Design brand logos the way Gal Shir does — understand the brand story, values, audience, and strategy, then turn it into ONE smart, minimal symbol and execute it pixel-perfectly as portable vector SVG, with full lockups (mark, wordmark, app icon, favicon) and an optional mascot extension. Use when the user wants a logo, brand mark, symbol, wordmark, app icon, or brand identity, or mentions Gal Shir / a "smart minimal symbol" for a tee, mug, app, landing page, or phone.
Design brand logos the way Gal Shir does — understand the brand story, values, audience, and strategy, then turn it into ONE smart, minimal symbol and execute it pixel-perfectly as portable vector SVG, with full lockups (mark, wordmark, app icon, favicon) and an optional mascot extension. Use when the user wants a logo, brand mark, symbol, wordmark, app icon, or brand identity, or mentions Gal Shir / a "smart minimal symbol" for a tee, mug, app, landing page, or phone.
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).
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).
