freee DESIGN.md

Design System Inspiration of freee

Overview

Visual Theme & Atmosphere

freee develops an integrated management platform for Japanese small businesses: accounting, HR, approvals, and connected business data are framed as a way to let owners manage freely rather than spend their time on back-office work. The company was established in July 2012 and its public mission is 「スモールビジネスを、世界の主役に。」 (“Empower Small Businesses to Take Center Stage”). On the current public freee pages supplied for this review, that purpose is expressed with a clean white field, a vivid practical blue, high-contrast Japanese text, and compact rounded calls to action. The visual system reads as calm and approachable without claiming that these marketing pages are the authenticated accounting, payroll, or documentation product UI. Mission · Company profile

freee also maintains Vibes, an official open-source design system. Vibes is valuable design and accessibility context, but the current public-site token set below comes only from the supplied live computed capture. Historic Vibes values such as #285ac8 are not substituted for the current live #2864f0, and no component is generalized from the website into an unobserved product surface. Official Vibes announcement · Vibes repository

• A public-site primary blue with white action text
• White canvas, charcoal body copy, and muted gray navigation
• 5px compact header controls and 8px page actions/cards
• Loaded Noto Sans JP across the supplied public routes

Primary tasks

• Run accounting, HR, and approvals on one platform
• Pick a segment on the freee home page
• Browse the product categories on the products page
• Check what freee costs on the pricing page
• Sign up from the public header

Brand Narrative

freee was established in July 2012. Its official company profile identifies Daisuke Sasaki as CEO and founder; its mission page describes an integrated management platform intended to reduce back-office burden for small businesses and support freer management. The current public-site blue, Noto Sans JP deployment, and concise action geometry are a separate live-surface record, not evidence about the private application. Company profile · Mission

In 2023 freee publicly released Vibes and its accessibility-related frontend-development knowledge. That release is evidence of an accessibility-focused design-system initiative, not authority to reclassify its historic tokens as current website values. Official announcement

Principles

1. Support small-business autonomy. UI implication: make the relevant management outcome explicit before the call to action.
2. Separate evidence domains. UI implication: public marketing, authenticated product, documentation chrome, and historical Vibes assets must not donate tokens to one another without direct evidence.
3. Treat accessibility as engineering practice. UI implication: use the official Vibes/a11y context for intent, but verify each public UI value at the actual surface before implementation.

Personas

No official persona research or product-user interviews were collected in this re-verification packet. Do not create synthetic users as evidence.

Colors

Observed public-site roles

• Primary (#2864f0): repeated public header and page-action fill, text, and border color across home, pricing, and products.
• Primary hover snapshot (#2863ef): pseudo-state snapshot on the pricing/page action capture; not a motion contract.
• Primary pressed snapshot (#245ad9): pseudo-state snapshot on a pricing primary action; not a universal state token.
• Canvas (#ffffff): repeated public-page action and surface background.
• Tint surface (#ebf3ff): home segment-selection card background.
• Text (#323232): observed home segment-card text and repeated public text.
• Muted text (#595959): repeated public navigation and footer text.
• Border (#e1dcdc): observed products-page category-card border.

Historical system boundary

The official Vibes repository contains a broader, versioned component and token system under an Apache-2.0 licence. It is a historical/design-system source, not evidence that its legacy palette or status colors are the current values on the three public pages in this capture. Values not computed on those pages are omitted from machine tokens rather than inferred.

Typography

Evidence classes

• Live computed public-site use: Noto Sans JP is the only promoted UI-family token. It has 1,371 visible computed uses across the three routes, a high-confidence loaded FontFaceSet match, and freee-hosted Regular, Medium, and Bold OTF source URLs.
• Official design-system context: Vibes is an official freee design system. Its repository is Apache-2.0 licensed and documents a reusable system; that does not make its historical font stack a current public-site token.
• Declared-only: Cherry Bomb One, Coiny, myfont, and swiper-icons have @font-face declarations in the raw bundle but zero visible observed uses. They are not UI-family tokens.
• Unobserved domains: no authenticated product screen or documentation chrome was included in the collector evidence. This reference makes no claim about their font use.

Measured public hierarchy

Do not render a declared Google font, icon face, or a system fallback as though it were Noto Sans JP.

Brand face, substitute, safe default

• Brand face: Noto Sans JP on the captured public site, a Noto CJK face released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (github.com/notofonts/noto-cjk); freee self-hosts its Regular, Medium and Bold OTF files. It can be installed as itself.
• Substitute: none needed; the face is installable.
• Safe default (not the brand face): none listed; install Noto Sans JP itself.

Layout

• The observed public header action uses 4px 20px padding; the larger public actions use 10px 16px.
• The capture shows local 5px and 8px geometry, not a universal radius scale.
• Only desktop public routes were supplied. No application layout grid, mobile breakpoint, or product workflow density is asserted.

Responsive Behavior

No responsive token or breakpoint is documented. The evidence contains no mobile viewport capture; re-verification must collect a matching public route at the target viewport before adding one.

Elevation & Depth

No reusable shadow or elevation token is promoted. The inspected public component samples used box-shadow: none; the broader Vibes shadow recipes are historical system context, not live-page tokens.

Motion & Easing

The collector recorded no interaction event or timing data. Hover, focus, and pressed images do not establish duration, easing, or reduced-motion behavior.

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Verified: 2026-07-13 Tier 1 sources: https://www.freee.co.jp/; https://www.freee.co.jp/pricing/; https://www.freee.co.jp/products/; https://corp.freee.co.jp/news/20231219_design.html; https://github.com/freee/vibes; https://corp.freee.co.jp/mission/; https://corp.freee.co.jp/company/ Tier 2 sources: https://getdesign.md/freee (attempted through built-in web search; no freee record returned); https://styles.refero.design/?q=freee (attempted through built-in web search; no freee result returned in the public result set) Conflicts unresolved: none

Components

Every component below is a public-site observation with preserved selector and surface provenance. The bundle reports three pseudo-state kinds but interactionCount: 0; hover, pressed, and focus snapshots are visual samples, not proof of transition timing, keyboard behavior, or a complete state model.

Header action

Primary — observed default

• Background: #2864f0
• Text: #ffffff
• Border: 1px solid #2864f0
• Radius: 5px
• Padding: 4px 20px
• Font: 14px / 700 / Noto Sans JP
• Use: public header sign-up action at home::[data-omd-capture="8"]; 31px rendered height.
• Hover: #2761e8 background at home::[data-omd-capture="8"]::state-hover.
• Pressed: #2358d4 background at home::[data-omd-capture="8"]::state-pressed.
• Focus: #2256ce background at home::[data-omd-capture="8"]::state-focus.

Page actions

Primary — observed default

• Background: #2864f0
• Text: #ffffff
• Border: 2px solid #2864f0
• Radius: 8px
• Padding: 10px 16px
• Font: 16px / 700 / Noto Sans JP
• Use: pricing-page action at pricing::[data-omd-capture="17"]; 48px rendered height.
• Hover: #2863ee background at pricing::[data-omd-capture="17"]::state-hover.
• Pressed: #2762ec background at pricing::[data-omd-capture="17"]::state-pressed.
• Focus: #2763ed background with #2761e8 border at pricing::[data-omd-capture="17"]::state-focus.

Outline — observed default

• Background: #ffffff
• Text: #2864f0
• Border: 2px solid #2864f0
• Radius: 8px
• Padding: 10px 16px
• Font: 16px / 700 / Noto Sans JP
• Use: pricing-page secondary action at pricing::[data-omd-capture="70"]; 48px rendered height, default state only.

Segment-selection card

Tinted — observed default

• Background: #ebf3ff
• Text: #323232
• Radius: 8px
• Font: 16px / 400 / Noto Sans JP
• Use: home segment-selection card at home::div.fr-3ezzk7z2_kv_card; 103px rendered height, default state only.

Product-category card

Outline — observed default

• Background: #ffffff
• Text: #2864f0
• Border: 1px solid #e1dcdc
• Radius: 8px
• Padding: 10px 14px
• Font: 16px / 700 / Noto Sans JP
• Use: products category link at products::[data-omd-capture="37"]; 186px rendered height, default state only.

No authenticated-app fields, data tables, status badges, dialogs, errors, disabled states, responsive breakpoints, or documentation components are specified: none had the required public selector/surface/state provenance in the supplied evidence.

Published component roster (69 published, none measured here)

freee's Vibes publishes 69 components in the two tiers it names itself, read from its Storybook index (https://vibes.freee.co.jp/index.json) on 2026-09-19. No value, state or geometry below is asserted by this reference.

• lv1 (16) — InlineSpinner, Loading, a11y, bases, buttons, calendar, forms, grids, icons, images, interactiveParts, layout, lists, messages, progress, typography
• lv2 (53) — accordionPanel, breadcrumbs, bulletedList, buttonGroup, calendar, cardNavigation, combobox, descriptionList, dialogs, dropdown, dropdownButton, emptyStates, fileUploader, filterTag, filterableDropdownButton, footer, formBlock, formControl, formFields, globalNavi, guidanceMessage, guidedContent, header, headlineArea, hierarchicalTable, indexSearchField, lineSeparatedList, listCard, listTable, messageBlock, messageIcon, modals, numericTable, pageSelector, pager, personTag, popupProgressBar, popupProgressBarPortal, propsListForm, scrimCoveredContent, selectableButton, skeleton, stackedBarChart, statusSelector, stepper, tabBar, tagBox, withAccordionContent, withBalloon, withDropdown, withFilterableDropdown, withPopup, withTOC

The host marks a further six deprecated, and they are listed apart rather than dropped: basicTable, buttons, forms, interactiveParts, listButtonSelector, listButtons.

Why a fetch could not find this. vibes.freee.co.jp is a Storybook: the page returns a shell with zero anchors, and the roster lives in /index.json, which Storybook publishes for exactly this purpose. A path crawl finds nothing here no matter how patient it is.

States

The supplied capture has pseudo-state visual snapshots for selected public buttons, but no observable error, loading, success, empty, disabled, dialog, or authenticated-product state model. Add a state only after collecting its selector and surface provenance.

Do's and Don'ts

Do

• Use Noto Sans JP only where its live loaded-font evidence applies.
• Keep public primary and outline actions distinct: filled blue versus white with a blue border.
• Treat pseudo-state samples as selector-specific visual evidence.

Don't

• Substitute Vibes’ historical #285ac8 for the current public #2864f0.
• Promote declared-only Cherry Bomb One, Coiny, myfont, or swiper-icons to UI typography.
• Invent product-dashboard tables, badges, form states, or motion from public marketing pages.

Voice & Tone

The official mission speaks directly about enabling small businesses to take centre stage and to manage freely. Public copy should be clear, respectful, and oriented to the user’s business outcome; this is an editorial application of the mission, not a claim that a full product copy guide was captured. Mission

Voice samples.

• 「スモールビジネスを、世界の主役に。」 — official mission.
• 「だれもが自由に自然体で経営できる環境」 — official mission-page framing.
• 「だれもが自由に経営できる統合型経営プラットフォーム」 — official vision framing.

Agent Prompt Guide

• “Create a public freee-style page action: #2864f0 fill, white Noto Sans JP 16px/700 text, 8px radius, and 10px 16px padding. Scope it to public marketing, not an accounting-app control.”
• “Create a public freee-style outline action: white fill, #2864f0 text and 2px border, 8px radius, 10px 16px padding, Noto Sans JP 16px/700.”
• “Use white canvas, #323232 content text, #595959 muted text, and #ebf3ff only for the observed segment-card context. Do not add unobserved status colors.”