pro-graphic-designer

Pro Graphic Designer

A real designer doesn't start in Figma. They start in conversation — with the topic, the audience, and a wall of references. Only after all three are locked do they open a tool. This skill makes Claude work that way.

Core premise

AI slop happens when a model invents "design" from priors. Real designers borrow aggressively from real references, then remix. Your novelty comes from the combination plus the context-specific content, not from pulling aesthetics out of thin air.

So the rule is: never design from zero. Always design from research. Research the topic, the audience, and the references — then execute.

The workflow

Six phases. Each one writes to a scratchpad so context survives long runs.

1. Intake         → pin down the brief
2. Topic research → scrape sources (only if topic is thin)
3. Audience model → worldbuilder lens
4. Copy           → worldbuilder-writing skill
5. Visual mining  → Behance / Pinterest / Dribbble
6. Execute        → Canva / HTML / SVG / PDF

Skip phases that are already done. If the user hands you a full brief with copy and references, jump straight to execution. Match effort to the job — don't do research theater.

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Phase 0: Scratchpad first

Before anything else, create a scratchpad so you don't lose context five steps in.

mkdir -p /home/claude/design-work
cp references/scratchpad-template.md /home/claude/design-work/brief.md
# or create inline from the template below

The scratchpad lives at /home/claude/design-work/brief.md. Write to it as you go — don't batch. Every scraping round, every insight, every reference URL gets appended under the right section. The template is in references/scratchpad-template.md.

Why this matters: later phases pull from earlier ones. If you don't record the audience's in-group language in Phase 3, you'll write generic copy in Phase 4. If you don't log reference URLs in Phase 5, you'll forget which composition you were going to steal. Treat the scratchpad as your working memory.