/static-visual-design

name: static-visual-design
description: |
  Design a finished ad, poster, banner, social post, or invitation as one
  PNG/JPEG with layout, headline, and brand styling rendered in, or adapt one
  into another placement size or aspect ratio.
when_to_use: |
  Any marketing, promotion, campaign, event, or brand-facing image, including
  ones naming a real brand. Not for explanatory diagrams, charts, infographics,
  or plain illustrations.

Static Visual Design

Stay within the commercial-creative scope

Use this skill only when the requested deliverable communicates marketing, promotional, campaign, event, or brand-facing material. A request to explain a concept with an image, comparison graphic, educational infographic, technical diagram, chart, or data visualization is outside this skill even when the user asks for a polished PNG or JPEG. Use the general image-generation workflow or a more specific explanatory-visual skill instead.

Do not use this skill to invent a logo, create video, manage ad accounts, generate a standalone illustration or photo with no designed commercial layout, or answer copy-only requests.

Produce the finished visual with image generation and editing. Let the image model solve the composition, type treatment, atmosphere, and graphic language together instead of reducing the work to a generated background plus an HTML layout.

For advertising creatives, campaign posters, promotional social posts, announcement graphics, and other commercially designed static visuals, read `references/static-ad-art-direction.md` with `read_skill_doc` before defining directions or rendering. Use its communication structures, layout specification, one-canvas contract, and rejection rules. Do not treat the reference as a menu of decorative styles.

Establish the brief

Identify the minimum useful brief before generating:

• communication goal, audience, and intended response;
• primary message, supporting copy, CTA, and required disclaimer;
• output channel and target aspect ratio or dimensions;
• available logo, QR code, product, brand-guide, campaign, and reference assets.

When available, ground creative direction in real brand materials, product facts, customer language, prior winning creative, and performance evidence, each from a source this skill sanctions below. Treat those inputs as evidence, not as permission to invent adjacent claims.

Distinguish exact supplied copy from facts that still need copywriting. Preserve copy the user marks as exact. When the user supplies facts but not final wording, write concise, idiomatic campaign copy instead of mechanically restating the brief. Avoid defensive or generic claims such as "you cannot be wrong," vague superlatives, and urgency unsupported by the offer.

Do not create a separate brief document unless the user asks for one. Infer low-risk creative choices, but never invent prices, milestones, performance claims, offer mechanics, eligibility, dates, URLs, legal copy, or brand rules. Verify time-sensitive claims when necessary. If exact campaign terms are absent, keep the visual to the claims the user actually supplied.

Develop campaign directions before rendering

For an open-ended brand campaign, poster, promotion, or advertising request, turn the brief into two or three genuinely different communication angles before committing to a visual. Useful angle families include milestone pride or social proof, offer-led value, product benefit, emotional identity, and urgency, but choose only those supported by the brief.

Keep this initial direction-setting in one coherent planning pass. One creative lead should define and compare the full set of directions; do not delegate open-ended ideation to independent agents or parallel nodes. Independent ideation tends to converge on the same obvious brand cues while changing only surface decoration. Parallel execution is useful only after the briefs are locked: each executor receives a distinct proposition, structure, focal device, production finish, and explicit exclusions, and must not reinterpret the other directions.

Represent this order in the execution plan. Brand/reference acquisition is a shared prerequisite, creative direction and design specification depend on that grounding, and every render depends on the locked specification. Do not search for identity assets in parallel with artifact generation. Inspection depends on the render results. Independent renders may run in parallel only after all shared inputs are resolved.

Never bake asset-availability conclusions into planned work before the acquisition step has run. Do not write instructions such as "use the brand name in typography since no logo asset is available" into a step definition; whether a verified logo exists is an outcome of asset resolution, and how the brand is represented must stay open until that outcome is known.

Give every direction one single-minded proposition, one visual device, and one structural approach. The proposition explains why the audience should care; the visual device creates the memorable image; the structure controls how the message is scanned. Evaluate directions for brand fit, stopping power, glance-level clarity, offer comprehension, and factual safety. Do not let a creative become two disconnected ads stacked in one canvas.

Invent each direction's visual device deliberately instead of jumping from an angle name to a layout. Use generative moves — dramatize the verb in the proposition, give the proof number physical form in a real place, literalize the offer as an object or event, stage a recognizable cultural moment, shift scale, or cast a brand asset as the protagonist — and sketch more device candidates in writing than you have direction slots before keeping the strongest. Those sketches are sentences, not renders, so they cost no budget. An angle name like "milestone pride" is not a device; "the milestone staged as a rally the viewer is invited to join" is. The art-direct