Gal Shir Brand Logo Design

Gal Shir — Brand Logo Design

Design a brand mark the way Gal Shir does: understand the brand story, values, audience, and strategy, and turn all of it into a smart, minimal symbol — then execute it pixel-perfectly. Both halves are the job. A brilliant concept rendered sloppily fails; flawless craft with no idea fails.

One medium, always. Marks are built as hand-constructed vector SVG via the bundled engine/logokit SDK. Not raster, not a template maker, not a prompt to an image model — a construction toolkit (grid + golden-ratio armature, boolean geometry, circle-packing, monoline, one-hue palette, real-font wordmarks) that gives you control of every coordinate and outputs one portable .svg that works on a tee, mug, favicon, app icon, software UI, landing hero, or phone.

• The concept is yours. references/gal-shir-principles.md (taste & method), references/idea-generation.md (the named idea moves), and references/inspirations.md (his real marks reverse-engineered, with reconstructions).
• The hands are the SDK. REFERENCE.md documents every logokit function.
• The eyes are Playwright. Render the SVG and critique it before shipping.

Workflow

Phase 1 — Brief (understand the brand)

• Read references/gal-shir-principles.md (the principles, grammar, method, and evaluation gate). Do this before designing.
• Answer the intake questions in that file: product in one sentence, audience and how they should feel, 3 core values + mission, competitors (to differ from), personality (playful ↔ technical), any object/metaphor/letter the brand ties to, and where the mark will live most.
• If the user hasn't given enough to answer these, ask a few sharp questions — do not invent a strategy silently. Gal starts every mark from a real brief.

Phase 2 — Concept (story before form)

• Read references/idea-generation.md and run the brief through its idea moves (mine the name/shape/material/function, object fusion, hide-a-letter, negative-space reveal, weaponize one colour, contrarian inversion, …). Study references/inspirations.md for how his real marks turned a brief into a symbol.
• Generate 3–5 distinct concept directions in words first — each a single idea that could encode the brand. Diverge wide before judging any (see the divergence multipliers). Think story-first.
• Select ruthlessly — ONE idea (his practice is a single option, not a menu). Name the "aha" — the one hidden reading, if there is one.
• Choose the ONE saturated brand hue and the wordmark character (geometric sans for tech, rounded for playful, etc.).

Phase 3 — Construct (pixel-perfect execution)

• cd engine && npm install if not already installed.
• Write an ES-module build script (model it on examples/orbit.mjs) that: setup() → build the symbol from primitives + boolean ops on a grid() (and a goldenSpiral() armature if the concept is motion/flow) → apply the grammar (monoline with rounded terminals, one-hue palette, negative-space cuts) → draw a custom wordmark with at most one concept twist → lockups() to emit the full system, plus a constructionSheet().
• Run it: node your-script.mjs. It writes portable .svg files.

Phase 4 — See & critique (the loop)

• Render the exported SVGs to a PNG via the Playwright MCP (contact sheet → playwright_navigate the file:// URL headless → playwright_screenshot fullPage → Read the PNG). See REFERENCE.md § visual-verification loop.
• Judge against the evaluation gate in references/gal-shir-principles.md: conceptually smart, minimal, unique, scale-proof, right personality, negative-space aha, ownable colour, geometric rigor, undeniable in application.
• Fix in code, regenerate, re-render. Loop until it passes. Then playwright_close.

Phase 5 — Deliver (and optionally, a mascot)

• Present the system: primary mark, mono + reverse, horizontal + stacked lockups, app icon, favicon, and the construction sheet — with a one-paragraph rationale tying the symbol back to the brand story (the "why", not just the "what").
• If the user wants a mascot, extend the symbol's DNA (same primitives, grid, stroke weight, hue) per the "Symbol → mascot extension" section of the principles file — build the character from the same modular circles/arcs, story-first.

Key rules

• Never skip the brief or the concept. No mark before there is a brand story and a single idea to encode. The SDK executes ideas; it does not invent them.
• Always render and look before declaring done. SVG is authored blind; the Playwright loop is non-optional — it catches optical flaws code can't see.
• Hold the grammar by default: one uniform monoline weight, rounded terminals, exactly ONE saturated hue + black/white, snapped to a grid, custom lettering, aim for one negative-space "aha". Break a rule only with a stated reason.
• One idea, one twist, one hue. Restraint is the style. Two hidden readings or two saturated colours means you haven't reduced enough.
• Stay concept-first, not mechanical. Gal uses no rigid template; don't let the grammar produce generic geometric marks. The idea leads; the constraints refine.
• Deliver a system, not a single file — mark, lockups, app icon, favicon, construction sheet — every one a portable .svg.

Engine

The bundled engine/logokit.js SDK is the sole build medium — see REFERENCE.md for the full API, the bundled OFL fonts, and the render loop. A complete worked run is in examples/orbit.mjs (preview: examples/orbit-preview.png).

Knowledge lives in references/:

• gal-shir-principles.md — taste, grammar, method, evaluation gate.
• idea-generation.md — the named idea moves + divergence/selection.
• inspirations.md — 18 of his real marks reverse-engineered by a blind 3-agent method. Each inspirations/<brand>/ holds the real original.svg/.png, his own portfolio showcase images (images/), and an analysis.md (brand truth · what Gal said · the mark read blind · consolidation). All real references — no reconstructions.

Credit & provenance

Modeled on the design principles and public work of Gal Shir (@galshirart) — founding-team brand designer at Lemonade, author of the "60 Tips for Logo Design" e-book, founder of Color Hunt. The principles here are distilled from his writing, talks, and identity work; the vocabulary and method are his, the SDK is our translation of his craft into a single reproducible vector medium.

The bar this skill aims for is Gal's own, from watching an AI (Fable 5) design a logo: "It understood the brand story, values, audience, strategy, and turned all of it into a smart, minimal symbol. A genuinely brilliant concept… And it didn't just nail the idea. It executed the design pixel-perfectly."

Gal Shir is not affiliated with this skill and has not endorsed it. Bundled fonts are licensed under the SIL Open Font License (see engine/fonts/LICENSE.md).