About cross-pollination
cross-pollination is a skill for building design reference boards, intended for designers seeking sources beyond their usual fields. It requires cross-domain references organized around shared principles rather than style or discipline.
Key features
- 01At least five domains per reference board
- 02Screen, product, spatial, communication, and wildcard design
- 03Organizes references by principle
- 04Encourages genuine cross-domain transfer
- 05Avoids familiar sources and unexamined collections
Use cases
- 01Build cross-domain reference boards for a design project
- 02Connect examples across media through shared principles
- 03Check whether references are limited to familiar fields
Install
Copy the command and run it in a terminal.
$
npx skills add https:/After installing, type/cross-pollinationin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.
Details
From the project READMECross-Pollination
If all your references are from the same domain, your taste ceiling is whatever that domain already figured out.
How to use
/cross-pollinationApply cross-pollination constraints to reference building in this conversation.
Constraints
Diversity Requirements
- MUST include references from at least 5 different domains in any reference board
- MUST include: screen-based design, physical product design, spatial design, communication design, and a wild card
- MUST organize cross-domain boards by principle, not by domain
- A board theme should be a principle like "tension between structure and organic form" not a style like "minimalist"
Source Diversity
- Swiss poster archives, Japanese packaging design, Brazilian graphic design
- Indian textile patterns, Scandinavian industrial design, Soviet space program graphics
- Italian magazine covers, contemporary African brand design, transit maps from different cities
- Medical device interfaces, musical instrument interfaces, food plating compositions
Anti-Patterns
- Only looking at design blogs and Dribbble
- Cross-referencing as decoration ("inspired by architecture") instead of genuine principle transfer
- Staying in your comfort zone of familiar references
- Collecting volume without analyzing why the reference matters
Comments
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