What good looks like on a still, a slide, a chart or a frame of film, and why. The making lives in
the production skills (stills, data-viz, thumbnails, storyboard, motion-direction); brand
facts live in the brand pack (/workspace/brand/); this wiki is the shared doctrine they all lean on.
How to read it
Every page here is either a rule with evidence you can check (a standard, a published guide, a
measurement), or a default to weigh, marked as such, which a good reason overrides. Brand rules
are not here: they come from the pack, and the pack wins over a default. When a job teaches something
new, save it as an observation (save_observations) with its evidence rather than editing this wiki;
a person decides what becomes doctrine.
| Job | Page |
|---|---|
| Deciding what the eye sees first; grids, margins, space, safe areas | references/hierarchy-and-layout.md |
| Type roles, sizes at the delivered size, line length, casing, legibility | references/typography.md |
| Grounds, the one accent, colour that means something, contrast | references/color.md |
| Sizes and specs per platform, with the date they were checked | references/platforms.md |
| Which chart or diagram, and how to keep it honest | references/data-and-diagrams.md |
| Scoring a piece at a review: areas, anchors, verdicts | references/review-rubric.md |
The doctrine in brief
One message, one focal point. A frame says one thing. Name each separate thing a viewer must interpret (the headline, a card, a chart): one is the good frame, two is the ceiling, a third is a second frame. Everything that is not the focal element steps down hard in size, weight or contrast. (Default to weigh; the attention-demand count is how you check it.)
Concept before composition. The visual idea is the real product surface, a specific metaphor, or
bold type. Decorative node, dot or network fields are never a concept (brand-design, the kill test).
Fewest words. Each fact once. No sub-line, caption, footer, URL or eyebrow the ask did not supply; the explanation belongs in the reply or the post. Copy the person supplied ships exactly.
Real over imitation. The product's real UI, real data with its source, the real logo. A number on
a frame is a claim: it goes in the brief's claims ledger with its source (content-brief).
Contrast is measured, not judged. Text meets WCAG 2.1 contrast: 4.5:1, or 3:1 for large text
(at least 18 pt, or 14 pt bold); meaningful graphics and UI parts meet 3:1 against what is next to
them (color). brand-lint measures text contrast against the tokens.
Size for where it is seen. The smallest text a person must read has to survive the smallest view the piece gets: a phone feed, a thumbnail rail, a projector at the back of a room (typography, platforms). A new size is a new layout, never a scaled or cropped copy.
Look at the render. Every gate passing is the floor. You look at the pixels yourself before
anyone else does (visual-verify), against the review rubric.
Using the rubric in a review
A critic, a helper or you before delivery scores the piece on the rubric's areas, 1 to 5, each with the timestamp, the crop or the number behind it, and writes at most a dozen notes ranked by impact, each marked must-fix or nice-to-have. The verdict follows the rubric's rule (ship, fix then ship, rework). Two things decide before any score: an invented claim fails the piece outright, and a gate that could not run (exit 2) is not a pass. Motion adds pacing, sound and finish areas: the film rubric is in motion-direction; the critic brief for a launch film points at both.
Where the rules came from
The evidence column of each page names a public, linkable source (a W3C standard, a platform's help page, a published book or style guide) or says "default to weigh". Platform specs change; each spec row carries the date it was checked, and a placement that matters is re-checked against the platform's own page before a final.