highsense-art-director

name	highsense-art-director
description	Extract slide visual grammar from high-end web and design references for HTML-first academic or technical decks, focusing layout, whitespace, evidence imagery, color rhythm, typography, and removing generic AI styling.

Highsense Art Director Skill

Use when a deck needs a sharper visual point of view before or during HTML-first slide design.

Workflow

1. Gather 3-6 strong references from high-end websites, editorial pages, product launches, research labs, portfolios, or conference talks. Prefer real designed artifacts over slide templates.
2. For each reference, extract only transferable grammar: grid, density, type scale, whitespace, image treatment, color rhythm, caption style, and motion/section cadence. Ignore brand copy and decorative tricks.
3. Distill a short visual brief before building slides:
   • Deck mood and audience.
   • Layout system and spacing rules.
   • Evidence image treatment and crop strategy.
   • Palette, accent cadence, and typography hierarchy.
   • Reusable slide types: cover, section break, evidence close-up, comparison, method, result.
4. If the deck is generated through Academic Deck Compiler, read DESIGN_DIRECTIONS.md from compare-grammars and select a direction school before selecting a grammar.
5. Apply the grammar in HTML/CSS, then render and inspect the contact sheet.
6. Iterate one high-leverage variable per pass: grid, crop, scale, density, color, or typography.

Judgment Rules

• Borrow structure, pacing, and restraint; do not copy a reference's brand surface verbatim.
• Academic and technical slides must foreground claims and proof, not marketing hero composition.
• Evidence images should be large, tightly cropped, and legible enough to support the slide claim.
• Whitespace should create hierarchy. Empty areas that do not improve reading should be rebalanced.
• Use color rhythm: mostly neutral structure, limited accents, and intentional contrast spikes for evidence or section turns.
• Avoid generic AI styling: purple-blue gradients, glassy cards, random blobs, ornamental glow, fake dashboards, stock abstraction, and decorative 3D unless they directly explain the content.
• Do not fill slides with nested cards. Use bands, columns, crop windows, callouts, and typographic contrast.
• Keep annotations sparse and aligned. A pin, bracket, or label must make a judgment clearer.
• If the deck starts looking like a template, change the layout cadence before changing colors.

Output

When reporting direction or review notes, use:

• Visual brief: the selected grammar in 3-6 concrete bullets.
• Keep: choices that should survive the next render.
• Change: specific slide-level or CSS-level edits.
• Risk: anything likely to read as generic, decorative, or illegible.