The theme that shipped in the first cut was quiet to a fault: outside
the hero, its pages fell back to ruled prose. This revision gives the
theme a constructive vocabulary and tightens the site integration
around it.
Theme (grid.md, rewritten):
- A marks kit: period square, 3px bar, register crosshair, quarter-disc,
stepped bars, dot module, border arrows, 45-degree diagonal, and giant
cropped numerals, all locked to the column tracks.
- The plate: at most one full-bleed flooded band per page as the poster
moment, rails continuing across it.
- A signal-ink axis: one ink per page, signal red (default), ultramarine,
or surface-only signal yellow; two pages in a run never share the ink.
- Section-object law: a band that is only prose has failed the theme.
- Asymmetric occupancy (prose capped at 6 of 12 columns) and structural
whitespace; grid-snapped hover geometry and an optional ticker.
Site:
- grid-01 example replaced with signal, a Basel poster festival page
built on the revised theme; thumb regenerated at the 1400-wide
full-page convention (the first cut shipped a 1600x1000 viewport crop
that broke the hover scroll).
- Grid tokens: serif slot resolves to the grotesk (the theme has no
serif), doubled comment opener fixed, description updated.
- Landing: grid headings follow the theme's lowercase display voice;
hero copy updated to the signal-ink language.
- main.js: grid added to THEME_GENRES (missing in the first cut).
Consistency sweep the first cut missed:
- custom-theme.md catalog lists still said 20 themes; now 21 with Grid.
- components.css banner comment still said 20 themes.
Swiss neo-grotesque systems design: a near-white cool sheet with the
twelve-column hairline grid painted behind the content rather than implied,
one heavy Archivo run lowercase and slammed left, and exactly one signal red
used as a geometric mark. It fills the editorial cluster's neo-grotesque slot,
which until now was serif-led on every one of its members.
Skill side: the theme spec, and the catalog count from twenty to twenty-one in
the four places SKILL.md states it.
Site side: the token block, the switcher entry, the twenty-first dropdown dot,
Archivo added to the font load, the Buro Grid example page with its thumbnail,
and an entry in the theme contact sheet.
Not added to scroll-demos.json on purpose. Grid's motion is near-zero by
design, no reveals and no parallax, so a scroll recording would be an empty
file advertising something the theme refuses to do.
README carries the new count only, no new section.
Carnival: fixed the three palette drops whose second accent failed contrast,
tightened the display tracking, and added section-rhythm, alignment, and
drop-selection guidance so the theme lands well-aligned and readable by
default. Lightened and tightened the Carnival headers on the landing.
Anti-slop guards (skill references): heading-to-body alignment coherence as a
principle rather than a rigid rule; centered overlays and command palettes must
center via their container; and a hero headline is never only a number, a lead
figure always pairs with words.
Worked Examples: added three generated pages to the landing carousel, a
small-batch honey farm, a risograph print fair, and an experimental type
studio, after fixing their nav centering and section alignment.
Media: removed the Soroe example card along with the unused scroll-videos,
poster stills, and orphaned thumbnails it left behind, and bumped the asset
cache-bust so the restyled CSS reloads.
Swap the Hum carousel card from Sprout (hum-02) to Bubble (hum-07), the
guided sourdough Narrative Workflow build. Keep only one custom example in
the showcase, the Mend Assembly repair-cafe poster; the other bespoke pages
stay in the repo but off the landing. Untrack hum-02 so only featured builds
ship, refresh the scroll-demos manifest, and bump the cache version.
Merge the clear duplicates (gradient text into the gradient gate, macrostructure-
repeat into the structural-fingerprint gate, the overflow-x:clip mandate into the
horizontal-scroll gate, emoji-icon into the icon-libraries gate), collapse the five
contrast gates to two, the five input-state gates to one, and the four hero gates to
two. No coverage lost. Renumber 1–57 and update every gate-number and gate-total
reference across SKILL.md, the reference docs, the landing copy, and the example builds.
Adds Carnival, Lumen, Hum, and Cobalt to the catalogue (now 20 themes),
each with its own tokens block, hero archetype, landing copy, and spec doc.
Introduces Custom as a first-class route: when a brief carries real
creative intent, Hallmark designs the whole page from first principles —
palette, type, and structure — rather than recolouring a catalogue theme.
Ships five worked custom examples and a README section.
Rewrites the per-theme landing copy and reconciles every catalogue count
across the site and the skill (20 themes · 21 macrostructures · 50
component archetypes · 70 slop-test gates). Drops the last competitor
references from the CSS comments, fixes the genre rosters, and ignores
the local example explorations so only the featured builds ship.
Each .ex-card div is now an <a target="_blank" rel="noopener"> wrapping the same content. The hover-play video, prompt line, and .ex-card styles all work unchanged (the class already had color: inherit + focus-visible). Added one CSS line — text-decoration: none on .ex-card — so the <a> doesn't underline the card.
Linked destinations:
- examples/tally/ — SaaS, modern-minimal (from /Users/youssef/test-hallmark-9)
- examples/wayfare/ — travel booking, atmospheric (from test-hallmark-12)
- _tests/09-slow-pour/ — small-batch coffee subscription (already in site)
- examples/bananastudio/ — creative studio with playful motion (from test-hallmark-6)
- _tests/06-anya-portfolio/ — software architect personal site (already in site)
- examples/najm/ — Moroccan fashion (from test-hallmark-7)
- _tests/11-soroe-ceramics/ — small ceramics studio (already in site)
- examples/hyperlane/ — developer infrastructure (from test-hallmark-15)
site/examples/ adds ~308 KB total across the 5 copied projects. The other 3 already live under site/_tests/ so no copying needed for them.
Youssef