Purpose
Produce a structured, constructive design critique of an editorial layout — diagnosing typography, hierarchy, composition, storytelling, and brand alignment against professional standards — so a design director can deliver specific, actionable feedback that improves the work without demoralizing the designer. Replaces gut-reaction notes with a reasoned, prioritized revision brief.
When to Use
Invoke this skill when the user asks to:
- Critique or review a magazine spread, article layout, or editorial feature
- Give feedback on a junior or mid-level designer's page layout
- Evaluate whether a layout matches the publication's brand voice and visual system
- Diagnose why a spread "feels off" but the reason isn't obvious
- Prepare structured notes before a design review meeting or crit session
- Assess a print or digital layout for production readiness before handoff
Inputs Required
Before starting, collect:
- Layout description: Detailed description of the layout, or the actual asset — spread, feature, cover, digital article, or template
- Layout type: Print spread / digital article / cover / long-form feature / newsletter / other
- Publication context: The title or brand, its audience, and its editorial category (news, lifestyle, luxury, technical, etc.)
- Brand voice / visual system: Known brand guidelines, house style, typographic palette, or comparable references — or a description of the intended feel
- Designer seniority: Junior / mid / senior — calibrates tone and depth of feedback
- Content role of the piece: Hero feature, secondary story, evergreen, sponsored, etc.
- Constraints: Fixed elements — mandated ads, template locks, deadline, print vs. responsive requirements
If brand voice or seniority is missing, assume a mid-level designer working within an established consumer editorial system and note the assumption.
Instructions
Step 1: First Impression & Intent Read
Before dissecting, capture the layout's gestalt in 2–3 sentences:
- What does the reader's eye do in the first second? Where does it land, where does it go next?
- What is this layout trying to communicate about the story — and does the design deliver that intent?
- Name the single strongest thing about the layout. Lead every critique with something that works.
Step 2: Typography Critique
Evaluate the type system on its own terms:
- Type pairing: Do the display and body faces have enough contrast and shared character? Flag clashing or overly similar pairings.
- Measure & leading: Body measure ideally 45–75 characters per line; leading 120–145% of type size. Flag lines too long to track or too tight to breathe.
- Hierarchy within type: Are heds, deks, subheads, captions, and pull quotes clearly differentiated by size, weight, and role — not just color?
- Typographic refinement: Check for orphans, widows, rivers, bad rags, hyphenation stacks, and inconsistent optical alignment.
- Voice through type: Does the type choice reinforce the story's tone (authoritative, playful, intimate) or fight it?
Step 3: Hierarchy & Reading Path
Assess whether the layout guides the eye deliberately:
- Rank the intended reading order (1 → hed, 2 → image, 3 → dek, etc.) and verify the visual weight matches that order.
- Flag competing focal points — two elements fighting for "first" attention dilute both.
- Check entry point clarity: is there one unmistakable place to begin?
- Verify secondary information (captions, credits, sidebars) reads as secondary, not as noise or as accidental emphasis.
Step 4: Grid & Composition
Evaluate structure and space:
- Grid discipline: Are elements aligning to a coherent grid, or floating? Flag near-misses that read as mistakes.
- Negative space: Is white space active and intentional, or leftover? Cramped gutters and starved margins signal weak spatial planning.
- Balance & tension: Symmetrical calm vs. asymmetrical energy — is the choice appropriate to the content and consistent within the spread?
- Spread relationship (print): Does the gutter cut through faces or critical content? Do facing pages read as one composition?
- Responsive behavior (digital): Does the hierarchy survive at mobile widths? Flag layouts that only work at desktop.
Step 5: Visual Storytelling & Imagery
Judge whether the visuals carry narrative, not just decoration:
- Image role: Does the lead image establish mood, subject, and stakes — or is it a generic placeholder?
- Cropping & scale: Is the crop telling a story (intimacy, scale, drama) or arbitrary? Is the hero image large enough to command?
- Image-text relationship: Do captions, callouts, and text placement extend the image's meaning rather than repeat it?
- Pacing across the piece: For multi-page features, does the visual rhythm build and release, or flatline?
- Treatment consistency: Color grading, duotone, silhouette, and framing should feel like one voice.
Step 6: Brand Voice Alignment
Measure the layout against the publication's identity:
- Does the layout look like it belongs in this title, next to its other pages?
- Are house conventions (folio style, byline treatment, section markers, color palette) honored or violated?
- If it deviates, is the deviation purposeful and elevating — or off-brand drift?
- Flag anything that reads as a template default rather than an editorial decision.
Step 7: Production Readiness
Check the practical bar for handoff:
- Print: Bleed, safe margins, CMYK vs. RGB, image resolution (300 dpi), overprint, folio and page-number accuracy.
- Digital: Contrast ratios for accessibility (WCAG AA), tap-target sizing, image weight/load, responsive breakpoints.
- Flag any issue that would block or embarrass at final handoff.
Step 8: Prioritized Revision Brief
Synthesize into a ranked action list:
- Rank every issue as Must-fix (breaks the layout or brand), Should-fix (meaningfully improves it), or Consider (polish/preference).
- Write each item as a specific instruction the designer can execute — not "improve hierarchy" but "reduce the dek to 14/18pt and increase space above the hed so the reading path leads hed → image → dek."
- Limit Must-fix items to the 3–5 that matter most; do not bury critical notes under stylistic preferences.
- Close with one sentence of encouragement that names the designer's strongest instinct to keep.
Output Format
- Structure: First impression → seven dimension critiques → prioritized revision brief
- Length: 800–1,100 words
- Format: Named sections with bulleted diagnostics; revision brief as a ranked list tagged Must-fix / Should-fix / Consider
- Sections: First Impression → Typography → Hierarchy & Reading Path → Grid & Composition → Visual Storytelling & Imagery → Brand Voice Alignment → Production Readiness → Prioritized Revision Brief
- Tone: Design director in a crit — specific, generous, and standards-driven; names problems precisely without condescension, always tied to reader experience or brand goals
Quality Checklist
Before delivering output, verify:
- [ ] The critique leads with a genuine strength, not a hedge
- [ ] All seven critique dimensions are addressed
- [ ] Every diagnostic references a specific element of the layout — no generic design platitudes
- [ ] Typography notes cite concrete measures (leading %, character count, weight/size) where relevant
- [ ] The revision brief tags each item Must-fix / Should-fix / Consider with no more than 5 Must-fix items
- [ ] Feedback tone is calibrated to the stated designer seniority
- [ ] Every note connects to reader experience or brand voice — not the critic's personal taste
Notes
- The most valuable critique isolates the one structural problem driving several symptoms — chasing surface fixes when hierarchy is the root cause wastes a revision cycle.
- Calibrate depth to seniority: junior designers need the "why" behind each rule; senior designers need sharper, faster notes and room to defend deliberate choices.
- When brand guidelines are unavailable, judge against the publication's own best recent pages rather than abstract design theory — internal consistency beats textbook correctness.
- If the layout description lacks visual specifics, ask one clarifying question: "What is the lead image and how large does it run relative to the text?"
How to use this skill
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