XHS Cover Template

Use this template for 小红书 / RED 信息流封面图 at the standard 3:4 (1242×1660) portrait canvas. This is a fixed-image surface delivered as HTML-to-image, not a slide deck and not a WeChat cover.

This template ships two voices. Pick before building.

Variants

xhs-cover-spring.html — Soft seasonal lifestyle

• Voice: meditative, slow-living, watercolor-paper, bilingual.
• Use for: 春日 / 慢生活 / 治愈 / 旅行 / 食物 / 居家 / 冥想 / 节气 content.
• Distinctive moves: mint→cream vertical gradient, Songti SC Chinese headline + Times New Roman italic English lead, ink-green (#2d4a3e) accents, hand-drawn SVG clouds / grass tufts, soft-glow photography.

xhs-cover-typography.html — Bold editorial design

• Voice: design-led, hashtag-as-mark, magazine-issue energy.
• Use for: 设计 / 排版 / 创作工具 / 课程预告 / 沙龙活动 / 设计周刊 content.
• Distinctive moves: cobalt-blue (#1652f0) top/bottom bands, cream "folded paper" interior with shadow fold, # prefix + chunky PingFang headline + Helvetica Neue Black numerics, rotated issue tag, angled photo strip.

Use When

• The artifact is an XHS cover at 3:4 portrait, optimized for the feed thumbnail context.
• The user explicitly says 小红书 / XHS / RED / 封面.
• The headline carries the card — photography supports, not dominates.

Avoid When

• The platform is WeChat 公众号 → use wechat-cover-pair/ (different aspect, different reading distance).
• The platform is Xiaohongshu but the content is a method / KPI / comparison card → use social-card-swiss/.
• The content needs to be a reflective long-quote literary card → use social-card-editorial/.
• The output is a deck or scrolling article — wrong carrier entirely.

Required Reading

Read this SKILL.md first. Do not read either pattern.html by default.

Read the chosen variant only when you need exact title-breaking, decorative-element placement, or the folded-paper / soft-cloud SVG geometry. Extract patterns; do not copy DOM, placeholder copy, Pexels photo URLs, or class names wholesale.

Design Strategy

Pick the variant from voice:

• Slow + warm + bilingual lyrical → spring
• Loud + editorial + design-savvy → typography

Then write the headline first. XHS covers live or die by how readable the headline is at thumbnail scale. Compose it to break in 2–3 lines with intentional line-break points.

Layout Bias

Prefer:

• one dominant headline, one supporting sub or keyword chain
• a single visual anchor (photo, mark, or geometric block) — not three
• credible photo credit if a stock image is used
• breathing room at top and bottom safe areas (XHS UI overlay)
• bilingual stacking (English lead + Chinese headline) only when both have meaning

Avoid:

• 塑料 stickers, emoji-pile decorations, 3D plastic badges (AI-slop)
• 黑金 "premium" gradients (forbidden — see design aesthetic memory)
• crowding the canvas with 4+ decorative elements
• shrinking the headline to fit a long sentence — rewrite the sentence

Platform / Size

Fixed 3:4 portrait. Use canvas-and-device.md for current XHS dimensions and safe areas. Do not hard-code other ratios; if the user wants 1:1 or 16:9 they want a different template.