visual-style

/visual-style — Visual Brand Identity Builder

Every brand has a voice. This skill gives it eyes.

Voice-profile.md defines how the brand sounds. Visual Brand Style defines how it looks — the lighting, the composition, the mood that makes someone see an image and know it's yours before reading a word.

On Activation

1. Read brand/creative-kit.md if it exists. Check for a ## Visual Brand Style section.
2. If the section exists and is populated (not template comments): Refresh mode — show current style, offer to update or replace.
3. If the section is template/empty: Create mode — build from scratch.
4. If creative-kit.md doesn't exist: create it first with mktg init, then proceed.
5. Read brand/voice-profile.md if it exists — personality informs visual tone (e.g., playful voice = warm/bright visuals, authoritative = clean/precise).
6. Read brand/positioning.md if it exists — angles inform visual metaphors (e.g., "the simple alternative" = minimalist aesthetic).
7. If no brand files exist, proceed anyway — ask the user directly. Progressive enhancement, not gating.

Mode Selection

Use AskUserQuestion:

"How do you want to define your visual brand style?"

1. Extract — I'll analyze your website or existing assets to derive the visual identity
2. Build — I'll interview you about your visual preferences (5-7 questions)
3. Reference — You provide mood boards, example images, or reference URLs and I'll synthesize a style

Mode 1: Extract

The user provides a URL or set of URLs (website, landing page, social profiles).

1. Use WebFetch to scrape each URL.
2. Analyze for visual patterns:
3. Dominant colors (map to hex codes)
4. Typography (serif vs sans-serif, weight, spacing)
5. Photography style (studio, candid, illustration, none)
6. Layout patterns (dense, airy, grid-heavy, asymmetric)
7. Mood (corporate, playful, premium, technical, warm)
8. Synthesize findings into the Visual Brand Style format.
9. Present to user via AskUserQuestion: "Here's what I extracted from your site. Does this capture your visual brand, or should I adjust?"

Fallback: If WebFetch is unavailable, switch to Build mode and tell the user why.

Mode 2: Build

Interview the user. Ask one question at a time via AskUserQuestion.

Question 1: Aesthetic anchor "Pick the closest match to how your brand should look visually:"

• Minimal and clean (Apple, Stripe)
• Warm and human (Mailchimp, Notion)
• Bold and energetic (Figma, Vercel)
• Premium and dark (Linear, Raycast)
• Editorial and photographic (Medium, Substack)
• Something else (describe it)

Question 2: Lighting and mood "What lighting feels right for your brand's images?"

• Warm and golden (golden hour, ambient glow)
• Bright and airy (soft diffused, clean whites)
• Dramatic and contrasty (rim lighting, dark backgrounds)
• Natural and candid (daylight, real environments)
• Neon and digital (glowing screens, dark mode)

Question 3: Composition "How should images be composed?"

• Single focal point with lots of breathing room
• Rich and detailed — fill the frame
• Asymmetric and editorial — off-center subjects
• Geometric and structured — grid-aligned elements

Question 4: What to avoid "What should your images NEVER look like?" (Free text — the user's avoidances are often more revealing than their preferences)

Question 5: Reference "Name a brand, website, or aesthetic that captures what you're going for — even if it's in a completely different industry."

Optional Question 6: Existing assets "Do you have any images that already feel on-brand? Describe them or share URLs."

Synthesize answers into the Visual Brand Style format.

Mode 3: Reference

The user provides mood boards, image URLs, or descriptions of their ideal visual style.

1. If URLs: use WebFetch or Read to analyze the images/pages.
2. If descriptions: extract the key visual patterns.
3. Synthesize into Visual Brand Style format.
4. Present for confirmation.

Output Format

Write the ## Visual Brand Style section into brand/creative-kit.md. Preserve all existing sections (Brand Colors, Typography, Visual Style). Only add/update the Visual Brand Style section.

## Visual Brand Style

- **Primary Aesthetic:** [derived aesthetic, e.g., "warm tech minimalism with editorial photography"]
- **Lighting:** [specific lighting direction, e.g., "soft diffused with rim lighting accents, warm color temperature"]
- **Backgrounds:** [background treatment, e.g., "dark slate (#0F172A) with warm accent gradients"]
- **Composition:** [layout approach, e.g., "single focal point, generous negative space for text overlay"]
- **Mood:** [emotional tone, e.g., "calm empowerment — powerful but approachable, like a quiet expert"]
- **Avoid:** [explicit exclusions, e.g., "generic stock photos, cold blue tech grids, floating 3D cubes, busy compositions"]
- **Reference Prompts:**
  1. [A proven prompt that captures the brand look — ready to paste into image gen]
  2. [A second prompt showing a different use case in the same style]
  3. [Optional third prompt for edge cases]

Reference Prompts are critical. These are the style anchors that /image-gen uses when generating on-brand images. They should be complete, narrative prompts (not keywords) that produce images distinctly this brand.

Refresh Mode

When ## Visual Brand Style already exists:

1. Present the current style summary.
2. AskUserQuestion: "Your visual brand style was last defined [date]. What would you like to do?"
3. Update specific fields (which ones?)
4. Rebuild from scratch
5. Add new reference prompts
6. Keep it as-is

Progressive Enhancement

| Level | Context | Output quality | |-------|---------|---------------| | L0 | No brand files | Generic but functional — asks user directly, writes style from scratch | | L1 | voice-profile.md exists | Personality-aligned — playful voice gets warm visuals | | L2 | + creative-kit.md colors/typography | Color-constrained — prompts incorporate brand palette | | L3 | + positioning.md | Full alignment — visual metaphors match positioning angles |

Anti-Patterns

| Anti-pattern | Why it fails | Instead | |-------------|-------------|---------| | Locking into one rigid style | Brands need versatility — a blog header and an error page shouldn't look identical | Define the core aesthetic but include "also works for: [alternative moods]" in reference prompts | | Ignoring existing creative-kit.md sections | Overwriting colors/typography the user already defined breaks trust and loses work | Read and preserve existing sections, only add/update Visual Brand Style | | Generic descriptions like "modern and clean" | Every brand says this — it gives image-gen nothing to work with | Be specific: "warm rim lighting on dark backgrounds, single subject, f/2.0 bokeh" | | Skipping the Avoid list | What to avoid is often more distinctive than what to include — it prevents the generic | Always ask what the brand should NEVER look like | | Writing keyword prompts instead of narrative | Image gen models produce better results from flowing descriptions than comma-separated terms | Reference prompts should read like a scene description, not a tag list |

Related Skills

• /image-gen — reads the Visual Brand Style this skill creates to generate on-brand images
• /brand-voice — builds the verbal identity; visual-style builds the visual identity
• /creative — produces multi-mode creative briefs that reference creative-kit.md
• /paper-marketing — designs in Paper MCP using creative-kit.md for design system