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Claret-and-bone split, one heavy slab word facing ten years of evidence, burnt-gold at the seam.
Why
The hero is Doug's own sentence about Spaceman: ten years independent, still the vehicle for the next experiment. On a day whose sidebar is full of "everyone is starting over," his answer is stability, not churn, and that answer is a thesis. A thesis wants an argument, so the composition is a two-equal split: the word carved into the left panel, the decade of actual work cataloged on the right, each half meaningless without the other. That is the gold-standard Split logic, which I have not repeated in the recent window.
The chassis is bitter-mulish because the line is grounded and established, not loud. Bitter's real heavy slab cuts make "Independent" a solid brick of a word, physical and weighted, while Mulish answers it with a humanist body that shares its screen-slab skeleton, so the inner pages will not read as a headline pasted onto default text. The palette is a deep claret field against a warm bone plane, a split-field strategy that fits the two-panel argument and deliberately walks away from the week's parade of golds; claret reads as autumnal, mature and settled, which is the register of "ten years." Burnt gold is the single accent, used as fills, year markers and small type on the claret field where it reaches full contrast.
Layout follows: a marginal left rail carries the mark-only mark and a title-case nav index, so the chrome stays out of the argument; at 360 that rail becomes a top band and the split stacks, claret panel first with the word at 3xl. The hero holds the top two-thirds of the claret panel open and lands the word low, right-aligned to the seam so it pushes toward the evidence. Nothing animates on load because all three recent entrances are spent and because a slab thesis should arrive fully formed; only the evidence index below the fold rises on scroll.
Visual specification
1. Color Specification
#FBF6EE, 100 #F3EADF, 200 #E8D8C8, 300 #D6C0AC, 400 #B9997E, 500 #94715C, 600 #6E4C40, 700 #4F322C, 800 #341C1E, 900 #221016#E3A94A, default #BD7A24, dark #9E6A20, glow #F2C878#E3A94A is the lighter register of the same gold, used for small type on the claret field.#F3EADF bone; card/surface #FBF6EE; claret field panel #451221; dark-scheme page bg #2C0B15.#2C0B15, secondary #611830, faint #7A5A48; on the claret field, ink #F3EADF, muted #ECA0B8.2. Typography
display (Bitter heavy). The word Independent is set at the hero ramp step (clamp sized to ~128px at 1440), right-aligned to the split seam. "Ten years" sits above it at lg, and "Still the vehicle for the next experiment." runs beneath as the deck at 2xl. The full sentence is the single h1 for semantics; the word is the largest object.hero for the word, 2xl for the deck line, xl for the ten-year standfirst in the evidence panel, lg for project titles and year markers, base (Mulish) for timeline body held at 60–68ch, sm for roles/clients, xs for the signal baseline. Mid-register is deliberately spent: standfirst at xl, section heads at lg, year figures at lg so no page jumps from marquee straight to body.3. Layout Specification
display: grid; grid-template-columns: 88px 1fr 1fr; (rail | claret thesis | bone evidence). Inside each panel, flex column.min-height: 100vh. Left rail width: 88px. Claret panel and bone panel each 1fr. max-width: none; panel padding clamp(32px, 5vw, 80px). Top two-thirds of the claret panel held open; word lands in the lower third./, full width below the hero split and above the signal footer, sitting between the work index and the footer baseline. Placed, not designed.4. Component Character
border on the bone side, fieldBorder inside the claret panel, borderStrong (claret) for the one strong rule under the standfirst.5. Signal Integration
textFaint, never beside a score as an event.Self-check
3xl with "Independent" (one word) fitting 360 width without a cut.Rationale
The hero is Doug's own sentence about Spaceman: ten years independent, still the vehicle for the next experiment. On a day whose sidebar is full of "everyone is starting over," his answer is stability, not churn, and that answer is a thesis. A thesis wants an argument, so the composition is a two-equal split: the word carved into the left panel, the decade of actual work cataloged on the right, each half meaningless without the other. That is the gold-standard Split logic, which I have not repeated in the recent window.
The chassis is bitter-mulish because the line is grounded and established, not loud. Bitter's real heavy slab cuts make "Independent" a solid brick of a word, physical and weighted, while Mulish answers it with a humanist body that shares its screen-slab skeleton, so the inner pages will not read as a headline pasted onto default text. The palette is a deep claret field against a warm bone plane, a split-field strategy that fits the two-panel argument and deliberately walks away from the week's parade of golds; claret reads as autumnal, mature and settled, which is the register of "ten years." Burnt gold is the single accent, used as fills, year markers and small type on the claret field where it reaches full contrast.
Layout follows: a marginal left rail carries the mark-only mark and a title-case nav index, so the chrome stays out of the argument; at 360 that rail becomes a top band and the split stacks, claret panel first with the word at 3xl. The hero holds the top two-thirds of the claret panel open and lands the word low, right-aligned to the seam so it pushes toward the evidence. Nothing animates on load because all three recent entrances are spent and because a slab thesis should arrive fully formed; only the evidence index below the fold rises on scroll.
Composition rationale
The phrase is a thesis, so the page argues it as a two-equal split: the word on the claret left panel, ten years of work on the bone right panel, each needing the other. I moved columns off the mandate's masonry start to two-equal because a packed rag would fragment a single quiet claim, and I set the hero alignment to right (off the recently-used left/centred) so the word reaches across the seam toward the evidence it produced. Kept horizontal, left-weighted, lower-third, sparse, accelerating, marginal, type-dominant, rail-to-band and word where they genuinely fit; this diverges from 2026-10-18 on columns, hero_zone and hero_object plus the whole split structure.
Signal integration
textFaint, never beside a score as an event.03
claret
hsl(340 62% 36%)
A deep claret panel for the decade behind the word and a warm bone plane for the work it produced, so 'ten years independent' reads as something grounded, not another gold headline.
04
Color — 3 ramps, 30 stops
claret
amber
bone
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