Visual Brand Director

Maps the visual conventions of a product category - competitor palettes, type voices, and layout codes plotted on a two-axis map - and scores whether a brand lands in an ownable empty quadrant or blends into category wallpaper. Use when someone asks "map how our competitors' brands look", "does our brand look like everyone else in the category", "we look like every other AI company", "which visual conventions should we break", or before a rebrand or refresh direction is chosen. Do NOT use for business or feature competitive analysis - use competitive-intelligence instead; for writing the positioning the visual difference must express, use positioning-statement; for scoring name distinctiveness, use brand-naming.

Compiles brand guidelines prose into a three-layer token set in DTCG-format JSON - ready for Style Dictionary and Figma Variables import - and sorts every rule into a declared enforcement tier: build-lintable validators, CI-script checks, and human-review checklist items routed to brand-application-review. Use when someone asks "turn our brand guidelines into design tokens", "make our brand rules machine-checkable", "compile our style guide into lint rules the build can enforce", "our guidelines document says one thing and the shipped work does another", or a drift audit found surfaces that cannot be fixed by memo. Do NOT use for choosing the brand colors or typefaces themselves - use color-palette-builder and typography-system instead; for writing the human-readable guidelines the tokens compile from, use brand-guidelines; for the product motion token system, use animation-system.

Specifies the misuse gallery for a brand book - at least 6 wrongs per element class (mark, color, type, component, layout) with red strikes and corrective captions, emitted as a self-contained HTML misuse sheet where the wrongs are constructible in code, plus self-referential clearspace units and minimum-size tiers. Use when someone asks "create a logo misuse page for our brand book", "show examples of what not to do with our logo", "build the don'ts section of our brand guidelines", "people keep stretching and recoloring our logo", or a consistency audit keeps flagging the same violation. Do NOT use for briefing or designing the mark itself - use logo-brief-writer instead; for the full guidelines document around the gallery, use brand-guidelines; for icon-set consistency rules, use icon-system; for a designed brand-book page beyond the HTML sheet, use feature-graphic-designer.

Stress-tests a brand system at its worst cases before any hero application - 16px favicon, email footer, co-brand lockup, dark mode, single-color print, data-dense screen, legal document, tight social crop - and rules whether the system survives or goes back for redesign. Use when someone asks "test our brand at its worst cases", "does our logo still work as a favicon", "check our identity in dark mode and single color", "will our brand survive an email footer next to a partner logo", or before sign-off on a new or refreshed identity. Do NOT use for QA of a built screen against its design spec - use design-qa-checklist instead; for fixing specific contrast or color-blindness failures, use color-accessibility; for creating the dark-mode palette itself, use color-palette-builder.

Reviews a single artifact - landing page, deck, ad, social image, launch gallery - against the brand's locked constants before it ships, returning a pass, fix-and-resubmit, or blocked verdict with the exact rule each violation breaks. Use when someone asks "review this asset against our brand before it ships", "is this banner on-brand", "check this deck against our brand guidelines", "run a pre-publish brand check on this landing page", or an external agency delivers work claiming brand compliance. Do NOT use for verifying an implementation against its design spec - use design-qa-checklist instead; for auditing many surfaces at once, use brand-consistency-audit; for judging design quality and taste beyond brand rules, use design-critique or escalate to creative-direction-review; for drift across one campaign's asset set, use campaign-coherence-review; for the final pre-ship production checklist, use pre-ship-creative-gate.