canvas-design turns a theme into a static visual piece such as a poster or cover. It develops a design philosophy before working with shape, color, rhythm, and space. Text normally provides a title or essential information. The expected outputs are a PNG or PDF and a Markdown description of the visual direction, not necessarily an editable layered design project.
Install and invoke
Send these two commands in the Claude Code chat input, one at a time. They are plugin commands, not shell commands for your operating system. The second installs the official collection containing canvas-design.
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills
In your project conversation, ask Claude to “use canvas-design” and supply the task or files. The prompt below is an editable starting example. Installing the collection supplies instructions and resources; it does not supply your source material or guarantee that every runtime dependency is installed locally. If the skill is missing, check that its plugin is installed, enabled, and loaded in the current session. Do that before troubleshooting the requested output.
Separate requirements from creative choices
Give it a small, complete brief:
Use canvas-design to make an A4 portrait poster for a reading group.
The theme is Quiet Corners in the City.
Include the event name, October 12 at 19:00, and the venue.
Use two main colors and sparse, legible text. Create an original composition.
Deliver a PDF, a PNG preview, and design notes. Check the canvas boundaries.
Treat dimensions, dates, location, and required names as fixed. Leave room to explore texture, abstraction, and composition. Say whether people will see a printed poster or a small phone image: each needs a different balance of text size and detail. For supplied photographs or logos, explain whether they should appear directly or serve only as references.
During the philosophy stage, check whether the proposed visual logic conveys the subject. Once that direction is settled, ask for clear hierarchy, adequate margins, and separation between the title, artwork, and event information. The bundled font directory offers choices, but the actual environment still needs fonts that cover your characters.
Inspect at two sizes
First view the design at a realistic small display size. Can you read the event name, time, and venue? Then inspect a larger view for broken glyphs, rough edges, collisions, and clipping. A poster that only works when enlarged has not yet met its practical brief. In the refinement pass, improve proportions, spacing, and contrast before adding more decoration.
Keep the final PDF or PNG together with the design notes. For a series, specify the number of pages and ask for a shared visual language with distinct compositions. A single page is the default. A multipage PDF is still different from a presentation with editable charts and speaker notes.
Missing characters usually require a font check. Cropped elements require checking the actual canvas bounds. If the request contains extensive prose, decide what belongs in supporting material instead of forcing everything onto the poster. The skill's preference for minimal text should not silently remove information you identified as mandatory.
Give feedback that leads to a useful second pass
Sort feedback into factual errors (date, venue, logo), readability problems (small text, weak contrast, unclear order), and visual preferences (shape, texture, mood). Fix the first two before debating taste. Ask for both a reduced preview and a full-size view. A poster that works only at desktop size may fail when shared on a phone.
For a series, keep canvas size, title placement, and color rules consistent while varying the central visual. If both PDF and PNG are delivered, inspect each file for missing glyphs, clipped edges, and transparency problems. A picture shown in chat does not prove that the exported files are ready to use.
Separate visual reference from usable assets
When sharing a poster you like, specify whether the reference is its whitespace, palette, or rhythm; do not assume its illustration and layout should be copied. For photos or logos, identify what must remain untouched and what may be cropped. Check event name, date, and venue in the first export before judging style. A beautiful poster with wrong facts is unusable. If a social cover is also needed, create a composition for that ratio rather than simply shrinking the A4 version.
Inspect every page of a multi-page result
In a published deck project, canvas-design informed the visual system, but static checks missed text overflow and a repeated SVG pattern ID that removed a texture. Rendering and inspecting pages exposed both. The skill is oriented toward a single visual canvas; if you need a sequence, animation, or slides, specify page order and required facts separately, then verify those alongside the visual quality.