# Visual Design > Use when creating posters, covers, social graphics, or other static visual designs. Covers composition, typographic hierarchy, colour, and producing original work rather than pastiche. - **Type:** Skill - **Install:** `agentstack add skill-nimadorostkar-claude-skills-collection-visual-design` - **Verified:** Yes — security-reviewed for prompt injection and unsafe behavior - **Seller:** [nimadorostkar](https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/nimadorostkar) - **Installs:** 0 - **Category:** [Agent Skills](https://agentstack.voostack.com/c/agent-skills) - **Latest version:** 0.1.0 - **License:** MIT - **Upstream author:** [nimadorostkar](https://github.com/nimadorostkar) - **Source:** https://github.com/nimadorostkar/Claude-Skills-collection/tree/main/skills/design/visual-design - **Website:** https://github.com/nimadorostkar/Claude-Skills-collection ## Install ```sh agentstack add skill-nimadorostkar-claude-skills-collection-visual-design ``` Requires the [AgentStack CLI](https://agentstack.voostack.com/docs/cli). Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible agent. ## About # 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. ## Source & license This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code. - **Author:** [nimadorostkar](https://github.com/nimadorostkar) - **Source:** [nimadorostkar/Claude-Skills-collection](https://github.com/nimadorostkar/Claude-Skills-collection) - **License:** MIT - **Homepage:** https://github.com/nimadorostkar/Claude-Skills-collection Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above. ## Pricing - **Free** — Free ## Security capabilities Automated source analysis of v0.1.0 — what this tool can access: - **Network access:** no - **Filesystem access:** no - **Shell / process execution:** no - **Environment & secrets:** no - **Dynamic code execution:** no *"Yes" means the capability is present in the source — more access means more to trust, not that it is unsafe.* ## Versions - **0.1.0** — security scan: passed — Imported from the upstream source. ## Links - Listing page: https://agentstack.voostack.com/l/skill-nimadorostkar-claude-skills-collection-visual-design - Seller: https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/nimadorostkar - Browse the marketplace: https://agentstack.voostack.com/browse --- Listed on AgentStack — the marketplace for AI agent skills and MCP servers. Every listing is security-reviewed. Creators keep 70%.