Design Business Card

Skill: business-card

Produces a single self-contained HTML file containing two pixel-exact 1050×600 canvases — the front and back of a standard 3.5×2 inch business card at 300dpi. Print-ready dimensions; bleed and crop notes documented at the end of the file.

This skill is the most extreme reduction test in the platform-skills set. A business card has ~6 square inches of total real estate; the brand must speak with nearly no text. If the brand can't hold its identity at this scale, the design system has a problem worth surfacing.

When to use

• User needs printed business cards (or digital equivalents — Apple Wallet, Linktree alternative)
• A DESIGN.md exists for the brand

Inputs

• Required: brand slug, name, title/role
• Required: primary contact (email OR URL — pick the one most likely to lead to a conversation)
• Optional: secondary contact (the other of email/URL)
• Optional: location (city · timezone)
• Optional: secondary handle (e.g. GitHub for engineering brands)

Output

./design//artifacts/business-card-YYYY-MM-DD-.html

Steps

1. Verify brand exists

test -f ./design//tokens.css

2. Gather the brief

Ask in one message:

1. Name — as it should appear on the card
2. Title / role — short, sentence-case (no periods on titles — they're labels not sentences)
3. Primary contact — pick ONE: email OR URL (the one you most want to receive)
4. Optional secondary contact — the other one
5. Optional location — city · timezone (e.g. "Louisville · GMT−5")
6. Optional secondary handle — e.g. "github.com/handle" for engineering brands

If the user wants more than 4 lines of text on the front, push back: "Business cards work at 4 lines max. What's essential?"

3. Pick variation — FRONT and BACK can use different archetypes

This is the rare skill where the front and back can take DIFFERENT visual approaches because they serve different functions (front = info; back = mark/identity):

Front archetype:

• chrome-led — name + title + contact-row, structured. Most common; readable.
• type-only — name at maximum scale, contact details small in corner. Confident.
• inverse-text — full canvas dark inversion (canonical v2 feature treatment). Bold.

Back archetype:

• wordmark-dominant — full brand wordmark centered or off-center; nothing else. The mark IS the back.
• single-mark — a single brand device (single character, monogram, or symbol) at maximum scale.
• inverse-text — dark inversion with wordmark in cream. Mirrors the front if front is also inverted.
• chromeless — the back is intentionally near-empty cream. The negative space IS the message.

Color treatment — pick a relationship between front and back:

• same-surface (both cream OR both inverted)
• inverted-back (front cream, back dark — a register flip when you turn the card)
• inverted-front (front dark, back cream — punchy front, quiet back)

4. Generate the HTML

Template:

 — Business card — 

&display=swap">

/* Embed tokens.css verbatim */

html, body { margin: 0; padding: 0; background: #2a2a2a; min-height: 100vh; font-family: var(--type-sans-family); }
body { display: flex; flex-direction: column; align-items: center; gap: 32px; padding: 32px 0; }

.canvas-label { font-family: var(--type-mono-family); font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0.14em; text-transform: uppercase; color: rgba(255,255,255,0.7); align-self: center; }

/* Front + Back — both 1050×600 (3.5×2 inch at 300dpi) */
.canvas-front, .canvas-back {
  width: 1050px; height: 600px;
  position: relative; overflow: hidden;
  padding: 48px 56px;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  display: grid;
}

.canvas-front {
  background: var(--color-surface);
  color: var(--color-ink);
  grid-template-rows: auto 1fr auto;
  gap: 16px;
}

.canvas-back {
  background: var(--color-surface);   /* or --color-ink for inversion */
  color: var(--color-ink);
  display: grid; place-items: center;  /* default for wordmark-dominant back */
}

/* === Front composition === */
.front-name {
  font-family: var(--type-display-family);
  font-weight: 500;
  font-size: 64px;
  line-height: 1.0;
  letter-spacing: -0.018em;
  margin: 0;
  color: var(--color-ink);
}
.front-title {
  font-family: var(--type-display-family);
  font-weight: 600;
  font-variant-caps: small-caps; font-feature-settings: 'smcp';
  text-transform: lowercase;
  font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.08em;
  color: var(--color-ink-3);
  margin: 12px 0 0;
}
.front-contact {
  align-self: end;
  display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 6px;
  font-family: var(--type-mono-family);
  font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.04em;
  color: var(--color-ink);
}
.front-contact .secondary { color: var(--color-ink-3); }
.front-contact .label { font-size: 11px; letter-spacing: 0.18em; text-transform: uppercase; color: var(--color-ink-3); margin-right: 12px; }

/* === Back composition === */
.back-wordmark {
  font-family: var(--type-display-family);
  font-weight: 500;
  font-size: 84px;
  letter-spacing: -0.018em;
  color: var(--color-ink);
  margin: 0;
  text-align: center;
}

/* Inverted variant */
.canvas-front--inverted, .canvas-back--inverted {
  background: var(--color-ink);
  color: var(--color-surface);
}
.canvas-front--inverted .front-name { color: var(--color-surface); }
.canvas-front--inverted .front-title { color: rgba(251, 250, 249, 0.55); }
.canvas-front--inverted .front-contact { color: var(--color-surface); }
.canvas-front--inverted .front-contact .secondary { color: rgba(251, 250, 249, 0.55); }
.canvas-front--inverted .front-contact .label { color: rgba(251, 250, 249, 0.55); }
.canvas-back--inverted .back-wordmark { color: var(--color-surface); }

@page { size: 1050px 600px; margin: 0; }

→ FRONT · 1050×600 · 3.5×2 inch at 300dpi · name + contact

  
    [Speaker name]
    [title / role]
  
  
  
    Email[email@domain]
    Web[domain.com]
    Loc[city · timezone]
  

→ BACK · 1050×600 · wordmark-dominant

  [Wordmark]

5. Verify

• [ ] Both canvases at exact 1050×600
• [ ] Front has at most 4 lines of text (name + title + contact rows)
• [ ] Title is sentence-case WITHOUT period (titles are labels, not sentences — distinct from headlines that DO end in period)
• [ ] Back is wordmark-dominant — minimal text, mark earns the space
• [ ] Architecture archetypes documented (front + back can differ; color relationship documented)
• [ ] Read ../design-anti-patterns.md and verify the artifact violates none of its rules. Pay special attention to sections 1 (no decorative orbs / patterns; no stock photography), 2 (no italics-emphasis OR single-word color emphasis as default), 4 (no center-aligned hero with template — the front composition should be intentionally asymmetric or grid-anchored, not centered-template)
• [ ] No "Founder & CEO" / "Co-founder" titles appended with em-dash decoration — the title is what it is

> Business card at ./design//artifacts/business-card-YYYY-MM-DD-.html. > > Front: ` · Back: · Color: . > > Export each side: open in browser → DevTools → 1050×600 viewport → screenshot each .canvas-front and .canvas-back` separately. Or use browser's "Save as PDF" with page size 1050×600. > > For print: add 0.125-0.25" bleed (notes in file footer). Most print services accept the rendered PNG/PDF directly.

Anti-Slop Rules

Governed by three shared canonical references — read them, do not restate them:

• ../design-anti-patterns.md — the hard floor. Wins every conflict.
• ../design-principles.md — the craft floor (typographic hierarchy, spatial rhythm, color theory, layout logic, visual tension).
• ../design-variation-sop.md — the named-aesthetic roster + the procedure for varying every invocation.

Forbidden (fast scan — the references hold the full list):

• Indigo/violet/purple as default accent or primary — the hsl(230–280) family on a near-white surface. The single loudest AI tell.
• Purple→blue / "aurora" / gradient-mesh backgrounds; gradient-fill text.
• Glassmorphism without an explicit AA-contrast scrim; floating gradient "blobs" as atmosphere.
• The three-up icon-card feature grid; the "hero → 3 cards → CTA" median skeleton.
• One global border-radius on every element; timid evenly-weighted low-contrast palette.
• Inter / Roboto / Arial / Open Sans / Lato / Helvetica / system as the primary family (Space Grotesk = yellow flag). Use a category-matched stack from the variation roster.
• Value-free CTAs ("Get Started", "Learn More", "Sign Up"); the two-CTA hero. Name the real action and its value.

Required variation (every invocation):

• Make at least two intentional decisions that differ from the safe defaults (palette, layout structure, typographic voice, or spatial density) AND from the most recent artifact in this brand.
• Never default to "clean / minimal / modern" — that is the absence of a direction (variation-sop Rule 1).
• Sketch three distinct directions, offer them as a one-line menu, generate the best-fit by default, all three only if asked (variation-sop Rule 3).

Authenticity: prefer specific over generic everywhere — real datelines (not "today"), the brand's actual voice (not "build the future" filler), concrete CTAs over placeholders.

Rules

• Pixel exactness on both canvases. 1050×600 = 3.5×2 inches at 300dpi.
• At most 4 lines on the front. Name + title + 2 contact rows is the maximum. More than that breaks the format.
• Back is identity, not info. Wordmark, brand device, or intentional negative space — never repeated contact info.
• Title without period. Titles are labels (no period); names without label suffix; contact is monospace data.
• Print bleed documented in the file so the user knows what to add when sending to a printer.
• Token-pure. Every visual value via var(--*) from tokens.css.
• Anti-pattern compliance. This skill defers to three shared canonical references: ../design-anti-patterns.md (the hard floor — wins every conflict), ../design-principles.md (the craft floor), and ../design-variation-sop.md (direction roster + offer-3 procedure). The anti-patterns file is the canonical anti-tell list.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: slogsdon
• Source: slogsdon/skills-design
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.