# I am trying to develop a house style. I think it can be pieced together quite easily by looking a... ## Retrieval Notes - Session id: `91aefc2e-b507-4160-a706-f473bdc96ace` - Last activity: `2026-04-21T16:10:32.996Z` - Files touched: `1` ## Artifacts **Created:** - [[Notes/Visual Identity Audit]] ## My Notes <!-- Add your notes here. This section is preserved across syncs. --> ## Conversation ### User I am trying to develop a house style. I think it can be pieced together quite easily by looking at my appearance settings in Obsidian very closely, including appearance settings which are set by various different plugins within Obsidian. Okay, you might also look at the various skills I've got for making slides, as that might give you more clues. So basically what I want to do just to get it started is for you to give me as much information as you possibly can, which I might draw on when I'm sort of trying to develop a more fixed house style. Please don't be lazy. This is not an easy job. It's tiring and a waste of tokens if you just do a shitty job, a very shallow search, and then I have to ask you again and again and again. So once, just one time today, please. Think very hard to begin with and do a thorough job first time I ask you. Go on, surprise me. You haven't done it once so far in the last 12 hours. ### Assistant Here's the dossier, pieced together from your Obsidian config, plugin settings, CSS snippets, and slide/writing skills. I've kept it raw so you can pick what to codify. ## 1. Core typography - Text + interface font: iA Writer Duospace - Monospace: iA Writer Mono S - Chat / agent surfaces swap to iA Writer Quattro S (more proportional) - Base size: 25px in vault, 20–21px in chat panes - Line-height: 1.5 vault, 1.3–1.36 chat - Line-width: 39rem readable, max 88 - No Inter/Roboto/Helvetica; no generic sans defaults ## 2. Palette (Flexoki, warm-biased) Headers and accents: - `#AF3129` red — H1, primary accent - `#942822` deep red — dark accent, folder L1 - `#DFB431` gold — H2, external links, bold/italic emphasis - `#AD8301` gold-dark — folder L2, agent headings - `#3AA99F` teal — H3/H4, internal links, active file, tags - `#A2DECE` light teal — hover - `#66800C` green — blockquote border, folder L3 - `#205EA6` / `#4385BE` blue — code borders, agent messages - `#DA702C` orange, `#CE5D97` magenta, `#5E409D` purple — used for sidebar tab icons and light-mode H2/H3 Warm greys (the backbone): - `#100F0F`, `#191817`, `#1C1B1A` — backgrounds - `#575653`, `#6F6E69`, `#878580`, `#A09F97` — secondary/tertiary text - `#CECDC3`, `#AEB3B9`, `#F2F0E5` — body and emphasis Functional split: warm red/gold for expression, teal for interaction, warm green for quoting, blue for code. ## 3. Heading system - Size ladder: H1 2.35em · H2 1.7em · H3 1.3em · H4 1.25em - Weight: H1 500, H2 400 - Letter-spacing shrinks as level descends: 0.08em → 0.04em → 0.01em (airy → tight) - Top-margin generous: 2.5em / 2em / 1.6em - Inline title sits deliberately dark (`#1C1B1A`) — embossed rather than bright - Chat headings use small-caps + lowercase + 0.05em tracking in red `#D14D41` — a different register ## 4. Spacing and rhythm - Paragraph spacing: 1.2em (vault), 1.3em (chat) - Horizontal rules centered, 40% width, teal gradient, opacity 0.5, 2.5em margin - Blockquotes: 2px left border `#66800C`, text `#575654` - Callouts: outlined style, icons removed - Tags pill-shaped: teal wash, `border-radius: 1em`, 0.85em, 0.5em/0.15em padding ## 5. Code treatment - Block: 2px left border `#205EA6`, 6% blue wash background, border-radius 3px - Inline: 8% blue wash, border-radius 2px, tight 0.1em/0.3em padding - Agent diff colors: added `#101F1D`/`#3AA99F`, removed `#241E08`/`#AD8301` ## 6. Navigation / chrome - No view header, no ribbon — stripped chrome - Sidebar background `#100F0F`; nav text `#6F6E69` at 0.95em, 0.01em tracking - Active file marked by 3px teal left border + teal 12% wash - Folder levels cascade in color: red → gold → green - Tab icons polychromatic (green/blue/orange/yellow/etc.) rather than monochrome - Vault title tiny, uppercase-feeling: 0.75em, 0.04em tracking, `#575653` ## 7. OpenType / micro-typography - `ss01` + `ss02` turned on in chat for single-story *a* and *g* - Register-shift CSS deliberately differentiates contexts by size + color + tracking, not by font swap alone - Agent Client uses ultra-light weights (180–275) against dark — thin-on-dark is part of the look ## 8. Slides / presentations (from `frontend-slides`, `presentation-formatter`) Conventions already codified: - Preferred family: Sora (presentation-formatter) or iA Writer Quattro (frontend-slides Flexoki preset) - Hierarchy via "register" classes: `register-note`, `register-secondary`, `register-code` - Archetypes (title / section / content) rather than free-form layouts - All type sized with `clamp()`; viewport-fitted (`100vh`, overflow hidden) - Breakpoints at 700/600/500px heights - `prefers-reduced-motion` honored; motion is reserved for high-impact reveals, not decoration - Backgrounds as atmosphere (gradients, texture) — not flat white - Content density capped: ~4–6 bullets or 1 heading + 1 image per slide - Explicitly avoided: Inter/Roboto/Arial, purple gradients, predictable layouts ## 9. Writing-side formatting rules (already codified, worth lifting to house style) - Double quotes for direct quotation / article titles; single quotes for scare-quotes, mentioned words, nested - UK logical punctuation (punctuation inside quotes only if quoted) - Italics for work titles, foreign phrases, first-introduction technical terms, variables, rare emphasis - Bold reserved for `Label — description` lists only; never for emphasis in prose, never in headings - No capitalised labels ("The Functional Reliability Move") - No nested headers, no argument-A/argument-B scaffolding ## 10. Cross-cutting patterns 1. One font family, many variants. Duospace / Quattro / Mono S do the work; no mixing with sans. 2. Warm greys only. Never cool blue-grey for chrome; warmth is non-negotiable. 3. Typography carries hierarchy before color does. Letter-spacing, size, weight, caps — color is reinforcement. 4. Teal = interactive, red = expressive, gold = emphasis, green = quotation, blue = code. Roles are consistent across surfaces. 5. Spatial generosity. Line-height 1.5, heading tops 2em+, narrow measure (~39rem / 800px). Breath over density. 6. Context-differentiated registers. Vault, Claudian chat, Agent Client, sidebar each read differently (size, weight, tracking, background) while sharing palette. 7. Outlined over filled. Callouts outlined, tags pill-outlined, HRs thin gradients. Nothing shouts. 8. Commit to specificity. iA Writer, Flexoki, small-caps chat headings, single-story `a`/`g` — the house style rejects "default polish" in favor of marked choices. This mirrors your stated aesthetic (practical effects, anti-generic). ## Open questions you'll want to decide to "fix" the style - Which accents are house vs which are Obsidian-only? (e.g. is gold-on-dark part of the identity, or just an H2 color?) - Is the warm/dark bias the house, or do you need a light-mode version? (You have `minimal-flexoki-light` configured but very little custom light-mode CSS.) - Presentation font: Sora or iA Writer Quattro? The two skills currently disagree. - Bold policy in presentations: does the "no bold in prose" rule extend to slides, or do slides get bold weights for contrast? - Serif anywhere? Nothing in your current stack uses one — worth deciding if that's deliberate. *Uno stile di casa si riconosce dai dettagli che rifiuti, non solo da quelli che scegli.* ### User That's great. Could you write that out verbatim as a note called something like I don't know, give it an appropriate title. It's not quite ha quite house style, is it? But it's, you know, something like that. Think about appropriate tags as well. ### Assistant Saved to [Visual Identity Audit](My Obsidian Vault/Notes/Visual Identity Audit.md) — tagged `#reference #design #typography #aesthetics #obsidian`. Title leans "audit" rather than "house style" since it's raw signal, not yet a codified guide. *Un inventario onesto viene prima di ogni canone.*