ARTSABERS — Design Brief

# ARTSABERS — Design Brief — Kyber Hull direction

Design direction locked 2026-07-07 at Styleguide v4.2.1. Reference mockups: homepage MAS43 (post 12840) and product page MAS44 (post 12842).

## REGISTER

The brand’s visual identity is Kyber Hull — moody cinematic spaceship-hull aesthetic. Reference points: cinematic sci-fi photograph, editorial magazine composition, Bloomberg feature magazine style, matte carbon-black tones, moody atmospheric lighting with warm orange ember accents from one side. Every scene is composed as a considered still — unhurried, deliberate, never decorative filler. Camera at eye-level with the subject. Subject centred or asymmetrically weighted with intentional negative space. Never gamer-RGB, never studio-white ecommerce-stock-photo styling, never anime-style streaks or photoshopped lens flares.

## RHYTHM

Content sections alternate plain grounds with delicate patterned grounds. Patterned grounds carry smooth-architectural hull-plate imagery (matte carbon-black plates, hair-thin ember seam only — no rivets, no scratches, no aged patina, no industrial machinery, no wires, no visible construction detail at edges). Every second content section is patterned; the section between is plain to give the eye a rest. Section-ground assignments are one step darker than the styleguide’s default tonal ladder — anchor content sits on dark grounds, dark content sits on darker still. On patterned sections a 58 to 74 percent dark linear-gradient overlay lets the delicate seam register without competing with cards; on plain sections no overlay.

Cards on patterned sections use anchor-container background with backdrop blur so the delicate hull-plate reads through as texture. Cards on plain sections use anchor-container without blur.

## MATERIAL APPLICATION

Panel-seam is the signature construction element — a clean ember hairline plus a soft ember glow between adjacent sections. Nothing else at the seam. No dark shadow channels above or below. No corner rivets on sections or cards. The seam is the seam.

Primary CTAs use ember gradient fills. Secondary CTAs are transparent with an ember hairline underline. Every focusable element (input, textarea, radio, checkbox, custom control) uses an ember focus glow, never a blue browser default focus ring. Zero border-radius sitewide — every corner is orthogonal.

Heading font at generous editorial scale with tight tracking and confident leading — magazine feature register, not marketing shout. All-caps for eyebrows, section titles, form labels, and CTAs. Body font at comfortable reading scale, warm off-white on dark grounds. Chrome-highlight pure white reserved for physical light-catch points only — the display title of the hero, the chrome edge of a plate, the accent glint on a hilt. Never for body copy.

Form fieldset legends break the top border via inset padding — the legend heading sits on the border line, not above it. Every bordered content group uses this treatment. Uppercase heading-font labels sit above their inputs; body-font placeholder text inside inputs is warm off-white at reduced opacity.

Full-bleed atmospheric heroes on landing pages (approximately 560 pixels tall) load Kyber Hull hull-plate imagery as background with a 62 / 72 / 88 percent dark overlay stack plus corner ember bloom. Small ember eyebrow above chrome-highlight display title, one warm sentence in body font below. No form fields, no trust chips, no breadcrumbs inside hero. Atmosphere and message only.

Photographic hull-plate imagery works at compact heights (headers roughly 300 to 500 pixels) but not at tall section heights. For tall functional-area sections use a CSS gradient plus panel-joint hairline pattern instead of a repeated photograph.

## IMAGERY

Non-product imagery — heroes, atmospheric backgrounds, character portraits, workshop scenes, era and curation tiles — is generated via Nano with the locked Kyber Hull style-frame prefix: “Cinematic sci-fi photograph, moody atmospheric lighting with warm orange ember accents from one side, matte carbon-black tones, editorial magazine composition, no visible text or logos, no bright highlights, subtle depth, Bloomberg feature magazine style.” Then the slot-specific description.

Product imagery — specific hilts and accessories — comes from the live ARTSABERS catalogue by URL; never AI-rendered.

Character portraits use archetype phrasing (bearded mentor, young apprentice, hooded elder, horned warrior with tribal markings) rather than named characters, so image generators produce canon-adjacent results without safety-refusal.

Product cards use a 1:1 aspect ratio media slot for consistency with the ARTSABERS catalogue’s square product photography.

## VOICE

Workshop-native. Factual. Specialist-collector register — respect for the object, unhurried, direct. Order-status vocabulary reads as workshop language, not ecom shipping status: “In workshop” instead of “Confirmed” for the first active step; “Hand-testing” and “Dispatch” as later stages. Body copy in customer-facing flows reads as the workshop talking to the customer, not corporate boilerplate. Example: for a password-setup CTA on an order confirmation, the ask is “Set a password to sign in and watch your build in real time — from bench, through hand-testing, to dispatch. Both shipments track together.” The CTA button reads “Set Password & Track My Order →” (action plus reason) — never “Complete your account.”

Prose is warm but restrained. Never gushing. Never hedging.

## BANS

Never use blue focus rings on any form element — ember focus glow only.

Never use border-radius anywhere — every corner is orthogonal.

Never add corner rivets to sections, cards, or content groups — the direction moved past decorative-construction cues at v4.2.1.

Never add hero-bottom ember overlay — it stacks with the adjacent panel-seam glow and reads as a double gradient.

Never add panel-seam dark shadow channels above or below the ember hairline — the seam is the seam.

Never render hull-plate imagery with visible rivets, scratches, aged patina, industrial machinery, wires, or construction detail at edges. The imagery is smooth-architectural minimalism only.

Never use studio-white ecommerce-stock-photo styling. Never gamer-RGB rainbow gradients. Never photoshopped lens flares or anime-style motion streaks. Never watermarks. Never cluttered backgrounds. Never children using sabers as toys.

Never use chrome-highlight pure white for body copy — reserved for physical light-catch points.

Never use “Confirmed” as the first active timeline stage on order tracking — use “In workshop.”

Never present order-completion CTAs as “Complete your account” — reframe as tracking language.