I asked Claude to tell me what it was good and bad at:
What I’m Bad At (Don’t Ask Me)
1. Graphic Design / Visual Aesthetics
- Creating attractive logos, illustrations, or decorative SVGs
- Color schemes that look genuinely good (I can do “technically correct” but not “visually appealing”)
- Typography that has real character or style
- Texture effects like wood grain, fabric, metal, etc.
- Any kind of artistic illustration or icon design
My SVG logo attempt was a perfect example – technically valid SVG, but visually uninspiring and generic. The “wood grain” is just a gradient that looks nothing like actual wood.
2. What I Try But Fail At
- Shadows, gradients, and depth effects (I can add them, but they often look flat or artificial)
- Visual balance and composition
- Making things look “vintage,” “modern,” “elegant,” etc. (I know the words, not the execution)
What I’m Good At (Use Me For This)
1. Implementation & Layout
- Converting designs into working HTML/CSS/JavaScript
- Responsive layouts that work across devices
- Functional UI components (buttons, forms, grids)
- CSS positioning, flexbox, grid layouts
- Accessibility and semantic HTML
- Making existing designs work correctly
2. Technical Design Decisions
- Component architecture
- State management
- Performance optimization
- Code organization
- API design
Better Resources for Design Work
For Logos:
- DALL-E / Midjourney / Stable Diffusion: Text-to-image AI for custom graphics
- Canva: Templates for logos, good free tier
- LogoMaker / Looka: AI logo generators
- Noun Project: Free/paid icon library for simple logos
For Textures & Effects:
- CSS Pattern Generators:
- SVGBackgrounds.com: Pre-made SVG patterns
- Unsplash/Pexels: Free stock photos for texture overlays
For Color Schemes:
- Coolors.co: Generate harmonious color palettes
- Adobe Color: Color wheel with harmony rules
- Realtime Colors: Preview color schemes on real UI
For Complete UI Design:
- Figma: Free for small projects, excellent for designing before coding
- Tailwind UI: Pre-built component designs
- shadcn/ui: Modern component library with good aesthetics
My Recommended Workflow With You
- You generate/find the visual assets (logos, textures, images)
- I implement them into working code with proper layout and functionality
- You provide feedback on positioning, sizing, spacing
- I iterate on the technical implementation
This is exactly what we just did with the cribbage logo – you generated the image, I integrated it into the board. That’s the sweet spot.
Bottom Line
Don’t ask me to: Make things look beautiful from scratch
Do ask me to: Make beautiful things work correctly, lay out properly, and integrate seamlessly into your application
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