Nine rules
before the tokens.
Tokens are the vocabulary, principles are the grammar. Designers reach for principles dozens of times a day; tokens get referenced as needed. If a design follows the principles but breaks a token, the design is right and the token is missing.
Hairline before shadow.
A shadow answers "is this floating?" A hairline answers "is this grouped?" The brand groups more often than it floats. If you reach for a shadow first, you are probably making the thing feel important when it should feel adjacent.
One Voice. Ten Percent.
Clay covers no more than ten percent of any single screen. The accent is the punctuation, not the prose. If you find yourself painting things clay because they "need to pop," paint them with hierarchy · type weight, scale, position · instead.
Two surfaces, two tempers.
Paper trends warm-earth (Cloud Dancer, slightly cream). Ink trends deep and very faintly cool (Midnight, near-black). Together they read as a single restrained system. Black is not #000. Paper is not #fff. The two named neutrals are the only neutrals; sampling anything else means you've picked from the wrong palette.
Stroke continuity.
Clay weighs less than ink. When type goes from ink to clay, compensate by weight: roman 500 → clay 700 on paper, roman 500 → clay-warm 600 on ink. Coloured text at light weights is invisible, and invisible is not the brand's voice.
Two voices, by ground.
Marketing has one accent voice (clay) used on content grounds. The cool voice (peacock) exists only as a full-bleed drenched band ground. Never a sprinkled label, never a chip, never a stroke on a paper section. If peacock is small, peacock is wrong.
One thing per section.
A section makes one argument. If you find yourself adding a second statement, split it into two sections. Editorial pace is built from sections that each commit to a single sentence · and then move on. Bento-grid feature maximalism is the failure mode this principle prevents.
Type before colour.
Hierarchy is built from type · size, weight, optical size, letterspacing · before it is built from colour. If two elements are the same size and weight but different colours, you have a colour problem masking a type problem. Solve it with type first; reach for colour second.
Slow. Exponential. Never bouncy.
The brand does not wink. Easing curves are slow exponentials (silk, velvet), durations are long for content and short for state, bounce and spring overshoot are banned. Motion communicates; it does not decorate.
If it could be a competitor's, cut it.
Apply to every screen, every sentence, every component. If a piece of work could appear unchanged on Yotpo, Trustpilot, or Stamped, it has failed the only test that matters. The brand earns its space by refusing to look like its category.
A token can be looked up. A principle has to be remembered.
Tokens describe what the brand is. Principles describe why it is. When you face a decision the design system has not anticipated · a new component, a new surface, a new partnership · you reach for principles. The principles are the brand's grammar; the tokens are its vocabulary.
In practice: principles get cited in design reviews ("this fails Principle IV"); tokens get looked up in code. If a design follows the principles but breaks an existing token, the design is right and the token is missing.