No. XXMisuses · the rejected gallery

Twenty-four things
the brand never does.

A consolidated reference of every misuse the system rejects. Cross-referenced to the relevant chapter. If you find one of these in the wild, it's a defect, not a stylistic choice.

24 Catalogued misuses Cross-ref to chapters 03–10 Last reviewed 14 MAY 2026
IWordmark

The lockup is not a flexible mark.

better reviews.
Don't place on a gradient.

Only legal grounds: paper, ink, peacock drenched band.

better reviews.
Don't italicise the wordmark.

The italic axis is intentionally not loaded. Banned.

better reviews.
Don't recolour bottom voice clay.

Only the i-tittle and trailing stop are clay. Never the word.

BETTER reviews.
Don't smallcap "better".

Top voice is lowercase, light, 34% cap-height. Period.

better reviews.
Don't drop the accent.

Without clay tittle and stop, it is not the wordmark.

better reviews.
— The Review Engine
Don't add a tagline lockup.

The wordmark stands alone. Always.

IIColour

Six combinations the system refuses.

#fff and #000.

Every neutral tints toward warm-earth. Cool greys read as a different brand.

Gradient grounds.

Solid surfaces only. No mesh. No 3D blobs.

Headline
Gradient-as-text.

Clay is the accent. Type renders in a single colour.

A whole paragraph in clay reads as shouting in a library.

Body copy in clay.

One Voice Rule: ≤10% of any screen.

Side-stripe card
Coloured left-borders > 1px.

One of the most-flagged AI-slop tells. Banned.

Peacock chip on paper
Peacock outside a drenched band.

Peacock exists only as a full-bleed ground.

IIITypography

Five things that ruin the typography immediately.

italic Fraunces
Italic Fraunces.

The axis is not loaded. Emphasis = colour + weight.

An — em-dash — sentence.
Em-dashes.

An AI-slop tell. Use comma, colon, semicolon, period, or parens.

Amazing! Just incredible!
Exclamation marks.

The brand is confident, not excited. Anywhere.

A line set in Inter.
Inter, Roboto, system-ui as primary.

Overused. The brand has two licensed faces, by design.

12.345 vs 67.89 · proportional
Proportional figures in product UI.

Tabular numerals always. Misalignment in tables fails inspection.

Light + clay
Light weights + clay = invisible.

Stroke-continuity rule: bump weight on coloured text.

IVLayout & motion

Patterns the brand outgrew.

Bento-grid maximalism.

Eighteen feature tiles. The brand says one thing per section.

$1.2M
REVENUE · LIFT 23%
Hero-metric template.

Big number / small label / supporting stats. Anywhere.

Glow + scale on hover
Scale + glow on hover.

Colour and border do the work. Never scale, never rotate.

3D app-icon tiles.

Wrong category. The brand is editorial-typographic.

BOUNCY CTA
Bouncy animations.

Slow, exponential, never bouncy. The brand does not wink.

Glassy card
Glassmorphism on regular cards.

Backdrop-filter only on the Floating CTA and TopMark chip.

VVoice & copy

Words that signal a different category.

Don't write

  • "Unlock the power of UGC."
  • "Harness the voice of your customers."
  • "Revolutionary AI-powered platform."
  • "Game-changing review automation."
  • "32 Best Strategies for Reviews in 2026."
  • "At the intersection of AI and commerce."

Write instead

  • "Reviews get quoted by ChatGPT."
  • "Your customers' words, indexed."
  • "Software that does loud work, quietly."
  • "Sixty seconds to switch over."
  • "Nine practices, none of them new."
  • "Between the buyer and the answer engine."
VIThe single test

One question, applied to every screen.

If a screen could appear unchanged on Yotpo, Trustpilot, or Stamped, it has failed.

The brand earns its space by refusing to look like its category. Editorial typography. Paper-on-ink restraint. A single accent used sparingly. Connective chrome set in tracked smallcaps. None of those are decorative; they are the brand's evidence that it is something different.