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ADR-026: Editorial Visual Brand System

Palamedes needs one visual language across marketing pages, documentation, proof artifacts, and shared site UI. The homepage revamp established a warm editorial masthead over a technical ledger, but its tokens, typography, icon rules, numeric presentation, and callout treatment were not yet recorded as a durable decision. Without that contract, individual routes can drift back to generic documentation chrome, mixed icon families, or several competing callout systems.

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-08-16

Context

Decision

Use the Monument core × Editorial masthead system for all Palamedes web surfaces:

  • warm paper #faf9f4 is the ground, navy #0e2a4d is the primary ink, and bronze #8e6628 is the single semantic accent;
  • Cinzel Hellenic is the display face, paired with restrained body type, mono uppercase micro-labels, and tabular numbers;
  • micro-labels use one 10 px treatment (11 px is reserved for the larger eyebrow role), and gray-spec is no lighter than #6f695b on paper so small text retains WCAG AA contrast;
  • mastheads and running heads use rules, alignment, and whitespace rather than cards; border radius, box shadows, and gradients are outside the system;
  • structural rules are one-pixel hairlines. Editorial qualifications, asides, and boundaries use the shared EditorialRail primitive. Its structural tone uses ink/hairline tokens; its emphasis tone may use bronze. Thick colored side tabs are not part of the system;
  • bronze communicates interaction or semantic emphasis. Ordinary grouping must not spend the accent merely for decoration;
  • non-brand marketing pictograms use only licensed Streamline Sharp Duo exports recorded in site/streamline-asset-manifest.md. Framework and vendor marks are the intentional brand exception;
  • public benchmark values follow the checked rounding and scope policy in site/homepage-revamp-concept.md: whole milliseconds below one second, one decimal for multi-second values, and floored speedup factors. Exact values remain available in the checked source artifacts.

ARDO continues to own documentation chrome. Palamedes applies this language through ARDO's public token and component APIs rather than overriding internal classes.

Alternatives Considered

Per-route styling

Rejected. Local choices recreate the drift this decision is intended to stop and make proof, marketing, and generated documentation look like separate products.

Thick accent callouts

Rejected. Four-pixel side tabs compete with the ledger grid and make bronze a generic grouping device instead of a meaningful accent.

Mixed open icon libraries

Rejected. Mixing Lucide or other sets with Sharp Duo loses the deliberate geometry and makes licensing/provenance harder to audit. Lucide was used only as a documented transition state and was removed when the licensed Sharp Duo selection was committed.

Consequences

  • Shared components and tokens carry visual changes across all site surfaces.
  • New callouts use EditorialRail; the site build guard rejects a return of border-l-4 callouts under site/app.
  • Designers and implementers must preserve adjacent scope and provenance for public numbers rather than treating them as decorative statistics.
  • Streamline additions require a manifest entry, license verification, and the repository attribution described by the asset manifest.
  • Framework marks retain their own trademark constraints and are not evidence of customer adoption.

Validation And Review Triggers

The shared site UI tests distinguish structural and emphasis rails, and scripts/verify-site-editorial-rails.mjs enforces the one-pixel rail contract. The site benchmark guard verifies checked numeric presentation. Revisit this decision when the brand palette or display type changes, ARDO exposes a new theme contract, the icon license or selected family changes, or accessibility testing shows that a token or type treatment cannot meet the documented contrast and reflow requirements.