---
name: "logo_brand_design"
description: "Design a logo or brand mark with AI image tools the professional way: write a real creative brief, run disciplined iteration rounds, stress-test the mark, and run an originality/trademark knockout check before delivery. Triggers when asked to create a logo, brand mark, wordmark, or visual identity."
---

# Logo & Brand-Mark Design

## Purpose

Turn "make me a logo" into a process that produces a usable, original mark: a tight brief, a few well-chosen generation rounds, ruthless review, an originality check, and a clean file handoff. This skill teaches the process, it does not sell design services. The goal is a logo the requester can actually use, not a pretty picture that dies at first contact with reality.

## Workflow

### 1. Take the brief (or write one)

If the requester gave a loose prompt ("something cool for my bakery"), turn it into a real brief before generating anything. Ask for only what changes design decisions:

- Business name and how it must read (wordmark, icon + wordmark, icon only)
- Two or three traits, ranked (e.g. warm, handcrafted, simple)
- Where the logo must work (website header, Instagram avatar, packaging, sign)
- Competitors to avoid looking like (name two or three)
- Hard constraints: single color needed? Must work tiny? No text in icon?

Use `references/brief-template.md` as the form. Leave out filler: long founder backstory, adjectives nobody can see ("memorable", "timeless"), and contradictory pairs (luxury + cartoonish) confuse the generator. If the requester already knows the exact icon, font, color, and layout, skip generation and go straight to vector assembly.

### 2. Generate round one, small and wide

Produce 4-6 concepts that differ from each other, not 20 near-copies. Vary one axis per concept (icon style, layout, weight) so each option teaches something. Do not lock in a favorite yet.

### 3. Review like an editor

Judge every concept against this short list, in order:

1. Read the name fast. If it takes a beat to parse, cut it.
2. Shrink it to favicon size (32 px). If the icon dies, cut it.
3. Compare it to the named competitors. If it looks like one, cut it.
4. Is the icon too literal? A bakery does not need a bread loaf.
5. Hold it up against the top three real use cases from the brief.

### 4. Iterate one variable at a time

Pick the strongest direction and change one thing per round: keep the wordmark, try a sturdier icon; keep the icon, try two colors. Blunt revision notes beat poetry: "remove the wheat, keep the wordmark, try charcoal" works, "make it pop" does not. Stop after 3-4 rounds. If no concept survives round one, the brief was wrong, fix the brief, not the pixels.

### 5. Stress-test the winner

- Single color: render it in pure black and pure white. It must read in both.
- Small size: 32 px, 16 px. Text drops out, the icon carries.
- Reversed: on dark and on light backgrounds.
- Bad reproduction: photocopy-grade, one-color, embroidery-thick. Lines need a minimum weight.

Anything that fails here goes back to step 4 with the specific failing test as the revision note.

### 6. Originality and clearance check

A logo nobody can defend is a liability. Run the knockout before delivery:

1. Reverse-image-search the final mark (search by image) and skim for anything close in the same industry.
2. Search USPTO's trademark database (`tmsearch.uspto.gov`) by design code for the icon's category, filtering to Live marks in the requester's classes of goods/services. A hit matters only if it is visually similar, live, and in an overlapping class.
3. Search the business name itself, plus common-law sources: domain names, social handles, industry directories.

A clean knockout is not a legal opinion and does not find every conflict. **Not legal advice**: any caution or high-risk finding, and any filing or registration decision, goes to a licensed trademark attorney before the requester relies on it.

### 7. Deliver

- Vector master (SVG or equivalent) plus PNG exports at the sizes the brief named
- One-color black and white versions, a reversed version
- A short usage note: minimum size, clear space, what not to do
- Note on the clearance check: what was searched, what was found, and the attorney-escalation caveat

## Output Contract

Every delivery includes: the brief used, the final mark in vector + raster + one-color versions, the stress-test results (small-size, single-color, reversed), and the clearance-check notes. If a step was skipped, say which and why.

## Operating Rules

1. Never invent trademark status. Report exactly what the search showed; "no conflicts found" is not the same as "clear."
2. Do not ship a mark that fails the small-size or single-color test.
3. If the requester will not settle the brief, refuse to iterate endlessly: state the decision that blocks progress and stop.
4. Do not fake AI generation tooling. Work with the image generation tools actually available; do not describe buttons, dials, or features that do not exist.
5. No filler adjectives anywhere: not in briefs, not in feedback, not in delivery notes.