# Taste — Frank's verdicts on how things should look _The criteria file for the `art-director` agent, and for any session making a page meant to be good rather than merely correct. **Read before producing. Append the moment Frank gives a verdict, in his own words, with the date.** Opened 12-08-2026, the day he said: "we need an agent with taste, able to pick good models in the many good UI models mentioned in inspiration and apply them. We don't have this agent so far, obviously."_ **How to use this file.** These are not rules to satisfy; they are judgements already made, so nobody spends his time making them twice. A new criterion is added only when he reacts to something real he can see. Nothing goes in here from a discussion. --- ## 1. Three options means three different ideas (12-08-2026) He asked for three modern options for the Simón page and received three pages that were the same as each other and the same as everything else we make. His words: *"i have 3 times the same UI, it is clear that no inspiration was looked at in the studio."* **Apply it as:** if the three candidates share a skeleton, a type scale or a colour behaviour, they are one option. Hunt further before showing anything. ## 2. Taste is not produced by specifications (12-08-2026) The second attempt gave the agents measurable targets — largest type at least five times body size, colour over a third of the first screen, no more than twenty-five words on the first screen. His verdict on the result: *"stop, it is very ugly."* **Apply it as:** numbers may check a design after the eye has approved it. They can never generate one. Choose a real model and copy it faithfully instead. ## 3. The house rules were making everything identical (12-08-2026) Identified with him: grayscale-first, colour-as-scarce-accent, the 66–72 character reading measure, the token ladder's "snap never invent", the shared block vocabulary, and the two audits run as a delivery gate. Six rules, all correct for a document read calmly, all fatal to a page meant to impress. **Apply it as:** a showpiece is freed from all six (the one list of showpieces is in `README.md` §Two modes). Do not run `token-audit.py` or `composition-audit.js` on a showpiece. ## 4. The skeleton he recognises instantly (12-08-2026) Sticky top nav with breadcrumbs · a meta line of date and links above the title · one centred container of 1100–1300px holding the page · h1 then grey dek then h2 prose sections · near-white background with hairline borders and 10px rounded cards. Measured across three "different" options: 1280px, 1280px, 1180px. **Apply it as:** on a showpiece, none of these may appear. Structure comes from the reference, never from our last page. ## 5. Dark is allowed, with a light mode (12-08-2026, changed 14-09-2026) On 12-08, when the galleries turned out to be almost entirely dark: *"no dark themes."* On 14-09 Frank changed it: *"never dark is no longer a rule, the rule is to also have a light mode if the proposal is dark."* **Apply it as:** a dark reference may be followed into its darkness when the proposal calls for it. The page then also offers a light mode, by a switch or the reader's system setting. ## 6. What he finds incredible: pictures moving in space (18-08-2026) On the animos.app showcase patterns, unprompted: *"it is very good. This card to tunnel for example is incredible, this spiral also, all are very good, the globe also."* The first positive verdict in this file: a set of images presented as a 3D object — a tunnel flown through, a spiral, a globe of cards — with real photographs as the material. **Apply it as:** when a presentation must impress, reach for the [ways of presenting images](inspiration/presenting-images.html) shelf before inventing a layout. His named picks: card tunnel first, then spiral, then globe. --- ## Waiting to be filled The most useful entry this file can get is **a page Frank finds beautiful**. Ask him for one, capture it, and write down what specifically he liked. Until that exists, every judgement here is a negative one — what he does not want — and taste built only from refusals stays timid. ## 8. Celia's registry over mine (02-09-2026) Shown Celia's version of the space registry site (smartrules.ai/spaceregistry: a dark ground, a dotted globe as the signature in orange or purple, one white headline, the types band with icons, a search pill), Frank set aside the moodboard and the layout proposals: *"this is Celia's proposed UI, much better than my version, make a template/skill out of it."* **Apply it as:** for the space registry family, Celia's design language is the adopted look; the skill `space-registry-ui` and `tokens-celia.css` carry it, and the studio's liked bank holds the captures. More generally: when a designer's version exists, put it on the board first; the house pages are the fallback, not the standard. Her dark ground with its light switch meets rule 5 as changed on 14-09-2026. ## 7. Day pictures, for life (26-08-2026) Choosing the look for the free zones offer mockup, he kept the usual gold photographic look but corrected the hero: *"we will change the picture to have a day picture, not a night picture, to give an impression of more life."* **Apply it as:** on offer and proposition pages, the hero photograph is daylight with visible activity (people, movement, work), never a night skyline, however beautiful. Night reads as postcard; day reads as life. Choosing the layout of a long concept note in Celia's UI (the note to UNOOSA, 03-09-2026), shown three real pages, he took the rail over the bare column: *"B"*, against the recommendation of one reading column. **Apply it as:** a long note or document page gets a quiet sticky rail of its sections beside a reading column of about 42em, hero and body on the same left edge; the bare column is for short pages. Offer the rail first on anything longer than a screen or two. ## 9. Fonts can vary (14-09-2026) Asked which body font the document kit should keep: *"we should be flexible on what the fonts should be, they can vary, not only one."* **Apply it as:** no house font is required. Fonts come from the page and its model and can change from page to page; body text stays easy to read. The one owner of the rule is the studio README §Two modes.