A Claude skill for generating typography-led UIs, splash screens, banners, and cards in the style of Reid Miles' Blue Note Records album covers — without using photography.
Inspired by Reid Miles (1927-1993), Blue Note Records' art director from 1956 to 1967, and the Swiss / International Typographic Style that shaped his work.
When triggered, this skill instructs Claude to produce layouts following four core principles:
- Typography as the lead actor — bold, contrasting typefaces carry the design; no photography
- Color blocks in place of photography — flat color fields and rules replace the tinted photography Miles usually paired with type
- Asymmetric, dynamic composition — off-center layouts, elements cropped at the frame edge
- Rhythm through repetition and scale contrast — extreme size jumps between dominant and supporting elements
For single-image outputs (icons, splash screens, key visuals) it adds a further layer — breaking the frame, overlapping elements, tilted baselines, non-rectangular color fields — so the result keeps Miles' "about to burst into motion" tension instead of settling into generic flat design.
Copy the reid-miles-design folder into your skills directory, or install the .skill file if packaged.
Place the folder where your Claude configuration can reference it, and ensure SKILL.md is accessible as a skill.
The skill activates on mentions of:
- Reid Miles, Blue Note Records, Blue Note style
- "Jazz album cover look but no photography"
- "Typography-only", "make it feel that way through type alone"
- Splash screens, app icons, or banners that should feel bold and typographic rather than photo-led
All outputs below were generated by Claude using this skill. Each is modeled on a specific Reid Miles cover confirmed to use no photography, so the color and composition stay faithful to the constraint.
Block-letter typography only, one word tinted blue — based on Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue, whose cover used only lettering (with just the word "Blue" colored) and no photograph.
A red-and-black exclamation-mark pattern behind a large number — based on Jackie McLean's It's Time!, whose cover (245 exclamation marks, tagged "only type" by design archive Fonts In Use) used no photography.
Overlapping colored rectangles suggesting piano keys — based on the Jutta Hipp with Zoot Sims cover, an abstract geometric design with sans-serif type and no photography.
Oversized letterforms with an arrow motif, one word in a warm accent color — based on Joe Henderson's In 'n Out, one of Miles' designs described as dispensing with photography almost entirely.
references/typography.md— common Reid Miles typefaces and how to combine themreferences/color.md— color patterns drawn from real, confirmed-no-photography Blue Note coversreferences/layout.md— composition rules, plus the additional single-image principles (breaking the frame, overlap, tilt, extreme scale contrast)
MIT