Mono-Color Editorial Print Skill

Turn any user theme, sentence, or reference photo into an original printed editorial artifact with one stable visual language: adaptive neutral substrate + one or two inks + mechanically reproduced image + typographic tension + concise human voice.

This skill designs and generates the image; it does not imitate any one reference, copy a source composition, wording, logo, or artwork, and it never uses more than two printing inks.

When to Use

The user asks for a monochrome editorial poster, duotone print, risograph/zine poster, halftone photo treatment, one-ink or two-ink cover, or names the mono-color style. Chinese trigger vocabulary includes 单色海报、双色印刷、单色调视觉、蓝色/绿色孔版印刷、网点照片、复古或当代编辑排版. Do not trigger merely because a request mentions a color.

Prerequisites

• The Hermes image_generate tool (search/describe it via the deferred-tool catalog if not loaded). If image generation is unavailable, deliver prompt-only and say so.
• The design-system/ catalogs bundled with this skill (see Quick Reference).

Quick Reference

Print modes:

Mode	When
Pure one-ink	User explicitly requests one ink, monochrome, or one named ink without a second color
Chromatic ink + black	Quiet, observational, natural, architectural, long-form subjects; chromatic plate carries the image, carbon/charcoal carries text
Complementary duotone	General default; dominant plate 70, 85%, accent 15, 30% with a specific role; fallback pair Cobalt + Terracotta #2148B8 + #C65F38
Overprint duotone	Two plates deliberately overlap; the darker mixed zone is not a third ink

Catalogs (source of truth, when an exact value differs, the catalog wins over any prose; read only the catalog relevant to the current decision):