Asset Briefs | Creative Yadley Design System

For anyone on the team making Creative Yadley visuals: merch mockups, stationery, social graphics, studio photos, portraits. No repository access needed — everything you need is on this page.

Use it when you open ChatGPT (or any image tool) and want the result to look like it came from us rather than from a stock library.

How to use this (three steps)

Copy the brief below.
Fill in the five <<…>> slots. Leave everything else alone.
Paste into ChatGPT, then attach a reference photo if you have one (§5).

The rules exist because generated images drift: a slightly wrong green, a wordmark the model "drew", a grade that looks like a filter. These constraints keep it ours.

Reference pages, if you want the detail: creativeyadley.com/design-system/ (logo, colour, photography, components).

1. The brief

You are designing on-brand visuals for Creative Yadley, a design studio.
Follow these brand rules exactly; do not improvise alternatives.

ASSET
Type: <<T-shirt mockup / stationery / social post / studio photo / portrait>>
Purpose: <<where it will be used>>
Size: <<e.g. 1080x1080 social, A4 print, 1200x1600 portrait>>
Subject: <<one or two plain sentences>>
Mood: <<calm / warm / editorial / energetic>>

BRAND CONSTANTS — do not vary
- Dark ground: obsidian #08090B. Light ground: warm white #F4F5F2.
  Never pure #000 or #FFF as a large field.
- Accent: lime #AFE139. ONE accent moment per image. Never a lime wash,
  never a second accent colour.
- Type: Plus Jakarta Sans for headings and the wordmark; Nunito Sans for body.
- Logo: an emblem (circular mark) plus the words "Creative Yadley" set as type.
  NEVER draw, redraw, letter or approximate the wordmark inside the image.
  If the design needs the name, leave clear space and set it in layout afterwards.
- Tagline (optional): "Big Ideas. Beautifully Built." — smaller than the name,
  never on its own.

COMPOSITION
- One idea, one focal subject, real negative space.
- Directional natural light, open shadows. No HDR, no lens flare, no heavy vignette,
  no coloured gels, no neon.
- Matte surfaces, fine grain, restrained. Nothing glossy or futuristic.
- Survives a 4:5 and a 1:1 crop unless the brief says otherwise.
- Tell me where the clear space for type is.

WARDROBE (people and merch on people)
- Black or near-black tailoring, white shirt or black tee. One muted earth tone is
  allowed in casual shots. Garments never carry large colour blocks.
- Accents are cues, not garments: a small lime lapel pin is the standard. If one
  person wears a lime garment, that garment IS the accent - nobody else may carry
  lime in the same frame (no pin, no prop, no signage).
- No other logos, pins, prints or slogans. No competitor marks, no slogan T-shirts.

COLOUR GRADE (photos and photoreal mockups)
- Neutral-warm. Skin tones faithful across all complexions.
- Low-to-medium contrast, blacks lifted slightly, highlights not clipped.
- No teal-and-orange split tone. No cool blue cast. No "AI look": no plastic skin,
  no impossible bokeh.

DO NOT
- Render text, logos or wordmarks inside the image unless explicitly requested.
- Invent brand elements: no extra icons, badges, borders, stamps or slogans.
- Use stock-model faces and present them as team members.
- Show fake client work, invented portfolios or unreadable mock UI.

DELIVER
- PNG (JPG for photographs), sRGB, under 400 KB for web use.
- Describe what is in frame in one sentence so we can write alt text.
- Tell me anything you could not do within these rules.

2. Merch and apparel (the most common brief)

T-shirt and apparel mockups follow the same brief, with these additions:

The shirt carries the emblem, not the wordmark — unless a print file says otherwise, and even then the words are set in layout, never generated.
Show one garment per frame: flat-lay or on-body, not both.
Ground: obsidian or warm grey. One soft key light, soft shadow, visible stitching and collar so it reads as a real product.
Garment colours: black, white, warm grey, and (sparingly) lime. No tie-dye, no gradients, no all-over prints.
No mockup watermarks, no stock model faces, no invented collection names.
If the shirt is on a person: black or neutral outfit, one lime pin, the grade from §1. The garment stays the subject.

The chest stays blank in generated images. Image models cannot place a real mark accurately: they redraw it, misspell it, or invent a variant. Generate the garment clean, then composite the approved emblem in layout. A blank chest is the correct deliverable, not a failure.
One saturated garment per frame, maximum. A lime tee is a colour block, not an accent. If the set needs lime, make it one garment and keep the rest black, white or warm grey.
On a lime garment, the full-colour emblem disappears — its own lime sits on lime. Either leave that garment blank or use an approved one-colour emblem. Do not recolour the emblem to force contrast.
Generated logos look like stickers. A model paints the mark flat: identical size and angle on every garment, crisp edges, no crease break-up, no ink texture. If a proof arrives with marks on the shirts, treat them as placeholders and composite properly (see below).

Compositing a mark onto a garment (the only reliable route)

Generate the garment with a blank chest. Never ask the model for the logo.
Place the mono emblem over the chest in a raster editor (Affinity Photo, Photoshop).
Warp it to the fabric — mesh or perspective warp, following the fold direction. A flat rectangle on a curved chest is the tell.
Blend for ink, not for sticker. Multiply for dark ink on light fabric, Screen for white ink on dark. Opacity 85–92%, never 100%.
Soften the edges (0.3–0.6px blur), add a touch of grain, then paint the fold shadows back over the mark with a soft brush at low opacity. Printed ink sits in the weave; it catches the same shadows as the cloth.

Prompt addition for merch

Product photography of a single garment. Neutral studio ground (obsidian or warm
grey), one soft key light from the front-left, soft contact shadow, fabric texture
and stitching clearly visible. The chest area stays clean for a logo; do not place
any mark there. No model face if the shot is a flat-lay.

2a. Candid group photography

Generated group shots fail in a specific, predictable way: everyone is tidy, evenly spaced, front-lit, and somehow has the same hair. That is not a mystery — models default to the average of their training data, and "a group of women smiling" averages to one face repeated.

Ask for the deviations explicitly. Vague briefs produce catalogue photography.

What to specify

Vary people on purpose. Name the differences: ages across 25–55, different heights and builds, different skin tones within the group.
Vary hair in words, one per person: locs, box braids, twist-out, straightened, short crop, grey or silver, headwrap, hat. Never leave hair to the model — it will produce one silhouette in four variations.
Stage a real place, not a backdrop. A market stall, a courtyard with string lights, folding tables, plants, cables, sand, stacked boxes. Clutter is evidence that the place is real.
Use available light and mixed colour temperature. Dusk plus warm string lights, a flash-lit foreground against a cooler sky, tungsten spilling from a doorway. Mild grain is expected; a little motion blur in a hand or shoulder is a feature.
Break the composition. 35mm at f/2, slightly off-centre, someone half-cropped at the frame edge, background people turned away and ignoring the camera.
Nobody looks at the lens. Two people in conversation, one mid-laugh with eyes closed, someone mid-sentence with their hand moving.
No lineup. No symmetry, no even spacing, no row of faces at the same height.

Why this matters more than it sounds: a group of people all facing camera and smiling is a stock photo, whatever the grade. The brand reads as candid — a stall at dusk with a real queue is more "us" than a perfect seamless wall.

Prompt addition for candid groups

Candid documentary photograph at a small outdoor market at dusk, string lights
overhead, folding tables and stacked stock in the foreground. Four to six people in
conversation, none looking at the camera; one mid-laugh, one turned away. Hair is
clearly different for each person: locs, box braids, twist-out, short crop, grey
hair, a headwrap. Mixed ages and builds. Available light with warm string lights and
cool twilight; slight grain, mild motion blur in one hand. 35mm, f/2, slightly
off-centre, one person cropped at the edge. Not a studio, not a lineup, no seamless
backdrop, nobody posed facing the lens.

3. Stationery and print

Business cards, letterheads, invoices, folders: white or warm-white stock, ink text, one lime rule or accent — never a lime background.
Emblem and wordmark are separate elements in the artwork so a printer can set type properly.
Add 3mm bleed and state the finished size.
For digital stationery (email signature, PDF), the same rules, plus the tagline under the name at 60% scale.

4. Social graphics

One statement per image, set in Jakarta at display scale; the lime accent appears once — a rule, a dot, or a single word.
Leave the outer 8% clear: platforms crop.
No text over busy photography; use the obsidian ground or a clear panel.

5. Attach a reference

Generation matches a reference far better than it follows words. Attach:

Portraits / team photos: one of the four studio headshots as the target grade.
Merch: an existing garment shot or the flat-lay you want the style of.
Studio scenes: a real photograph of the studio.

Then add: "Match the light, grade and background of the attached reference."

6. Check before you send it to anyone

One accent, and it is our lime — not a yellow-green approximation
Skin tones look like the person, not like a filter
No invented wordmark, logo or text inside the image
Clothing is black, white or warm neutral, with at most one lime pin
The background is obsidian or warm white — not pure black or pure white
Nothing is melted, doubled or physically impossible (fingers, straps, shadows)
The crop works at the size it will actually be used

If it fails any of these, regenerate rather than "fixing" it in an editor — patched artefacts always look patched.

7. When the brief does not fit

Stop, and say which rule is blocking you. A new colour, a new lockup or a new pattern is a design-system decision, not an image decision. Better to ask than to ship something that has to be thrown away.

7a. Studio atmosphere (no people needed)

The studio is a subject in itself. These frames carry the brand's best claim: that real work happens here. They are also the easiest to get right, because nothing has to look at the camera.

The rule that matters: mess is evidence. Generated scenes default to tidy, and tidy reads as fake. Ask for the specific objects that prove work happened.

Shot list

Spilled ink or paint on a work surface, still wet, with the bottle lying beside it.
Crayons, markers or pencils fanned mid-use, not arranged in a row.
A printer mid-print, paper curling out, a jam of offcuts underneath.
Tracing paper over a sketch, taped at one corner, graphite showing through.
Coffee rings and a half-full cup on a stack of proofs.
Paper offcuts and trimming waste on the floor around a desk.
A wall of pinned prints, some crooked, one falling.
Dust in a shaft of afternoon light across a desk.
A laptop with a design open, cables across the desk, a phone face-down on top.
Hands only: holding a swatch fan, tearing paper, taping a sheet.

Prompt pattern

Documentary still life in a working design studio, available window light from the
left, late afternoon. [OBJECT AND STATE: e.g. a half-used set of crayons spilled from
a tin across a paper-covered desk]. Evidence of work: pencil shavings, paper offcuts,
a coffee ring, a roll of tape. Matte surfaces, mild grain, no styling, no symmetry.
35mm, f/2.8, slightly above desk height. Neutral-warm grade. No text, no logos, no
people, nothing arranged in a row.

Why these work better than people: no faces to go wrong, no hands mid-gesture, no identity claims. They are also the frames a designer notices — and the ones that make a portfolio feel inhabited.

8. Use it inside a ChatGPT Project

If the work happens in one place — a ChatGPT Project, a Claude Project, a team workspace — paste the instructions below into the Project instructions box once. Every thread in that project then starts from the same rules, which is the closest thing to brand memory an external tool can have.

It tells the assistant to read this site before acting, so it stays current as we publish new pages. Nothing is copied into the instructions that the site can answer.

You are Creative Yadley's studio assistant. Creative Yadley is a design studio in
Sheridan, Wyoming, building complete digital business ecosystems: websites, systems
and brand identity. We are a studio, not an agency.

SOURCE OF TRUTH
Treat the Creative Yadley Design System as authoritative:
https://creativeyadley.com/design-system/
Read the relevant page before producing anything:
- /logo.html for marks and lockups
- /color.html for palette and contrast
- /typography.html for type and the scale
- /components.html for interface patterns
- /photography.html for imagery and grading
- /email.html for email rules
- /briefs.html for image-prompt briefs
If those pages do not answer the question, say so and ask. Do not invent.

BRAND CONSTANTS
- Obsidian #08090B is the dark ground; warm white #F4F5F2 the light one. Never a
  large field of pure black or pure white.
- Lime #AFE139 is the only accent. One accent moment per composition.
- Plus Jakarta Sans for display and the wordmark; Nunito Sans for body copy.
- The logo is an emblem plus the words "Creative Yadley" set as type. Never draw,
  letter or approximate the wordmark inside an image - leave space and set it in
  layout afterwards.
- Tagline, optional: "Big Ideas. Beautifully Built."
- Photography: off-white seamless ground, black tailoring with at most one lime cue,
  soft frontal light, neutral-warm grade. No teal-and-orange, no HDR, no heavy
  vignette, no "AI look".

WRITING
- Calm, precise, warm. Short sentences. No hype, no "leverage", no exclamation marks.
- Titles in Title Case; button labels in Action Case ("Book Your Call").
- British spelling, except in URLs and product names.
- Never promise a timeline you were not given. Ask instead.

RULES
- Do not invent brand elements: no extra logos, colours, fonts, slogans or icons.
- Do not present stock-model faces as team members.
- Do not publish a client's name or work without permission.
- If something needs a new rule, token or asset, stop and ask rather than improvising.

FORMAT
- Image requests: use the brief on /briefs.html and fill its five slots.
- Email requests: one action per email, 600px shell, hero present, per /email.html.
- End every response with: what you assumed, and what needs confirming.