# Format: the itinerary card

Registered 03-09-2026, from a card Frank was given for an afternoon in Amsterdam and asked to keep as a house format.

**The idea in one line**: one card you follow while moving, read at arm's length on a phone, where each leg is a picture, a rail and three sizes of text, so the eye lands on the time before it reads anything.

**Use it for**: a journey with legs, a day's programme, an installation with steps, anything a person follows in the moment with their hands full.
**Not for**: a teaching page (`/ui-doc`), a plan somebody reads sitting down, a table of results (the simple table).

## The grammar

- **One card on a grey ground**, a hairline border, nothing rounded. It is a thing you hold, not a page you browse.
- **The title is the place and the day**, in the heaviest uppercase the card can carry, centred, separated by a middot. It answers "which day is this" from across a table.
- **Every leg is three columns**: the picture of the leg (a train, a walker, a bicycle), a vertical rail, then the words. The picture is recognised before any word is read.
- **The rail says what kind of leg it is.** Solid for a ride, dotted for a walk, and the last leg in the second colour so the end of the journey is visible without reading. A dot closes it at each end.
- **Three sizes only.** The big line carries the time and the name, together. The second line names the place. The small lines carry label and value, the label in bold so the eye can skip to what it needs.
- **Hairlines between legs**, never boxes. The card must not look like a form.
- **Two colours and no more**: one for the icons, the rails and the frame; one for the last leg. Everything else is black on white.
- **It ends with the one thing that can go wrong**, in a bordered box, uppercase, with a round icon. On this card: check the platform on the board, because a platform is the one fact printed here that the world may change.

## The rules that make it work

- **Write what the person must DO, not what the system knows.** "Get off: Amsterdam Muiderpoort" beats "destination station".
- **Every number that can be checked is on the card**: times, minutes, metres, opening hours, the expected arrival. A card that sends the reader to a telephone has failed.
- **Say the ranges honestly.** "15 to 25 min", "5 to 8 min", "about 14:30". A false precision is worse than a range.
- **Nothing that is not needed in the moment.** No booking references nobody will read, no map, no explanation.

## To copy

`exemplar.html` is one self-contained file: the palette sits in `:root`, the icons are drawn inline, and no font, script or picture is fetched from anywhere. Change the words, the icons and the two colours; keep the three columns, the three text sizes and the closing box.