to Launch

A clean mockup of the KubeCon EU 2025 booth: a Permission to Launch backwall with a zed permission check command and a planet, beside a counter with the AuthZed mark
A LinkedIn ad: Permission to Launch, with the planet at the right A later version of the same ad: Permission to Collaborate
Built and shown at KubeCon EU 2025 (clean mockup with the real print file), then the ads that came out of it.

AuthZed is 5 and the Community Showcase

The AuthZed is 5 board: a big gradient 5 running across event banners, speaker cards and a recap The SpiceDB Community Showcase board: an event title card, a speaker grid and a shirt
AuthZed is 5, and the SpiceDB Community Showcase virtual events.

Booths

A clean mockup of the EIC 2026 booth: a backwall headlined The Authorization Platform for AI and Modern Applications, with customer logos set among anonymous industry tags A clean mockup of the Identiverse 2026 booth: an L of two walls, one with an OpenAI quote and one with customer logos, and a kiosk with the AuthZed mark on the front and Dibs on its side
EIC and Identiverse 2026. Clean mockups with the real print files on them.

Ads and slides

An ad: No More JWTs for Authorization, over a decoded token An ad: Homegrown authorization works, until it doesn't, over a house of cards An ad: 4 of 10 OWASP AI risks need authorization controls An ad for the Zanzibar+ annotated paper, with the book cover
Other ads falling from the same system.
A slide: How AuthZed helps secure your AI systems A slide with a system diagram: Unify your application and agent permissions
The same visual language on slides.

Zanzibar+

A mockup of the printed Zanzibar+ booklet open on a worn desk at pages 14 and 15, with violet and teal margin notes beside the architecture diagram A mockup of a fanned stack of Zanzibar+ booklets on a desk, the purple cover with the Zanzibar+ title and planet art on top
Zanzibar+, Annotated by AuthZed with violet notes to explain Zanzibar and teal for where SpiceDB differs.

Supper Club

A mockup of a black Supper Club hoodie, front: the seal printed small on the left chest The same hoodie mockup from the back: The AuthZed supper club, est. 2025, printed large across the shoulders
The AuthZed Supper Club, a private dinner series focused on the authorization space. Hoodies as a keepsake.

Swag

A photo of a black pocket tee with Dibs peeking out of the pocket and the AuthZed wordmark on the sleeve Dibs socks shown from the front, side and back, black with an orange and pink pattern A mockup of stickers on a laptop lid: We're Hiring stickers with QR codes and Dibs character stickers
The pocket tee, hand pressed for a company offsite (any idea how hard it is to get someone to print in the pocket?), socks, and some stickers.
A mockup of three enamel pins on their dark backing cards on a wooden table: a keychain reading Friends don't let agents have admin, a round pin reading My friends don't dangerously skip permissions, and a bar reading safely run with exact permissions, with one card turned over to its QR code
A set of pins focused on agent authorization for an AuthZed + ClawCon event.
A mockup of a white shirt from the back with a bowl of noodles above the words Scope-ghetti alla JWTs A mockup of a white shirt with a small print on the chest, beside the same art at large size: No more JWTs A mockup of a white shirt, front and back: No more JWTs in big red type, under pill shapes reading stale, key chaos, no revoke, token replay and scope bloat
Scope-ghetti shirt and two No More JWTs shirts available in our swag market.

Gifts

A gift box mockup with a massage gun behind it: Chronic RBAC pain? Ask your engineers if relationship-based access is right for you A gift box mockup laid open with the Zanzibar+ book, a Dibs storybook and small pieces: Time to return those if-statements A mailer mockup with three prints: Some relationships are worth framing
Gifting authorization to those in need (prospects).

The Mascot

SpiceDB needed a friendly face (can you name a developer who doesn't love a mascot?), the way Go has its Gopher. Dibs is a jerboa named after Dune's Muad'Dib, the chosen one: small, nimble, & resilient, which lines up with SpiceDB. I explored hundreds of directions with AI image gen, and then traced and tweaked the winner, massaging all of the points in Illustrator like old times.

  1. Hundreds of small AI-generated mouse mascot images in dense grids, in many styles and palettes

    01 Throwing things at the wall

    From AI image tools.

  2. Fifteen of the most promising mouse directions in a grid

    02 The versions that stuck

    The few worth keeping.

  3. One chosen mouse edited into character sheets over several rounds, with gray masked areas waiting to be regenerated

    03 Iterating on each to go from one to many

    Round after round. The gray blobs are erase-and-regenerate masks.

  4. Six named character sheet variants in different palettes

    04 Sharing the newly minted creatures to the team

    Sunrise Muad'Dib, Quiet Confidence, Cozy Rock Hopper.

  5. The first flat vector Dibs in orange and pink, sitting in profile

    05 Vector of the approved direction

    Auto trace, then massaging points by hand.

  6. Four Dibs reference poses in a row: front, side, back and cheering

    06 Creating reference sheets

    Re-renders to feed image models.

  7. A contact sheet going from flat Dibs art through AI 3D views and Blender cleanup to painted test prints

    07 3D render into Blender for mesh cleanup & rigging

    From the flat art to a sculpt and test prints.

  8. The Dibs 3D model in a Blender-style edit view: a grey mesh with its wireframe showing and a few faces on the near ear selected in orange

    08 Editing the mesh

    From my Blender file.

  9. Slicer views of trophy figures and rock bases laid out on print plates

    09 Preparing manufacture of trophy set

    Trophy tops and rock bases, ready for the printer.

  10. A printed gold Dibs figure sitting on a black faceted rock base

    10 Printed and finished

    The Golden Dibs, for our spring 2025 offsite. Photo.

  11. 11 The idle loop

    Sniff, blink, ear twitch.

A photo of the printed Dibs deck, fanned out on its shipping box beside a stack of cards
One-bit dithered art of a campsite at night: pine trees, a tent, a campfire and Dibs resting by the fire
The printed deck (photo), with court art I made with AI image tools from my Dibs character. My art for the shirt at the spring 2025 offsite.
The final king, queen and jack of hearts from the Dibs deck, in cream, red and gold A mockup of Dibs and the Magic Library in a small bookshop: two copies on easels and a stack on a wooden table by a window, with shelves blurred behind
Style rounds until one held up across 52 cards, and Dibs and the Magic Library, written by Sam Kim.

Experiments

Being the only designer means I get to try a lot of things. Some are still in progress, some are shared, even more are sitting in folders on my desktop.

Chess against a live SpiceDB: every move fires a real check and every card a real write. A rule card gives the knight a new move, the knight makes it, and X-ray shows the grant on the board.

AI Moves Fast. Permissions Must Keep Up.

AuthZed Display, not on the live site yet, with today's homepage headline set in it. Try the sliders.
Three of my favorites from the SpiceDB candidates. Drag them to spin them.
Four round award stamps for poker chips, each with Dibs in the center: Dedicated Driver, Founders' Award, Ultimate Collaborator and Selfless Service
A photo of stacks of foil-stamped poker chips in black, teal and pink beside the finished brass dies A photo of the foil press with a strip of gold foil loaded A photo of four finished brass dies on a wood bench
Award art reduced to flat silhouettes for the dies, then cut, mounted and pressed. Photos.

And beyond

Teammates are now able to make work that's consistently on brand at the speed they can ask a question or provide feedback (with their AI tools and the spec of course), all while I still get to work on the fun stuff a designer loves.