# Brand family depth (Persuade and Experience surfaces) When design IS the product: brand sites, landing pages, campaign pages, portfolios, long-form content, about pages. The essentials live in SKILL.md (modes, craft floor) and, for new identity work, in [new-work.md](new-work.md); this file is extended depth for substantial brand work. Rules stated in those files are not repeated here. The register spans every genre. A tech brand, a luxury hotel, a restaurant, a band's album page, an agency portfolio. They share a stance (*communicate, not transact*) and diverge wildly in aesthetic. Don't collapse them into one look. ## The aesthetic-lane test Before committing to moves, name the lane. A type-foundry specimen page is one lane; minimal-cool tech is another; acid-maximalism is another. Don't drift into editorial-magazine aesthetics on a brief that isn't editorial; a hiking brand with italic drop caps has the wrong register within the register. Then the inverse test: in one sentence, describe what you're about to build the way a competitor would describe theirs. If that sentence fits the modal landing page in the category, restart. ### Reflex-reject aesthetic lanes Currently saturated aesthetic families that have flooded brand surfaces. If a brief lands in one of these lanes without a register reason that *requires* it (a literal magazine, a literal terminal), it's the second-order training reflex: the trap one tier deeper than a reflex font pick. Look further. - **Editorial-typographic.** Display serif (often italic) + small mono labels + ruled separators + monochromatic restraint. The fingerprint: three rule-separated columns, an italic serif headline, lowercase track-spaced metadata, no imagery. (Entries land and leave this list as families saturate and fade.) The reflex-reject lists apply to **new design choices**. When the existing brand has already committed to a font or a lane as part of its identity, identity-preservation wins. ## Color - Name a real reference before picking a strategy; unnamed ambition becomes beige. - Palette IS voice. A calm brand and a restless brand should not share palette mechanics. - Don't converge across projects. Each brand surface differentiates from the last. - When a cultural-symbol palette is the obvious pull, reach past it. Let the cultural reading come from typography, imagery, and copy, not the palette. ## Layout - Asymmetric compositions are one option. Break the grid intentionally for emphasis. - Fluid spacing with `clamp()` that breathes on larger viewports. - For image-led briefs (hotels, restaurants, magazines, photography), full-bleed hero imagery with overlaid menu and centered headline is a canonical move; let the photograph be the design. ## Brand permissions Brand can afford things product can't. Take them. - Ambitious first-load motion. Reveals and typographic choreography that earn their place; one orchestrated page-load beats scattered micro-interactions, and some brands skip entrance motion entirely, which is also a voice. - Single-purpose viewports. One dominant idea per fold, long scroll, deliberate pacing. - Art direction per section. Different sections can have different visual worlds if the narrative demands it. Consistency of voice beats consistency of treatment.