emboss-deboss

Imported from okou-ai/vm0-skills (illustration-template/emboss-deboss/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add okou-ai/vm0-skills --skill emboss-deboss. Copyright stays with the author.

/emboss-deboss — tactile paper-relief poster style

Turn a theme into a finished artwork that looks physically pressed into thick, uncoated paper. Typography, a visual metaphor, relief, and empty space form one composition. The mood is quiet and poetic; the depth is unmistakable at the size of the complete poster.

Prompt interpretation

Use the theme, supplied copy, palette, aspect ratio, and preferred relief treatment to shape the design. Explicit choices override defaults.

• Express the relationship, movement, or feeling behind the theme through one concrete visual metaphor.
• Preserve supplied wording exactly. Keep any newly composed headline short and omit unrequested supporting copy.
• Choose one composition, palette, typographic treatment, and arrangement of raised and recessed elements.
• Default to portrait 2:3. Recompose for square or landscape instead of cropping a portrait into another format.

Locked style

Paper and light

• One continuous sheet of thick matte cotton or uncoated paper, seen front-on. Fine, irregular fibers continue across faces, shoulders, and grooves. Broad empty areas stay calm; grain must not compete with the relief edges.
• The design is integral to the sheet, with pronounced sculptural relief. A useful starting point is a 2–3 mm rise from dense molded cotton board: distinct top faces, substantial shoulders, and visible side walls joining the base sheet. Adapt the depth to the motif's scale without losing those planes. Keep the rounded shoulders narrow enough to preserve broad top faces.
• One raking side light, upper left by default, roughly 15–25 degrees above the paper plane. A broad source softens shadow edges while restrained fill preserves the shaded walls and base shadows. All forms share this lighting.
• One or two principal colors, with a small purposeful accent if needed. Selected ink colors the raised faces without replacing their physical relief.

Emboss and deboss

• Emboss: a raised matte face, a lit shoulder toward the light, a clearly exposed strip of shaded side wall away from it, and an attached cast shadow on the surrounding paper. The wall and shadow have enough width to reveal height in the complete artwork. Letter counters remain at the lower paper level.
• Deboss: a visibly lowered bed between two inner walls, with a shaded upper-left wall and a lit opposite wall under the default light. Recessed paths have a readable channel width and depth, including at their endpoints. Keep the sheet inside a contour at the base level unless the entire area is recessed.
• Include both processes by default: a raised title or main form can sit beside a recessed route, water line, leaf vein, or contour. Honor requests for only embossing or only debossing. Supporting relief occupies less visual area while retaining clearly recessed geometry.
• Give the headline and primary solid form the full face–wall–base profile individually. Choose strokes wide enough to carry a readable raised top and shoulder. Inked lettering has the same physical height as blind lettering. An embossed moon or disk has a broad, gently convex face, a substantial rounded shoulder, an exposed side wall, and an attached base shadow around its shaded arc.
• Use blind pressing on a major element where the brief permits: its face keeps the paper's color, and coherent edge lighting makes it legible.

Composition

Build a relationship between forms. A small boat can answer a large moon across empty water; a distant sun can balance a recessed valley; a leaf can end a wind path. Choose the metaphor for the theme without automatically repeating these subjects.

Use one main metaphor and at most two supporting marks. Quiet space often covers roughly 40–60% of the canvas, adjusted for the brief. Give that space a purpose: distance, stillness, anticipation, or a path for the eye.

Specify positions, relative scale, and clear gaps. Let text and image share an axis or contour while protecting every required glyph. Keep the focal hierarchy clear even when the main forms use the paper's own color.

Create quietness through spacing, color restraint, and few elements. Preserve pronounced relief in a minimal or poetic composition.

Variable axes

For a varied batch, change at least two unconstrained axes while retaining fine matte paper, coherent side lighting, readable relief, and the quiet editorial mood. Preserve any fixed brand system, subject, palette, layout, or exact wording.

Brief template

Describe one resolved design using these details:

Output: one complete front-on artwork in the requested aspect ratio.
Intent: the theme and one specific visual relationship that expresses it.
Visible content: required motifs and exact supplied copy, if any.
Paper: matte sheet color, fine quiet fibers, continuous material.
Composition: element positions, relative scale, clear gaps, purposeful empty space.
Typography, if present: family, relief-bearing stroke weight, line breaks, ink or blind treatment.
Emboss, if used: named raised faces, substantial shoulders, exposed walls, and attached cast shadows.
Deboss, if used: named lowered beds, channel widths, inner walls, and consistent shading.
Lighting: one low raking side light with restrained fill, revealing height at whole-poster size.
Exclusions: extra text, coarse grain, flat substitutes for relief, incompatible materials.

Worked examples

Weightless · indigo

Raised book title and disk above a deeply recessed orbit

An ivory title and isolated disk rise above the indigo board with broad top faces, exposed side walls, and attached shadows. A deep open orbital channel reveals its lower bed and inner walls. This example anchors the default relief strength: all three levels remain distinct in the complete cover, with generous empty space.

Mountain valley · ivory

Mountain valley on ivory paper

A broad blind-embossed headline balances a small orange sun above mountain ridges. A recessed winding valley leads the eye through the lower half; the open sky keeps the landscape expansive.

Wind and ginkgo · blush

Ginkgo and wind on blush paper

A vertical blind-embossed title balances a raised ginkgo leaf across a clear gap. The leaf's fine recessed veins and a long sunken wind path provide quieter detail around the prominent paper forms.

Moon mooring · indigo and ochre

Moon mooring on indigo paper

Raised lettering faces a convex ochre moon across the upper field. Their side walls and attached shadows establish depth; a tiny boat and sparse recessed water marks balance the lower field.

Moon and boat · indigo

Moon and boat on indigo paper

A large raised ochre moon and a small blind-embossed boat carry the composition. Their unequal scale and the broad empty middle suggest stillness and distance, with a few recessed water lines completing the relationship.

Anti-patterns

• Flat printed lettering, a colored circle, a hairline bevel, or a shaded outline used in place of visible raised walls or a recessed channel.
• Flat replacement text that loses the surrounding artwork's relief and lighting.
• Coarse sand or concrete grain, gritty speckles, and oversharpened paper texture.
• Plastic, foam, clay, stone, chrome, glossy bevels, or inflated lettering.
• Deep block extrusion, floating cutouts, detached drop shadows, or glowing halos.
• Accidental tangencies, repetitive contour clutter, or unrelated decorative icons.
• Desks, frames, mockup books, curled sheets, or stacked paper layers unless requested.

Output evaluation checklist

• At a normal cover-preview size, the title and primary form each show a raised face, an exposed side wall, and an attached shadow. Color contrast alone does not establish depth. Recessed details show a lower bed and inner walls. All forms retain the character of sculpted paper.
• One light direction explains all edges. Fine fibers are visible close up without making broad paper areas noisy.
• One coherent metaphor, deliberate scale and spacing, and purposeful negative space create a clear focal point even in a thumbnail.
• Any supplied copy is exact, complete, legible, and uncropped, with no extra text.
• The artwork follows the requested aspect ratio, palette, and fixed choices.