Ink overview
Ink is Carta's shared foundation of design and code—bringing consistency, quality, and speed to every product experience. Whether you're designing in Figma or building in code, Ink provides the components, patterns, and guidance you need to move faster with confidence.
Ink Principles
Craft as differentiator
We maintain the highest bar for design quality, treating craft as a competitive advantage equal to features in our digital-first world.
Sweat the details
Craft every detail with meticulous care, delivering the polish and precision users expect from best in class digital products.
Quality through research and standards
Ensure every element meets clear standards for accessibility, responsiveness, and enterprise scale through rigorous testing.
Craft drives competitive advantage
Treat design quality as a strategic differentiator that sets Carta apart in a crowded digital landscape.
Simplify the complex
We provide comprehensive guidance and thoughtful defaults that turn building blocks into confident creation, making the complex simple and the simple obvious.
Guide decisions, don't just provide options
Offer opinionated defaults and clear "when to use" guidance so teams spend less time choosing and more time creating.
Make wisdom accessibleUse
AI, documentation, and multiple support channels to help everyone understand not just what exists, but how to use it effectively.
Balance flexibility with direction
Provide customization without complexity, giving teams specific solutions that solve real problems without overwhelming choice.
Impact over output
We measure success by product velocity, user experience quality, and team confidence — not by how many components we ship or teams that adopt them.
Optimize for outcomes
Every component, token, and guideline should ladder up to better products shipping faster, reducing decision fatigue instead of adding complexity.
Build with intention
Build tools that accelerate quality, ensure consistency, and enable flexibility — freeing teams to focus on solving user problems.
Automate the mundane
Use AI and automation to translate design language into code, prototypes, and decisions at the pace of product ambition.
Getting started
For Designers
Ink enables designers to work quickly and confidently by providing a consistent visual language, interaction patterns, and a shared foundation that connects directly to production code. It's the source of truth for Carta's product design—helping teams design high-quality experiences that look and feel cohesive across the platform.
Start by exploring our Figma libraries, which include our core foundations (color, typography, spacing) and components that match our production React library. You'll use these libraries as building blocks in your design work.
For Developers
Ink helps developers build consistent, accessible, and performant interfaces with production-ready React components. Each component in Ink is designed and built to match our Figma counterparts—making handoff smoother and implementation faster. You can install Ink through our npm package and import components directly into your application. Each component includes usage examples, props, and testing documentation to help you build quickly and confidently.