newsletter-visuals

Newsletter Visual Assets

Analyze a newsletter draft, identify the highest-impact opportunities for visual enhancement, and generate on-brand visual assets. Every visual must clarify, persuade, or engage — never decorate.

Core Principle: Visuals earn their place through measurable impact on clarity, engagement, or persuasion. A newsletter with zero visuals is better than one with decorative filler.

When to Use

Use this skill when:

• Enhancing a newsletter draft with visual assets
• A draft contains [screenshot] placeholders that need strategic evaluation
• The user asks to "add visuals", "create images", or "make this more visual"
• A newsletter draft is text-heavy and could benefit from visual breaks

Prerequisites

A design system must exist before generating any visuals — without one, generated images won't have consistent colors, typography, or style. Check ~/.claude/.context/design-systems/ for available design systems.

• If none exists: Inform the user and offer to invoke creator-stack:design-system to create one. Do not generate visuals without a design system — the results will be inconsistent and off-brand.
• If one exists: Verify its Application Guidelines cover newsletter/website assets. If they don't, note this to the user and proceed with the closest available style guidance.

Content Type Resolution

Content Type	Reference File	Key Focus
Substack newsletter	references/substack-constraints.md	Aspect ratios, email rendering, resolution

Read the relevant reference file before generating any assets — it contains platform-specific constraints (aspect ratios, resolution, email rendering limits) that affect every prompt.

Workflow

Step 1: Audit the Draft

Read the full draft and catalog every section. For each section, evaluate:

1. Existing visuals — Does it already have a [screenshot] placeholder, code block, table, or other visual element? Note what it covers and whether it's sufficient.
2. Complexity — Is the concept hard to explain in text alone? (process flows, architectures, comparisons, data)
3. Engagement risk — Is this a point where readers are likely to disengage? (long text-only stretches, dense technical explanations)
4. Persuasion opportunity — Could a visual make a claim more believable? (cost data, performance comparisons, before/after scenarios)

Existing [screenshot] placeholders: These represent real UI captures the author will provide. Treat them as existing visuals. Only recommend replacing one if the concept would be better served by a diagram or illustration — and explicitly flag this to the user with justification.

Step 2: Score and Rank Opportunities

For each potential visual opportunity, score on three dimensions (1-5 each):

Dimension	1 (Low)	5 (High)
Clarity lift	Text explains it fine	Text alone is confusing or requires re-reading
Engagement lift	Section is already engaging	Long text-only stretch, reader likely to skim past
Uniqueness	Generic/decorative visual	Visual reveals structure or data text can't convey

Total score = Clarity + Engagement + Uniqueness (max 15)

Hard rules:

• Only visuals scoring 10+ make the shortlist
• Maximum 5 visuals per newsletter issue (fewer is often better)
• At least one visual in the first half of the newsletter
• Never add a visual within 150 words of another (visual fatigue)
• Visuals scoring below 8 are never included

Step 3: Select Visual Types

Choose the type based on what the visual needs to accomplish:

Visual Type	Use When	Examples
Conceptual diagram	Explaining a process, architecture, or flow	Flowcharts, swimlane diagrams, network diagrams
Comparison visual	Showing differences between two or more things	Side-by-side layouts, before/after
Data visualization	Making numbers or ratios tangible	Bar charts, token cost comparisons
Custom illustration	Engaging the reader emotionally or setting context	Hero images, conceptual metaphors
Annotated screenshot	Adding context to an existing UI capture	Callout boxes, arrows, numbered annotations

Never use illustrations when a diagram would be more informative. Illustrations are for engagement; diagrams are for clarity. When in doubt, choose the one that teaches.

Step 4: Present the Visual Brief

Before generating anything, present the brief to the user for approval:

For each recommended visual:

1. Location — Exact section and paragraph
2. Type — Which visual type
3. Purpose — What it clarifies, persuades, or engages (one sentence)
4. Description — What the visual shows (the concept, not the generation prompt)
5. Score — The three dimension scores and total

Also include:

• Sections where you did NOT recommend visuals and why
• Any [screenshot] placeholders you recommend replacing (with justification)

Do NOT generate prompts or images until the user approves the brief.

Step 5: Generate Visual Assets

After approval, generate each visual using creator-stack:nanobanana.

Design system integration: Load the design system from ~/.claude/.context/design-systems/ and apply it to every prompt — colors, typography, illustration style, brand constraints.

Prompt construction:

[SUBJECT]: What the visual depicts
[COMPOSITION]: Layout, arrangement, spatial relationships
[STYLE]: From the design system — colors, typography, illustration style
[CONSTRAINTS]: What to avoid, what NOT to include
[FORMAT]: Aspect ratio and resolution (from substack-constraints reference)

Prompt rules:

• Be specific about spatial relationships ("left side shows X, right side shows Y")
• Include exact hex colors from the design system
• Specify "no text" or exact text to render (minimize text — AI text rendering is unreliable)
• Always include the style from your design system — never leave style ambiguous
• Never fabricate data that isn't in the source draft

Step 6: Write Captions and Alt Text

For each generated visual:

1. Caption — 1 sentence that adds context the image doesn't show. Good captions answer "so what?" — they don't just describe what's visible.
2. Alt text — Descriptive text for accessibility. Convey informational content, not visual style. ("Bar chart showing agent teams use 7x more tokens than single agents" not "blue and orange bar chart")

Step 7: Verify Against Checklist

Run the quality checklist before presenting final assets.

Voice Application

Invoke creator-stack:voice before finalizing any written output (captions). Voice is applied after the structural draft is complete but before brand compliance.

Invocation point: After writing captions and alt text, before presenting to the user.

Brand Compliance

When creating assets for The AI Launchpad, invoke creator-stack:brand-guidelines to resolve the correct design system and check anti-patterns.

Invocation point: After voice application, as the final quality gate.

Quality Checklist

• Design system loaded before any generation
• Every visual scores 10+ on the clarity/engagement/uniqueness scale
• Maximum 5 visuals in the brief
• At least one visual in the first half of the newsletter
• No two visuals within 150 words of each other
• Brief presented and approved before generation
• Every prompt includes design system colors and style
• No fabricated data in any visual
• Captions answer "so what?" (not just describe the image)
• Alt text conveys information, not visual style
• creator-stack:voice invoked for captions
• creator-stack:brand-guidelines invoked for brand compliance

Common Pitfalls

1. Too many visuals (6+): Cap at 5. Force-rank by score. Fewer high-impact visuals beat many mediocre ones.
2. Decorative hero image: Only include a hero if it scores 10+. Most newsletters don't need one.
3. Inventing data: Only visualize data the author provides. Never fabricate statistics.
4. Replacing screenshots without asking: Screenshots are the author's real evidence. Only suggest replacing with explicit justification.
5. Ignoring the design system: Every prompt must reference the design system. No making up colors or styles.
6. Dark-themed images for email: Default to light backgrounds. Dark images look broken in most email clients.
7. Text-heavy images: Minimize text in generated images. Put text in captions instead.
8. Generating before brief approval: Always present the brief first. Wasted assets cost time and API credits.
9. Using illustrations where diagrams belong: If the goal is clarity, use a diagram. Illustrations are for engagement.