Generates a structured mood board brief defining visual references, tone, palette, texture, and language for designers, photographers, or AI image generators.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/autopunk-media-skills:mood-board-briefThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Writes a structured mood board brief for a visual project — a document that specifies visual references, tone, palette, texture, and the visual language a designer, photographer, or AI image generator should work within.
Writes a structured mood board brief for a visual project — a document that specifies visual references, tone, palette, texture, and the visual language a designer, photographer, or AI image generator should work within.
Required:
Optional:
MOOD BOARD BRIEF — THE MARGIN Visual direction document · Version 1.0
VISUAL POSITION STATEMENT
The Margin inhabits the visual world of serious documentary journalism: observational, specific, unglamorous in the best sense. Images look like they were taken by someone who was there, who had access, who stayed long enough to see the moment rather than manufacture it. The palette is the palette of real working environments — worn surfaces, natural light, the specific color of industrial fluorescence or low winter sun. Nothing is brightened for effect. The light falls where it falls.
THE FIVE DIMENSIONS
Lighting: Natural and available whenever possible. The default is soft, slightly overcast — the light that is always there, not the light that makes things look their best. Interior shots use practical sources (desk lamps, factory lights, daylight through windows). No fill lights, no dramatic shadows for effect — drama comes from the subject, not the lighting rig.
Color Palette: Muted and slightly desaturated throughout. Warm tones — aged paper, brick, human skin in natural light — in human-scale, individual stories. Cooler tones — institutional grey, fluorescent blue-white, concrete — in systemic and structural contexts. The palette shifts with the story, but never saturates.
Texture & Surface: Worn, specific, tactile. Weathered wood, worn linoleum, aged newsprint, callused hands, paint over paint over concrete. Every surface has a history. Nothing looks new, nothing looks aspirational.
Composition: Observational. Subjects caught mid-action or mid-thought rather than posed. Wide shots that show subjects in relation to their environment. Close-ups on hands and objects as much as faces. Foreground elements allowed to intrude. The camera is a witness, not a director.
Subject-Camera Relationship: Close but not intrusive. The camera earns its access. Subjects are not performing for it. There is a mutual respect in the framing — the camera does not diminish or aggrandize.
REFERENCE POINTS
Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) — for the absolute refusal of sentiment combined with absolute respect for the subject. Not the nostalgic Walker Evans that gets quoted; the forensically precise one.
The New York Times Magazine photo essays, 1970s–1980s — for the combination of strong photojournalism with editorial intelligence. The images know what story they are in.
Sebastião Salgado, Workers (1993) — specifically the large-scale industrial shots, for the dignity of labor as subject without heroization. Not for the dramatic black-and-white; for the compositional intelligence.
WHAT THIS VISUAL LANGUAGE IS NOT
Not the visual language of a startup pitch: no pure white backgrounds, no gradient blues, no people beaming at laptops. Not the visual language of a political campaign: no symbolic uplift, no purposeful horizon staring, no crowd-and-flag iconography. Not stock photography of any kind — the generic handshake, the diverse-team-meeting, the woman-laughing-at-salad register is the visual opposite of what The Margin inhabits.
AI PROMPT ANCHOR
For any AI-generated image in The Margin visual system, include:
"documentary photography, muted desaturated palette, available natural light, observational composition, worn surfaces, Walker Evans aesthetic, no studio lighting, no commercial sheen"
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