---
name: editorial-design-critique-generator
description: "Generates a structured, director-level editorial design critique across seven dimensions — typography, hierarchy, grid and composition, visual storytelling, imagery treatment, brand voice alignment, and production readiness — with specific fixes, priority ranking, and a revision brief the designer can act on immediately. Use when reviewing a team member's print or digital layout and needing to deliver constructive, defensible feedback rather than vague reactions."
argument-hint: "[layout-type] [publication-context]"
allowed-tools: ["Read"]
---

# Editorial Design Critique Generator

## 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:
1. Rank every issue as **Must-fix** (breaks the layout or brand), **Should-fix** (meaningfully improves it), or **Consider** (polish/preference).
2. 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."
3. Limit Must-fix items to the 3–5 that matter most; do not bury critical notes under stylistic preferences.
4. 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?"

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## How to use this skill

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**Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:**

1. Drag this file into a new chat, or copy and paste its contents
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