---
name: Visual Design
slug: visual-design
category: Frontend
description: Visual Design produces static layouts like posters, covers, and social graphics with deliberate hierarchy, composition, type, and colour. Use it when reviewing or creating designs for print or screen.
github: "https://github.com/nimadorostkar/Claude-Skills-collection/tree/main/skills/design/visual-design"
language: Python
stars: 25
forks: 3
install: "npx degit https://github.com/nimadorostkar/Claude-Skills-collection/tree/main/skills/design/visual-design ~/.claude/skills/visual-design"
installs_to: ~/.claude/skills/visual-design
source_path: skills/design/visual-design/SKILL.md
collection_size: 50
category_size: 567
collection_url: "https://dirskills.com/collections/nimadorostkar/Claude-Skills-collection"
added: 2026-08-12T04:44:19.789Z
last_synced: 2026-08-12T04:44:19.789Z
canonical_url: "https://dirskills.com/skills/visual-design"
---

# Visual Design

Visual Design produces static layouts like posters, covers, and social graphics with deliberate hierarchy, composition, type, and colour. Use it when reviewing or creating designs for print or screen.

**Install:**

```bash
npx degit https://github.com/nimadorostkar/Claude-Skills-collection/tree/main/skills/design/visual-design ~/.claude/skills/visual-design
```

## README

# Visual Design

## Purpose

Produce static visual designs — posters, covers, graphics — that are composed deliberately rather than assembled. Most weak design is not a failure of taste; it is a failure to establish a hierarchy.

## When to Use

- Creating a poster, cover, banner, or social graphic.
- Designing a static layout where composition carries the message.
- Reviewing a design for hierarchy and balance.

## Capabilities

- Composition: grid, balance, negative space, focal point.
- Typographic hierarchy and pairing.
- Colour: palette construction, contrast, and restraint.
- Output for print (CMYK, bleed) and screen (RGB, pixel density).

## Inputs

- The message, and the one thing that must be read first.
- The medium, the size, and the viewing distance.
- Brand constraints, if any.

## Outputs

- A composed design with an unambiguous focal point.
- Assets at the correct resolution and colour space for the medium.

## Workflow

1. **Establish the hierarchy first** — What is read first, second, third? If everything is emphasized, nothing is. This decision precedes every other one.
2. **Build on a grid** — Even a loose one. A grid is what makes an intentional composition distinguishable from an accidental one, and it is what makes breaking it read as deliberate.
3. **Use negative space as a material** — Space is not emptiness to be filled. It is what gives the focal point its force.
4. **Restrict the palette** — Two or three colours plus neutrals. Every additional colour dilutes the hierarchy you just built.
5. **Restrict the type** — Two typefaces at most. Hierarchy comes from size, weight, and space — not from more fonts.
6. **Test at the actual viewing distance** — A poster is read from three metres. Shrink it to thumbnail size: the focal point should still be unmistakable.

## Best Practices

- The most common failure is no hierarchy: three elements at similar visual weight, so the eye has nowhere to land. Make one thing dominant.
- Negative space is what distinguishes a professional composition from an amateur one more reliably than any other single factor. Resist filling it.
- Contrast carries hierarchy: size, weight, colour, and space. Small contrasts read as mistakes; commit to a difference.
- Two typefaces, deliberately paired — one for display, one for text. A third is almost never an improvement.
- Colour with no restraint reads as noise. Pick a palette and stay within it.
- Never reproduce an existing artist's or brand's distinctive style. Create original work; take inspiration from principles, not from imitation.

## Examples

**Establishing hierarchy through contrast, not decoration:**

```text
A conference poster. Three pieces of information:
  1. The conference name          <- must be read first, from across a room
  2. The dates and the city       <- second
  3. The URL and the sponsors     <- third, only if they are already interested

Weak: all three set at similar sizes, centred, in three colours. The eye lands
nowhere. From three metres it is a grey rectangle.

Composed:
  - Name        : 240pt, one colour, occupying the upper-left third, ranged left,
                  with the counters tight. It is the only thing visible at
                  thumbnail size — which is the test.
  - Dates/city  : 48pt, the accent colour, sitting directly beneath the name's
                  baseline, aligned to the same left edge.
  - URL/sponsors: 18pt, neutral grey, at the foot, with generous space above so
                  they read as a footer rather than as content.
  - The lower-right 40% of the poster is empty. That emptiness is what gives the
    name its force. Filling it with a stock image would halve the poster's impact.

Palette: one dark neutral, one accent, white. Nothing else.
Type: one display face, one text face.
```

**Output specification, which is where designs get ruined:**

```text
Print (A2 poster):
  - 300 DPI at final size. A 150 DPI file will look acceptable on screen and
    visibly soft in print.
  - CMYK, with the accent colour checked for gamut. A vivid RGB blue frequently
    prints as a dull purple, and this is discovered at the printer.
  - 3mm bleed on every edge, with nothing important within 5mm of the trim.
  - Fonts outlined or embedded.

Screen (social, 1080x1350):
  - RGB, sRGB colour profile.
  - Text no smaller than 24px at 1080 width, or it is unreadable on a phone.
  - Check the composition at 150px wide — that is the size of a feed thumbnail,
    and it is where most people will see it.
```

## Notes

- The thumbnail test is the fastest and most brutal check available. Shrink the design to a quarter of an inch. Whatever is still legible is the hierarchy you actually built, as opposed to the one you intended.
- RGB-to-CMYK gamut loss is the standard print disappointment. Check the vivid colours before the print run, not after.
- Never imitate a specific living artist's or a specific brand's distinctive visual identity. Work from principles, and produce something original.