Wednesday, September 9, 2026

Visual specification

1. Color Specification

• Primary hue — 162° (teal-green). Chosen inside the 140–180° mandate; it reads as the color of a dark, still night that still has life in it — the new moon (3.3% illuminated) as ground, one green pulse as the surviving detail.
• Neutral palette (teal-black, hued toward 162°) — 50 #eef4f2, 100 #d7e2de, 200 #b3c6c0, 300 #8aa39b, 400 #647d75, 500 #48605a, 600 #344944, 700 #223531, 800 #142320, 900 #0a1512.
• Accent color — light #6ef0c6, default #2ecf9d, dark #12a37a, glow #8ff6d6.
• Secondary accent — none. The page turns on exactly one color.
• Background — page bg #06110f (near-black teal void), card/surface #0f2620, flooded field plane #0d3a2c.
• Text colors — primary #e8f4ef, secondary #9dbdb2, muted/faint #7f9f94.

2. Typography (chassis: hanken-solo — one humanist grotesk at three weights)

• Hero phrase rendering — set at the hero ramp step (fluid clamp ~64px→96px), weight 700, centered in the void with clearance on all four sides, text-wrap: balance so it settles into 2–3 lines. A single family carrying display, standfirst and body IS the message: limit the details, including the fonts.
• Type treatment — hero = hero; a standfirst under the phrase = xl; section heads (Selected work, About, Colophon) = 2xl; index row titles = lg; body/deck = base capped at 62–68ch; metadata and colophon = sm; micro labels = xs (never a sentence). Leading and tracking come from the chassis ramp — I name steps, not raw values. This spends the middle of the scale the owner asked for.

3. Layout Specification

• Composition — single / vertical / symmetric / center / sparse / accelerating / standard / drenched / hero-only. A manifesto about subtraction wants one spine, centered, floating in a flooded void — the confidence is in what is withheld (davidrudnick.org logic).
• CSS grid/flex structure — display: grid; grid-template-columns: minmax(0,1fr); justify-items: center; for the hero fold; below-fold sections are single-column blocks max 68ch, left-aligned to one rail, margin-inline: auto.
• Major dimensions:
  • Hero fold: min-height: 92vh, phrase optically centered.
  • No sidebar/fixed panel.
  • Max content width — this is columns: single: body pinned to max-width: 68ch; hero block max-width: 20ch. Side padding clamp(24px, 6vw, 96px).
  • Section padding: vertical rhythm from the chassis spacing base; sections tighten as the page descends (accelerating): first gap ~14 units, last ~6.
• Nav placement — corner header, top-left cluster (mark + wordmark), three small-caps links tucked beneath. Not a top bar. Height ~72px.
• Hero phrase grid zone — occupies the centered single column, rows spanning the first fold (roughly viewport rows 2–8 of 10), intended rendered size 64px (360) → 96px (1440).

4. Component Character

• Border radius — cards/buttons/tags 0–2px (hard corners; owner dislikes rounded). Only the circular mark is round.
• Border treatment — hairlines only, border token; section breaks use borderStrong. No boxes around the hero.
• Shadow — none. Depth comes from surface lightness (#0f2620 sits above #06110f), not shadow.
• Density — sparse above the fold, quietly measured in the index below.
• Interactive states — links shift text → accent on _hover, hairline underline appears; no motion beyond a single staggered fade-in on load.

5. Signal Integration

• Where signal elements live — a hairline baseline colophon at the page foot; the void itself is the primary signal (the new moon).
• Sports scores — Tigers 2–3 loss set quietly in sm tabular figures in the colophon, textMuted, no accent — it is not today's win.
• Quote — Mandela's line is deliberately NOT the hero (breaking the quote habit); it sits once as a small sm footnote near the about block: "express yourself as though everyone is listening."
• Holiday — none today; omitted.
• Music — Radiohead · Guided by Voices · My Morning Jacket as an "on rotation" micro-line in the colophon, marked as taste, not an event; Radiohead's mood suits the restrained void.
• Other signals — new moon 3.3% (named as the ground concept + colophon), overcast 69°F Aldie, SPY 765.96 (−0.55%), AQI Good / UV 0, Biltmore Championship (scheduled) — all as spaced small-caps entries on the one colophon rule, subordinate to the type.

Self-check

1. Hero quotability: Yes — "Limit the number of details" is a standalone imperative that reads as a design manifesto, screenshot-worthy in isolation.
2. Because-of chain: Yes — restraint phrase → sparse single-spine void → single-family quiet chassis → dark-void teal with one accent → centered poster with an accelerating index beneath.
3. Render feasibility: Yes — 5 short words at hanken hero (max 96px) fit 2–3 balanced lines centered at 1440 with clearance, no overflow.
4. Canvas floor feasible: Yes — a drenched teal-black void fills the full canvas as chromatic ground even at sparse density; 70% is easily cleared.
5. Phone: Yes — hero-only puts the phrase alone in the first fold; at 360 the hero step is 64px and the longest word ("details") fits the column without cutting.

Rationale

The phrase is a manifesto about subtraction, lifted from the day's design-discourse lane and elevated into the argument a self-redesigning portfolio should be judged against: "Limit the number of details." On a new-moon, overcast, market-down day with no win to celebrate, the honest gesture is not to add but to withhold — so every downstream decision serves that withholding. The composition collapses to a single vertical spine, one phrase centered in a flooded void with clearance on all four sides, because a manifesto about editing cannot be rendered as three crowded columns without contradicting itself. The confidence comes from what is absent.

The chassis is hanken-solo — one humanist grotesk at three weights — chosen precisely because it is a single voice. A page arguing to limit details should not run two competing typefaces; using one family for hero, standfirst, index and body makes the type system itself enact the message, and it answers the standing "display and body must share a skeleton" complaint completely (they are the same face). Its quiet 96px hero is a feature, not a shortfall: this line is a considered statement, not a shout, and a poster whose restraint is the point wants the reserved register, not a condensed billboard.

The palette is a new-moon teal-black void at 162°, inside the 140–180° mandate and clear of every recently-spent warm and violet zone. Dark-void is the preferred formula this week (drench, light-ground and split-field are all recently used) and it is genuinely called for: the moon is 3.3% illuminated, the darkest night of the cycle, and a near-black teal ground with one saturated cyan-green pulse is that night made into pigment — the single surviving detail glowing in an edited-away field. Because a dark teal ground gives green somewhere to sit, the brand mark runs in its original green-and-blue for the first time in effectively 17 builds, harmonizing with the accent rather than fighting it. The header is a fresh corner cluster (no top bar the owner has rejected three times), the footer a single hairline colophon carrying every remaining signal as quiet spaced small-caps, subordinate to the one line that carries the day.

Composition rationale

A manifesto about subtraction cannot be crowded, so I moved density off the mandate's crowded to sparse and columns off three to single — a single centered spine is the only honest structure for "limit the number of details," and three newspaper columns would add exactly the details the phrase rejects. I moved axis off radial to vertical (a radial diagram orbits new elements around the center, the opposite of editing down) and symmetry off mirrored to symmetric (a centered poster, deliberate like davidrudnick.org, not a reflected pattern). I kept center, accelerating, standard, drenched and hero-only from the starting tuple because they genuinely serve: the void floods the canvas, the hero owns the fold, and the index below tightens as it descends.

Signal integration

• Where signal elements live — a hairline baseline colophon at the page foot; the void itself is the primary signal (the new moon).
• Sports scores — Tigers 2–3 loss set quietly in sm tabular figures in the colophon, textMuted, no accent — it is not today's win.
• Quote — Mandela's line is deliberately NOT the hero (breaking the quote habit); it sits once as a small sm footnote near the about block: "express yourself as though everyone is listening."
• Holiday — none today; omitted.
• Music — Radiohead · Guided by Voices · My Morning Jacket as an "on rotation" micro-line in the colophon, marked as taste, not an event; Radiohead's mood suits the restrained void.
• Other signals — new moon 3.3% (named as the ground concept + colophon), overcast 69°F Aldie, SPY 765.96 (−0.55%), AQI Good / UV 0, Biltmore Championship (scheduled) — all as spaced small-caps entries on the one colophon rule, subordinate to the type.