Design vocabulary, illustrated

The design library,
drilled into memory.

29 hand-curated decks across UX laws, color, typography, design systems, and the new AI layer. 450+ illustrated cards on spaced repetition. Five free to start; full catalog $8/mo.

Start learning See how it works ↓
learnwithcortex.com/everything

The Problem

Design keeps expanding. Your fluency hasn't caught up.

The job has expanded. "Designer" used to mean craft and research. Now it also means design tokens, Claude Code, motion, accessibility audits, and prompt engineering. Same title, four times the verbiage.
You nod through meetings where engineers throw around "hooks" or your PM mentions "retention curves" — and you don't want to nod anymore.
Anki works for retention but it's ugly and uncurated. YouTube is too long. Twitter threads expire. You need real, structured learning that respects your time.

Cortex fixes this.

How It Works

Three steps from sign-up to fluent

01

Pick what you want to learn

Fundamentals, visual craft, interaction, systems, or the code-and-AI side. Pick the areas you care about and we surface the right decks. No blank canvas.

Focal Point — picking what to attend to Focal Point · Visual Hierarchy
02

Build your starter library

Hand-curated decks, each with 15-23 illustrated cards. UX Laws, Color, Typography, Design Systems, AI Fundamentals. Five free; Pro unlocks the full catalog of 29 decks.

Building a Palette — assembling your library Building a Palette · Color
03

Drill it until it sticks

Spaced repetition surfaces cards right before you'd forget them. Pro unlocks Multiple Choice, Fill-in-the-Blank, and Brain Dump — every angle on the same content.

Recognition Over Recall — memory you can lean on Recognition Over Recall · Heuristics

Hand-curated, hand-illustrated

Every card gets a face

Editorial illustrations in a locked palette, paired with concise explanations. The same visual system across every deck, so the catalog feels like one product, not a stack of templates.

Hick's Law
More options means slower decisions, not better ones
UX Laws
The Color Wheel
The relationships between hues that drive every palette decision
Color
X-Height
The hidden ratio that determines whether type feels readable
Typography
Primitive Tokens
The raw values your design system actually stores
Design Systems
AI Coding Agent
What an agent is, what it isn't, and why it matters now
Claude Code
Heuristic Evaluation
Nielsen's 10 — the cheapest critique tool a designer owns
Heuristics

Why Cortex

What you've been doing

  • Half-listening through engineering meetings
  • Bookmarking articles you'll never re-read
  • Watching 90-minute YouTube primers at 2x
  • Building Anki decks that look like tax forms
  • Nodding at the new buzzword in standup

With Cortex

  • Curated decks for the design work you actually do
  • 15 illustrated cards per deck — no fluff
  • Spaced repetition surfaces what you'd forget
  • Four practice modes, not just flashcards
  • A reason to nod with conviction

Who It's For

Built for designers leveling up

A designer surrounded by floating tokens, motion arrows and design symbols

The leveler-up

Mid-level designer whose job grew faster than the curriculum. You're picking up design tokens, motion, Claude Code, prompt engineering — and want a structured way to drill them.

A person walking forward carrying a notebook, with simple icons from an old field behind and design symbols ahead

The career switcher

Coming into design from an adjacent field. You need to get fluent in the vocabulary fast — without nodding through a year of meetings while you absorb it by osmosis.

A person at a desk with one beautifully illustrated card upright, an old pile of index cards pushed aside

The Anki refugee

You believe spaced repetition works. You can't stand the UI. You want decks that someone curated, illustrations that don't look like clip art, and a product that respects your eye.

Pricing

Five decks free. The catalog for $8.

Start your library. Upgrade when you want the rest.

Monthly
Yearly Save 37%
Free
Get started with a starter library
$0 /month
 
  • 5 free decks in your library
  • Flashcard practice mode
  • Spaced repetition
  • Sharing
Start free
Pro
Full catalog, every practice mode
$8 /month
 
  • Full deck catalog (all premium decks)
  • All four practice modes — Flashcard, Multiple Choice, Fill-in-Blank, Brain Dump
  • Create your own cards & decks
  • Unlimited AI illustrations & explanations
  • Custom AI prompts
  • Spaced repetition
  • Sharing & export
Upgrade to Pro

By next month, you'll know things
you nodded through last week.

Five free decks. Pick the areas that matter for your work — we surface the rest.

Start learning →

No credit card required.