# Logo > Design a logo or mark through reference study, generated concept rounds, and a browsable contact sheet the user picks from. Use "/logo new " to start, "/logo round " to rebuild a sheet, "/logo ship " to emit final assets. - Skill: `oharu121/logo` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 6 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add oharu121/logo` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/oharu121/logo/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Design & Media - Author: oharu121 (https://skillmd.com/u/oharu121) - Updated: 2026-09-10 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/oharu121/logo --- # Logo Skill You are designing a mark. The user picks; you generate, render, and narrow. ## Path Variables - `SKILLS_DIR` = this skill's directory (where `SKILL.md` lives) - `SCRATCH` = the session scratchpad directory, or `$(mktemp -d)` if none is given. **Concepts and contact sheets never go in the user's repo** — only the final chosen assets do ## Dispatch - `new ` → follow [explore.md](explore.md) from the top - `round ` → rebuild and serve the contact sheet for `` (step 4 of explore.md). Use when concepts changed and you want a fresh look - `refine ` → re-enter explore.md at the refinement round with that concept as the seed - `ship ` → follow [ship.md](ship.md) to emit final assets - anything else → list the subcommands above and stop ## Requirements - **Node** for the contact sheet. No dependencies - **`uv`** only if you bake typeface outlines (`outline.py` pulls `fonttools` and `uharfbuzz` on demand). Purely geometric marks do not need it - A way to view a rendered page. The sheet is served over HTTP precisely so a headless browser can reach it --- ## Non-negotiables These are not style preferences. Each is here because skipping it produced a visibly worse result, and they are ordered by how much damage they do. ### 1. Study real work before generating anything Generating first and looking at references later does not work. Asked for *N* concepts cold, you will produce *N* samples from one distribution — the same monoline geometric stroke drawing, wearing *N* hats. It reads as generic because it *is* the generic default, and it is the house style of every automated logo tool. Breadth has to come from outside. [references.md](references.md) is the step that supplies it. Do not skip it because the brief seems obvious. ### 2. Render it and look before showing it to anyone You cannot judge a mark from its path data. Build the contact sheet, open it, and look at the pixels before presenting. This is not a formality. Real bugs that survived review-by-reading: a letter whose stem was missing its top half, a subtitle whose ascenders punched through the word above it, a mark sized so small beside its wordmark that it read as a bullet point. All three were obvious in a browser and invisible in the markup. ### 3. Judge at 16px The sheet renders every concept at 16px for a reason. That is the size a favicon is actually used at, it is the size that eliminates candidates, and it is the one nobody looks at until the thing ships. What it reliably decides: - **Solid fills survive; strokes close up.** A stroked ring at 16px fills in - **Detail is a liability.** A 10-stroke CJK glyph at 16px is texture, not a character. Two of them is a smudge - **Silhouette beats interior.** A circle among square favicons is identifiable even when nothing inside it resolves ### 4. Never bake in an assumption about the person If a mark depends on a fact about the user — what their name means, which characters it is written with, what a symbol signifies in their culture — **ask before building it**, with AskUserQuestion. You will otherwise produce a confident, polished, well-executed artefact built on a guess, and the guess will not be visible in the output. A name that sounds like a common word usually is not one. ### 5. Use real typeface outlines, not hand-rolled letterforms Hand-drawn geometric letters look like a template and carry bugs. Bake outlines from a real face with `SKILLS_DIR/scripts/outline.py` and freeze them as path data: correct contrast and kerning, no webfont request, no flash of fallback type. The trade: baked outlines fix the string. If the wordmark text might ever be localised or edited, say so at the time — it has to stay live text. ### 6. Decide colour by comparison, not theory Put candidate palettes side by side in the sheet and look. Two colours that are defensible individually can fight when adjacent — near-complementary pairs especially. The fix is usually not a different hue but removing one from the pairing. ### 7. The user picks, at every gate Never advance a round on your own taste. Present, recommend with reasons, and wait. Say plainly which candidates you would cut and why — an opinion is useful, a decision is not yours. --- ## Anti-patterns | Smell | What it actually means | | ----- | ---------------------- | | Every concept shares one skeleton | You produced one concept, *N* times. Go do the reference study | | All strokes, uniform weight | The generated default. Try solid fills, real type, or no mark at all | | A mark for its own sake | Plenty of strong identities are type plus one colour. "No mark" is a candidate | | Judging from the SVG source | You have not seen it. Build the sheet | | A concept that needs its name explained | If it needs explaining it is not reading. The 16px column is the test | ## Tooling | Need | Command | | ---- | ------- | | Contact sheet + local server | `node SKILLS_DIR/scripts/gallery.mjs [--port N] [--title T] [--no-serve]` | | Bake typeface outlines to paths | `uv run --with fonttools --with uharfbuzz python SKILLS_DIR/scripts/outline.py` | `outline.py` reads a JSON job list on stdin and writes JSON on stdout. Source faces come from `LOGO_FONT_DIR` (default `.fonts`), or a job may name an absolute path. See [ship.md](ship.md) for the job shape and the traps.