Everything you have asked for this summer, in one place, in your words.
Every new tool or mock is graded against this list, line by line, before it reaches you. Colours come from Brand Standards. The questions at the bottom are yours to settle; until you do, nothing gets guessed.
ColourFrom Brand Standards
1Take every colour from Brand Standards. Never a colour a tool has drifted to.
Pull the hex from the palette, every time.Tool build notes, June
2Cream is F4F1EC. Navy is 363657.
“it is f4f1ec always.”Recipe design brief, 19 Aug
3No amber, gold, brown or ochre. No yellow badges.
“brand colors only, no amber anywhere”Amber retired, 2 Jul
4Bright blue 3385E3 is ours. Used for the tool name in the header and sparing accents.
“this is the blue and it is in our design language.”Ingredient library, 22 Aug
5Verdicts: F*ck Yes sage · Yes But dusty blue · Not Yet slate · Hard No coral with navy text.
Solid fills, cream text; navy on coral so it reads.Brand Standards
6Sage means a decision. Signal green 00C853 means settled (booked, locked to a day), as a mark only.
“can we make the locked-in square the same green as the location dot, since it’s a commitment?”Brand Standards, 1 Sep
7Let colour contrast. Don’t wash a page out in cream and pale sage.
“neutralizes the whole system, washes it flat and dead.”Hub, 9 Aug
TypeTwo typefaces, each with its job
8IvyPresto, light only: names, headings, the tool name, taglines (italic). Never bold or heavy.
Heavy IvyPresto “reads aggressive and off-brand.”Brand Standards
9Helvetica for everything readable: body at 13–14px, fields, filters, buttons.
“Everything the reader actually reads lives in the sans.”Brand Standards
10Section labels: Helvetica, bold, small capitals, spaced out. Buttons: 12px bold capitals.
Section label · 700 · spaced caps.Brand Standards
11Numbers line up (even-width figures). Small text in slate 5A5D63, not pale grey, so it can be read.
Faint grey moved to slate so it passes.Guide map, 13 Aug
12Search boxes at 16px, so a phone doesn’t zoom in.
Guide map, 13 Aug
Shape & spaceRestraint
13Slight corners only, about 5px, on everything: buttons, cards, labels and filter pills. No rounded pills, ever.
“Pill is rounded and not us.”Media Desk, 3 Oct · Brand Standards: “restrained, never fully rounded.”
14Thin 1px lines; shadows only when you hover.
Brand Standards
15Restraint, and still dense enough to work in.
“elevated editorial restraint, not a dense utility grid, not Costco.” · “dashboard density, not landing page.”Media Diet direction, 8 Aug · Hub, 9 Aug
16Nothing slides sideways on a phone; taps are at least 42px.
Tool build notes
Filters & searchShort, honest, on one line
19Filters stay small. One slim row; the rest folds away, with counts.
“the top isn’t all filters.”Research, 26 Sep
20Keep a pill row on one line.
“can we keep the pills as one line when possible... it gets wild when they wrap.”Guide curator, 9 Sep
21Pills in navy, so they don’t get lost on cream.
Tool build notes
22Lists of ten or more go A to Z. Ratings, steps and your own spine keep their order.
“Long pill lists get alphabetized.”Search & filtering brief
23One set of counts. Each number is exactly what you get when you click it.
Media Desk, 3 Oct
24Never drop a filter you built.
“why is there no filter for the event? that was how the tool was built.”Research, 1 Oct
25Choices are pills from your own lists, never free text.
“no open taxonomy.”Search & filtering brief
26Places: one place row per guide, in that guide’s own unit. Place never shares a row with category.
“some maps are neighborhoods and some are towns and some are counties.”Place row, 14 Sep
27The guide map’s search band is the search to reuse.
Search & filtering brief
Lists & cardsThe content gets the screen
28The things themselves take the screen, not the controls.
“half the page on a desktop is sort and it’s sloppy”Media Desk, 3 Oct
29Your calls sit at the top of a card.
“notes won’t matter if they’re not rated.”Curator card, 9 Sep
30Done is a celebration: finished cards get more presence (sage-mint), never greyed out.
Tool build notes
31Rating something never moves you down the page.
“it moves me to that section… disjointed for rating things efficiently.”Journey board, 4 Sep
32Collapsed is fine; hidden is not.
“we risk flood over risk losing access.”Journey board, 9 Sep
33The private note stays shut until opened.
“open with stuff is a distraction.”Curator card, 9 Sep
34Here now / next on the journey board stays as you set it.
Stay card, 1 Sep
Opening a recordIn place, never a new page
35A record opens over the list, never on another page, and never as a permanent empty half-screen.
“the UX of going to another page is a no — we already solved this.”Media Diet, 8 Aug
36Reading and changing are separate: one Change button turns the whole record into its edit view.
Working card is for reading and judging; the drawer is for editing.Guide curator, 9 Sep
37Easy access to the main content first.
“missing the easy access to the meat of the listing.”Guide curator, 9 Sep
38Tabs only where a record is long; empty tabs are hidden.
Tool build notes
WordsYours, short and plain
39No technical words on screen: no table, field or code names, no “entity”, no “set live by a build”.
“so technical and messy” · “like a fill-in form from 1960 for a government site”Guide curator, 3 Oct
40Use your words for things: Waiting for you, Live, Mixes, To check, Cast into a story, What we’re using.
Media Desk, 3 Oct · Index notes
41No absolutes (every, all, never, always, only) in copy for readers.
Tool build notes
ImagesOnly yours, only real
42Only your artwork and the real images on the records. Nothing drawn, no made-up icons.
Standing rule
43No dark overlay, blur or tint on photos; no type over faces. (The map card’s label chip sits on the photo by design.)
“the product is designed to overlay - do research before making assumptions”Brand page brief, 10 Aug · Guide map, 19 Aug
44A photo shows only if there is one.
“if not there is not a hole for it.”Recipe card, 21 Aug
45Logos and wordmarks are shown whole, never cropped mid-word.
Media Desk, 3 Oct
How we workBefore you see anything
46Look at canava.co and your own best tools first; no one tool is the benchmark.
“the maps are the BEGINNING, not the bar.”Media Diet, 8 Aug
47Design first, then lock the spec, then build against it.
“APPROVED SPEC… build against this”Curator card, 9 Sep
48Check it at desktop width and on a phone, against this list, before you see it.
“this has to be good the first time.”3 Oct
