Build your brand once as real tokens — color, type, spacing, logo. Then make email, documents and featured images that inherit them. No model in the loop, so nothing ever looks like a prompt.
Three tools built and in daily use · One in design · Free tier runs entirely in your browser
Your brand leaves the studio as a token file. It isn't a mood board or a PDF nobody opens — it's the thing the tools actually run on.
{
"name": "Shepdesign",
"fonts": { "head": "Bricolage",
"body": "Geist" },
"light": { "primary": "#1f4ed8",
"ink": "#1b2130",
"paper": "#f2f3f5" },
"dark": { … },
"radius": 8,
"type": { "base": 16, "ratio": 1.25 }
}
theme.json, Bricks classes. The work isn't trapped in a canvas.Each one runs on its own in a browser tab, free. Together they share a brand.
Color, type, spacing and radius, built as a real system: an OKLCH engine with gamut mapping, 19 curated font pairings, contrast audited as you go. Export CSS, Tailwind, JSON, Figma, theme.json — or send it straight to the other tools.
Drag blocks, click any text to edit it in place, switch brand and the whole email re-skins. Outputs table-based HTML that survives Outlook, with your ESP’s real merge tags already in the footer.
Drop a Markdown file and read it typeset. Seven skins plus your own, code, math, diagrams, tables. Export a self-contained HTML document, print a PDF, or publish it to a link in your own skin.
Branded hero images, OG cards and social tiles composed from your tokens — typography, color, logo, structure. One title renders every size, with alt text, filename pattern and metadata written into the file.
There's a wave of tools that take your brand guide, run a prompt, and hand back fifty assets. They're fast, and everything they make has the same fingerprint on it. Zest goes the other way.
| Generative tools | Zest | |
|---|---|---|
| How it looks | Every asset carries the model’s fingerprint. Clients notice. | Typography, color and your logo. There is no model in the loop. |
| Doing it twice | Same prompt, different result. You cannot reproduce last month’s hero. | Same tokens, same output. Every time. |
| Rebranding | Regenerate everything and hope. Then fix it by hand. | Change four colors. Regenerate the set. |
| Where it lives | Their cloud, your credits, their canvas. | Your browser. Cloud only for sync and publishing. |
| What you keep | Images. | Tokens — CSS, Tailwind, Figma, WordPress, and the images. |
Zest does use AI, in one place and optionally: drafting copy or a first layout you then edit. It's your key or your plan's drafts, it says which model it used, and the output goes through the same checks as anything you paste. You review it. You own it.
Three tools exist and are used on real client work every week. Here's what's between now and a product you can buy.
Zest, ZestMail and Zest MD are built and in daily use on client work. Brand guide, icon system and architecture done.
Accounts and licenses. Cloud brands and designs that follow you between machines. Image hosting, test sends, and one-click publishing.
ZestImage. The macOS app — one login, every tool, Markdown files opening from Finder, Quick Look previews.
Custom domains for published documents. Teams. A CLI that builds a docs site with the same engine.
You can't copy-protect an HTML file and it's dishonest to pretend otherwise. So the tools stay free and local — that's the demo and the point. What's paid is everything a single file can't do alone.
Lifetime licenses available at launch. 14-day refunds, no questions, through the billing portal. Export everything you've made — designs, documents, images, tokens — from your account at any time.
The tools are free to use the day they go up. Waitlist members get in first, keep founding pricing, and help decide what ships after ZestImage.