How we redesigned the Linear UI (part Ⅱ)

Linear has released a full redesign of its application UI, which the company describes as reducing visual noise and increasing the hierarchy and density of navigation elements in the sidebar, tabs, headers and panels. Karri, who led the concept design, explored hundreds of screens in Figma before the team narrowed to one main direction. The redesign took about six weeks to complete, moving from a feature-flagged internal test to a private beta, then a gradual rollout by percentage of workspaces, and finally general availability to all workspaces. The new light and dark themes are generated from three variables (base color, accent color and contrast) instead of 98 specific variables per theme, using the LCH color space.