Lacuna Labs · Pan-African economic platform

Baobab^™

Visual Canon · v1.0 · 2026-05-12

The wordmark

The B · standalone

The wordmark is the identity. The substrate is cream paper. The mark holds its terminals. The platform serves the operator's commercial agency, and beauty is part of the contract.

Status

Canon. Load-bearing. Walk-back-registered.

Supersedes

Pre-canon design memos at research/2026-05-12-redesign-*.md (now informational).

Successor of

None. Baobab v1.0 is the first canon.

Companion canon

lacuna-canon-v0.4.3 (LLM routing protocol); lacuna-positioning-principle (operator memory).

Merkle anchor

shasum -a 256 baobab-visual-canon-v1.0.pdf

Authored by

PM (Claude session) synthesizing four parallel section leads (typography, color, layout/motion, voice/icon) on 2026-05-12.

Canon · 01The B is the trademark

The B is the mark. An adinkra-style geometric crest in bark, derived from Canva design DAHJfCx22YE. It carries Baobab the way Sakura’s blossom carries Curator. “That B means Baobab.”

1.0 Trademark notice

Baobab and the adinkra B mark are trademarks of Lacuna Labs, pending USPTO registration. The mark, the wordmark, and the B+wordmark lockup are reserved use; their appearance outside Baobab’s own surfaces or operator-authorized contexts is not permitted. The favicon set ships as a transparent SVG (vector, infinite scale) plus PNG raster fallbacks (16, 32, 180, 192, 512). Co-marketing surfaces require explicit Lacuna Labs sign-off.

1.1 The wordmark, fully specified

Property	Value
Family	Fraunces (variable)
Style / weight	Italic 600
opsz axis	Bound to render size: 9 / 24 / 72 / 96 / 144 (see 1.3)
SOFT axis	0. Terminals stay firm. Never softened.
Tracking	-0.018em display, -0.01em masthead, 0 below 24px
Default color	--forest #2D5016 on cream
Identity-warm color	--bark #6B4423 on masthead and warm contexts
Photographic substrate	--ink #1A1A1A
Inverted (dark substrate)	--ink-on-dark #F1ECDE
Minimum width	88px
Clear space	Equal to the cap-height of the lowercase “b” on all four sides
Minimum contrast	4.5:1 against the mean luminance of any substrate
Baseline	Optical baseline of the italic “b”-stem foot — never bounding-box bottom

1.2 The B — where and how it lives

• Masthead lockup. Top of every operator-facing surface. B + wordmark together, B on the left, wordmark on the right, baselines aligned. B sized to match the cap-height of the wordmark. Gap between B and wordmark equals the width of the wordmark’s lowercase “a.”
• Favicons. B alone, bark on transparent. favicon-16.png, favicon-32.png, favicon.ico.
• App icons. B alone, cream on bark square. apple-touch-icon-180.png, icon-192.png, icon-512.png.
• Social avatars. B alone, cream on bark, square crop.
• Open Graph share image. B + wordmark lockup, centered on cream paper, 1200×630.
• Default color. --bark #6B4423 (B on cream) or --ink-on-dark (B on bark). Never both. Forest variant only on the wordmark, never on the B.

What the B never does

• Never with a tagline locked-up underneath it. Tagline lives below a hairline rule.
• Never on a photograph (loses contrast). On photo: cream B on a bark plate.
• Never with the wordmark stacked vertically. The lockup is horizontal, always.
• Never recolored beyond the bark / cream / forest set. No gold B, no terracotta B.
• Never altered — no underline, no period, no swash. Fraunces italic 600 capital B, full stop.

1.3 Optical-size response

Render size	opsz	Tracking
14–18px (inline)	9	0
19–28px (in-flow)	24	-0.005em
29–56px (masthead)	72	-0.01em
≥ 57px (hero / share)	96	-0.018em
≥ 96px (canvas / billboard)	144	-0.02em

1.4 What the wordmark never does

• Never outlined. Never “knockout” rendered.
• Never stretched, condensed, or skewed. The italic is the italic.
• Never paired with a glow, halo, drop shadow, or text-shadow.
• Never paired with a tagline locked-up immediately below it.
• Never altered: the string is exactly Baobab — never BAOBAB, baobab., or Baobab+.
• Never gradient-filled. Never animated on load. The mark is a mark, not a transition.
• Never rendered in roman (upright) Fraunces. Italic 600 is the lock.

Canon · 02Type system

Three families plus one transitional fallback. All OFL-licensed. Self-hostable. Loaded with the variable axes the canon uses, no more.

Family	Role	Axes
Fraunces	Display, headlines, wordmark, emphasis, drop caps.	opsz (9–144), wght (100–900), ital. SOFT always 0.
Crimson Pro	Long-form body, reading surfaces, captions, pull-quotes, LLM voice on dark substrate (see 2.5).	wght (200–900), ital.
JetBrains Mono	Data, ticker, code, metadata, attribution, eyebrows, operator-typed input.	wght (100–800). Italic loaded but never used in product.
Inter	UI-chrome fallback only where serif is too soft below 14px (compact form fields, lang-picker dropdown options). Transitional concession.	wght (100–900).

2.1 Hosting

• Phase 1 (current). Google Fonts CDN with display=swap + preconnect. Acceptable for v0.
• Phase 2 (before launch). Self-hosted versioned WOFF2 under /fonts/, Latin + Latin-Extended subsets, preload the Fraunces variable file (masthead is above-the-fold). CDN dependency removed.
• Self-hosted fonts versioned in the filename (fraunces-2026-05.woff2); served with Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable.
• No icon-font workarounds. Iconography is SVG. Fonts are for text.

2.2 Type scale

Mobile baseline (≤ 639px). Two breakpoint bumps. Body and metadata sizes do not grow on larger viewports — legibility doesn’t get bigger because the screen does.

Token	Family	Weight	Mobile	Tablet	Desktop	Italic
--type-masthead	Fraunces opsz 96	600 ital	30/32	40/42	56/56	locked
--type-display-xl	Fraunces opsz 72	600	34/38	48/52	64/64	lead story
--type-display	Fraunces opsz 48	600	26/30	36/40	44/46	roman default
--type-headline	Fraunces opsz 36	600	22/26	26/30	30/34	lead only
--type-subhead	Fraunces opsz 24	500	18/24	20/26	22/28	optional
--type-body	Crimson Pro	400	17/28	17/28	18/30	inline em
--type-body-emphasis	Crimson Pro	500	19/30	19/30	21/32	pull-quote
--type-metadata	JetBrains Mono	500	11/16	11/16	11/16	never
--type-caption	Crimson Pro	400	13/18	13/18	13/18	italic default
--type-code	JetBrains Mono	400	13/20	13/20	13.5/20	never
--type-data-tabular	JetBrains Mono	500	13/18	13/18	14/20	never
--type-ticker	JetBrains Mono	600	12/18	12/18	12/18	never
--type-attribution	JetBrains Mono	500	9.5/12 ALL-CAPS	9.5/12	9.5/12	never

2.3 Italic policy

Italic is allowed in five places only:

• The wordmark (Fraunces italic 600 — locked).
• The day’s lead-story headline (one per page, never more).
• Pull-quotes and lede grafs (Crimson Pro italic 500).
• Inline <em> emphasis inside body text (Crimson Pro italic).
• Captions (Crimson Pro italic 400 default).

Italic is forbidden in: UI chrome (buttons, tabs, nav, breadcrumbs, form labels, inputs, dropdowns, toasts, tooltips); metadata, byline, timestamp, attribution, eyebrow; all data surfaces (ticker, tables, prices, counters, wallet balances); code blocks; the mono family in any product context; all-caps anything.

2.4 Numerals — scope discipline

Tabular figures with slashed zero on data surfaces. Proportional figures everywhere else.

/* Data surfaces only */
.ticker, .market-tile, .wallet, .tabular, .data {
  font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums slashed-zero;
  font-feature-settings: "tnum" 1, "zero" 1;
}

/* Body, headlines, captions: proportional (default) */

Lining numerals in flowing prose break the reading rhythm. font-variant-numeric is set on the data token, not inherited globally.

2.5 The Baobab LLM speaks in serif — the LLM voice rule

When the Baobab LLM renders its own speech, the type is serif. Crimson Pro italic 400 on the dark --ink substrate, color --ink-on-dark #F1ECDE.

The conversational overlay is the one dark surface in the system. Inside it: the operator’s typed input renders in JetBrains Mono (operator voice = typing, characters in a fixed pitch); system metadata (timestamps, handles, tool calls) renders in JetBrains Mono uppercase letter-spaced; the LLM’s own utterances render in Crimson Pro italic — the literary register, the broker’s memo, the considered reply.

Element	Family	Style	Color
LLM utterance	Crimson Pro	italic 400, 16/24	--ink-on-dark
Operator input	JetBrains Mono	regular 400, 14/22	--ink-on-dark
System metadata	JetBrains Mono	500, 10/14 letter-spaced 0.08em ALL-CAPS	--ink-on-dark-mute
Tool call / inline citation	JetBrains Mono	500, 11/14	--ink-on-dark-mute

2.6 Type anti-patterns

• Forbidden: Inter for body in operator surfaces (Crimson Pro is the answer).
• Forbidden: Arial, Helvetica, Helvetica Neue anywhere.
• Forbidden: system-ui as the primary face in chrome.
• Forbidden: gradient fills on text (background-clip: text).
• Forbidden: drop shadows on type (text-shadow).
• Forbidden: all-caps tracking beyond 0.12em.
• Forbidden: weight pairings tighter than 100 weight-units in the same block.
• Forbidden: serif body × sans headline mixing.
• Forbidden: mono in flowing prose; serif in chrome.
• Forbidden: synthesized italics or boldface.
• Forbidden: Fraunces with SOFT > 0.

Canon · 03Color and surfaces

The substrate is warm cream paper. Six surfaces, seven inks, fifteen accents, eight state tokens, four rules. Each accent has one job; if you cannot decide between two accents, the job decides.

3.1 Surfaces

Token	Hex	Role
--surface-paper	#FDFCF7	Default page substrate. The cream. The brand.
--surface-soft	#FAF6EC	Card body, table-row hover, sidebar fill.
--surface-warm	#F6F1E6	Section bands. Eyebrow strips.
--surface-elevated	#FFFFFF	Reserved: modal interior, popover body, image-card mat. Never page background.
--surface-overlay	rgba(253,252,247,0.78)	Frost scrim. Translucent paper, never translucent ink.
--surface-ink	#1A1A1A	Dark inverted. LLM overlay only. One dark moment.

3.2 Inks

Token	Hex	Role
--ink	#1A1A1A	Headlines, body emphasis. Not #000.
--ink-soft	#3A3A3A	Body text default.
--ink-mute	#6E6A60	Metadata, byline, timestamp.
--ink-faint	#9A9588	Disabled state. Affordance for disabled only — fails AA on every surface.
--ink-on-dark	#F1ECDE	Body on the Baobab LLM overlay. Cream-tinted, not pure white.
--ink-on-dark-mute	#C9C2B0	Metadata on the Baobab LLM overlay.
--ink-inverse	#FDFCF7	Type on saturated accent fills.

3.3 Accents

Token	Hex	Job
--forest	#2D5016	Action. CTAs, links, active-tab, focus rings.
--forest-deep	#1F3A0F	Hover/pressed forest.
--bark	#6B4423	Identity. Wordmark, masthead, the color that says “this is Baobab.”
--bark-deep	#4A2E16	Deep bark headings; the hex behind every warm-tinted shadow alpha.
--bark-soft	#C9A87C	Adinkra glyph in empty states.
--terracotta	#B5503E	Down / alert. Deliberately not red. Red is alarm; terracotta is signal.
--gold	#C9A24F	Up / earned / winning. Price up, audit-tick, adinkra on dark.
--sage	#8FA68E	Ambient. Neutral metadata pills, peace-state indicators, selection background.

3.4 The cream substrate is the brand

• Drop shadows are warm-tinted, not black. All elevation values use rgba(74, 46, 22, α) — bark at low alpha. Pure-black shadows on cream produce muddy gray halos.
• Pure black text (#000) is forbidden on cream. Deepest ink is --ink #1A1A1A.
• Pure-white pages do not exist. --surface-elevated #FFFFFF is for modal interiors only.
• Dark mode is one surface only. The LLM conversational overlay. The rest of the system stays on cream because cream is the brand.

3.5 Accent application rules

• Forest = action. Decorative forest is theme-park.
• Bark = identity / signage. Bark never marks “click this.”
• Terracotta = down. Not red. Red is alarm; terracotta is signal. Red does not exist in the palette.
• Gold = up / earned / winning. Gold-as-decoration is theme-park.
• Sage = hush. If a UI element is neither action nor identity nor up/down, sage is the answer.
• Two-accent maximum per composition. At most two accents in any single visual unit (card, row, banner, modal), and one of them must be forest or bark.

3.6 Cleared contrast pairings (excerpt)

Foreground	Background	Ratio	Level
--ink	--surface-paper	~16.1	AAA
--ink-soft	--surface-paper	~11.3	AAA
--ink-mute	--surface-paper	~5.0	AA
--forest	--surface-paper	~9.0	AAA
--bark	--surface-paper	~6.4	AA
--terracotta	--surface-paper	~4.5	AA ≥14px
--ink-faint	--surface-paper	~2.6	Below AA — disabled affordance only
--gold	--surface-paper	~2.2	Below AA — never on type

3.7 Elevation

--shadow-1: 0 1px 2px rgba(74,46,22,.04), 0 2px 8px rgba(74,46,22,.04);
--shadow-2: 0 4px 14px rgba(74,46,22,.10), 0 2px 4px rgba(74,46,22,.05);
--shadow-3: 0 18px 48px rgba(74,46,22,.16), 0 6px 12px rgba(74,46,22,.08);
--shadow-3-dark: 0 18px 48px rgba(0,0,0,.55), 0 6px 12px rgba(0,0,0,.30);

The canon’s banking move: 1px --rule hairline preferred to shadow at rest in 80% of cases. Shadow wins only when an element is literally lifting off the page (hover, focus, drawer-in-transit), floating over cream (popovers), or seating itself on white (modal interiors).

Canon · 04Layout, spacing, and the grid

4.1 The grid

Breakpoint	Range	Columns	Gutter	Gap
mobile	≤639px	1	16px	--space-5 (20px)
tablet	640–1023px	2	24px	--space-7 (32px)
desktop	≥1024px	3	24px	--space-7 (32px)

Container max-width: 1080px. Centered. Three surfaces and three only break the container for full-bleed: the kente masthead, the hero block on landing, the ticker frame.

4.2 The 11-step spacing scale

Token	px	Canonical use
--space-0	0	reset
--space-1	4	tight inline; chip flex-gap
--space-2	8	pill internal padding
--space-3	12	button vertical; desktop tab padding
--space-4	16	card internal padding mobile; mobile gutter
--space-5	20	sibling stack default; mobile grid gap
--space-6	24	section internal padding; desktop gutter
--space-7	32	desktop grid gap; distinct content blocks
--space-8	40	section margin only. Never sibling stack.
--space-9	56	generous section break
--space-10	80	hero / page-top breathing

4.3 The four destinations

Read · Trade · Talk · Wallet. Locked. Atlas is a substrate, not a tab — appears inside Read (story-clusters), inside Trade (dealer-flow, corridors), inside Wallet (Sankey).

• Mobile bottom-nav, 56px tall, four equal cells. Label in --type-attribution.
• Desktop top-tabs, --space-3 vertical padding, --space-6 inter-tab gap, 2px --forest-deep bottom border on the active tab.

4.4 The masthead — stacking order locked

Row	Component	Desktop	Mobile
1	Kente hairline gradient (4–6px)	full-bleed	full-bleed
2	Wordmark left + meta + lang + sign-in + B monogram upper-right	56px	48px
3	Ticker frame	40px	36px
4	Tabs (Read · Trade · Talk · Wallet)	48px	hidden (bottom-nav serves)
5	Main content	—	—

4.5 Tap targets

Every actionable element has a minimum 44×44px tap target. Hard rule. touch-action: manipulation on every tap surface (cards, chips, tabs, pills, menu rows, buttons, links). This removes the 300ms tap delay and disables double-tap-to-zoom.

Canon · 05Motion and the seamless window pattern

5.1 The motion tokens

--ease-in:  cubic-bezier(0.32, 0.72, 0.2, 1);   /* every enter */
--ease-out: cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.6, 1);       /* every exit */
--dur-in:    240ms;   /* overlay enter, drawer enter */
--dur-out:   180ms;   /* overlay exit, drawer exit */
--dur-cross: 160ms;   /* content swap inside same surface */

Two easings, three durations. No custom cubic-beziers outside this pair. No ease-in-out. No springs, no bouncing, no overshoot. Baobab is paper, not gummy. Hover transitions are 120ms; press states are 60ms scale(0.97).

5.2 Windows — the seamless overlay pattern

Window	Direction	Desktop width	Mobile
Article reader	right	720px	bottom-sheet
Room overlay	bottom	720px	bottom-sheet
Account drawer	top-right	360px	bottom-sheet
Ask palette	center fade-up	640px	bottom-sheet
Atlas focus	right	1080px	full-screen
Audio mini-player	bottom-pinned, persistent	1080px	full-width 64px

Backdrop: cream-paper frost (rgba(253,252,247,0.78) + blur(8px) saturate(140%)). Never a black scrim. Mobile uses solid cream at 0.92 instead of blur.

Stacking rule: replace, not stack. Three-deep is rejected. The audio mini-player is the one exception — it survives navigation across destinations.

5.3 Reduced motion is canon

@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
  *, *::before, *::after {
    animation-duration: 0.01ms !important;
    transition-duration: 0.01ms !important;
    scroll-behavior: auto !important;
  }
}

Surfaces remain functional. The audio mini-player still pins; it just does not slide. Color flashes on price ticks remain (200ms is not motion in the sense reduced-motion targets — the operator still needs to see the price moved).

Canon · 06Iconography — two systems, two jobs

6.1 Phosphor Regular — chrome only

Single SVG sprite. 16px in compact rows; 20px in default chrome; 24px in section openers. Regular weight only — not Thin, not Bold, not Light. Single-color always: --ink-soft at rest, --forest on hover and active, --ink-on-dark on dark substrates, --ink-faint for disabled. Never multi-color. Never gradient.

Phosphor lives at: search, close, settings, menu, expand, collapse, chevrons, sort arrows, kebab, hamburger, share, bookmark, upload, download, eye, copy, edit, trash, plus, minus, check, x, alert-triangle, info-circle, calendar, clock, link, paperclip.

6.2 Adinkra — identity and structure

12px (ticker provenance), 14px (eyebrow co-marks), 24–32px (avatar discs, station glyphs in Tune, ticker tile marks), 64px (empty states). Single-color, 1px stroke on cream. Default --bark; --forest on nav active; --gold on dark substrates. Single SVG sprite, 25–30 glyphs maximum.

6.3 The adinkra stance — canon position

Adinkra are named, sourced, and used as identity-bearing marks — never as decorative African pattern.

Every adinkra used in the system appears in the canon appendix table with: Twi name, one-line meaning, source citation (museum / archive / scholarly), and the Baobab surface it lives on. No mock adinkra. No flattening to pattern. No religious / funerary glyphs in commercial-transaction surfaces. The kente hairline carries any decorative-band role; adinkra carry meaning roles.

6.4 Iconography anti-patterns

• Forbidden: emoji as iconography in chrome, tabs, eyebrows, empty states.
• Forbidden: illustrated avatars, Bitmoji, AI-generated portraits.
• Forbidden: Lucide, Material, Heroicons, Feather, Tabler, FontAwesome. Phosphor only.
• Forbidden: custom hand-drawn icons that drift from Phosphor’s geometry.
• Forbidden: multi-color icon SVGs. Single-color always.

Canon · 07Voice and copy

7.1 The register

• Sentence case. Title Case is reserved for proper names. There is no third case.
• No exclamation marks in operator copy. Zero. Including onboarding, success toasts, push notifications.
• No emoji in operator chrome. Operator-typed UGC can carry emoji; the platform’s own surfaces cannot.
• Operator-active verbs. read, trade, settle, talk, list, watch, follow, open, sign in, place order. Banned: discover, explore, browse, unlock, get started, join now, learn more, experience.
• First-person plural is rare. “We” lives only in the colophon, the about-page, and legal copy. Default voice is second-person or operator-named.
• Fragments are allowed when they read tighter. “Three weeks in.” Period, not ellipsis.
• Diasporic English is respected in quoted operator speech. “I de come” is not flattened. “She fit do am” is not regularized.
• Help-me-help-them tone. Every label answers what is the operator about to do, and what do they need to know to do it well?

7.2 Before / after — from real surfaces

Surface	Before (off-canon)	After (canon)
Splash CTA	Get Early Access!	Sign in
Empty wallet	No transactions yet 😢 Make your first move!	No transactions yet. Your first deposit lands here.
Markets provenance	Trusted Source ✓	Source: COCOBOD daily · attribution audit ok
News empty	Discover the latest from across Africa!	Pan-African channel. Today’s wires below.
Upload toast	Awesome! Your file is uploading!	Uploading. You can keep working.
Send confirm	You’re all set! Funds on their way!	Sent. Settling in two to three minutes.
Fill row	Congrats on your fill! 🎉	Filled. 0.5 MT sesame · Abuja · settled.

7.3 The scientific register

• Citation-grade attribution. Every claim in editorial is footnoted or in-line cited (Source · YYYY-MM-DD).
• Provenance on every commercial surface. Source: {named source} · {timestamp or audit state}. Self-reported and unverified states are flagged, not hidden.
• Hedging where hedging is honest. “I think”, “fairly confident”, “based on the AFEX bulletin”. Banned: “It is well known”, “Experts agree”, “Everyone says”.
• Anti-clickbait. No interrogative bait, no numbered listicles in editorial, no suspense withholding, no second-person command headlines.
• Sources are named. Every byline, every quote, every photo attribution names a person, an organization, or a publication. Anonymous sources require an editorial reason on the line.

Canon · 08Photography and texture

8.1 Photography — the locked treatment

Property	Value
Max widths	760px article reader; 380px grid cell; 220px compact row.
Aspect ratios	4:5 portrait; 16:9 landscape; 1:1 square in three-up grids only.
Border-radius	4px. Never circular.
Ground	1px --rule border on every photo. No drop shadow.
Color treatment	None. No filter, no vignette, no duotone, no preset.
Caption type	JetBrains Mono 12/16, --ink-mute, letter-spaced 0.04em.
Attribution	Required. PHOTO · {source} in mono ALL-CAPS 0.06em, --space-2 below image.

8.2 Texture — two atmospheric treatments, no more

Treatment 1 — warm-tinted paper grain at 3% opacity over --surface-paper. SVG noise, biased toward bark, fixed-attachment. Sensed-not-seen at all zoom levels. Disabled under prefers-contrast: more.

Treatment 2 — kente hairline at the masthead top. Exactly one 4–6px band, full-bleed, gradient gold→forest→gold→bark→gold. The only kente in the system. Never repeated. Never on cards. Never on borders elsewhere.

8.3 Texture anti-patterns

• Forbidden: wood-grain on bark-colored surfaces.
• Forbidden: mud-cloth patterns, “African” SVG fills, kente-cloth literal renders.
• Forbidden: paper-fold, torn-edge, tape-strip skeuomorphs.
• Forbidden: moving gradients, animated noise, parallax backgrounds.
• Forbidden: “savannah at sunset” hero photography, generic African landscape stock, baobab silhouettes outside the wordmark.

Canon · 09Consolidated anti-patterns

What marks a bad Baobab implementation. Each item is a canon decision, not a preference. Reviewers reject on hit.

1. Pure white as a page background.
2. Pure black drop shadows on cream.
3. Red for price-down or any down semantic.
4. Theme-park African color clichés (sunset-orange, mustard-yellow brick-red).
5. Purple gradients (the 2026 AI-design cliché).
6. Gradient meshes.
7. Three or more accent colors in a single composition.
8. box-shadow on a flat at-rest card with no hover state.
9. The system-blue focus ring.
10. Skeuomorphic paper textures beyond the 3% noise treatment.
11. Adinkra used as decoration (background pattern, repeating motif, watermark).
12. Title Case marketing headlines.
13. Drop shadows on text.
14. “Trust us we’re for you” first-person platform voice.
15. Loading spinners on every state change (use skeletons on --surface-soft).
16. Modal dialogs that thank the operator.
17. Identity-marker chiplets on every card (no “Black-Owned ✓” ribbons).
18. Decorative photos in empty states.
19. Persistent floating helper bubbles (the LLM helper, chat peek).
20. Page-level slide transitions between Read / Trade / Talk / Wallet.
21. Spring overshoot / bouncy easing.
22. Modal stacks deeper than two visible overlays.
23. Tap targets smaller than 44×44px.
24. Animations longer than 320ms for page transitions.
25. Raw pixel values in component CSS (except 1/2/4px hairlines).

Canon · 10Compliance — the grep-able checklist

The canon’s enforcement layer. Every item is mechanizable in CI.

10.1 Typography

1. No font-family with Inter as the primary face for body / article / reader surfaces.
2. No Arial, Helvetica, Helvetica Neue in any font stack.
3. The string “Baobab” is the only spelling of the wordmark in source.
4. The wordmark uses var(--font-head) + italic + 600.
5. Data surfaces set font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums slashed-zero.
6. Body / paragraph / heading selectors do not set tabular-nums.
7. No text-shadow declaration anywhere.
8. No background-clip: text.
9. No italic on UI chrome (.button, .tab, .nav, .label, .ticker, .data).
10. Favicon set ships both favicon-16.png (B alone) and favicon-32.png (full or B).

10.2 Color & surfaces

11. No background: #fff on body / html / page-section selectors.
12. No rgba(0, 0, 0, in box-shadow on cream substrates.
13. No color: red, #ff0000, crimson, firebrick anywhere.
14. No color: #000 or background: #000 on operator-facing surfaces.
15. No purple / violet / indigo / #6b46c1 / #8b5cf6 values.
16. No more than two accent tokens per component file.
17. outline: none always paired with a forest box-shadow focus ring.
18. No hex literal where a token name exists (e.g., #2D5016 → var(--forest)).
19. No linear-gradient outside three permitted sites (kente band, hero overlay, chart axis).
20. All text pairings pass WCAG AA at the rendered size.

10.3 Layout & motion

21. Zero hits for rgba(0, *0, *0 in overlay backdrop selectors.
22. Every cubic-bezier is (0.32, 0.72, 0.2, 1) or (0.4, 0, 0.6, 1).
23. No transition-duration or animation-duration > 320ms (annotated exceptions only).
24. Every motion-using file includes a prefers-reduced-motion block.
25. Every interactive class sets touch-action: manipulation.
26. Container max-width: 1080px appears in the page wrapper, not duplicated inside cards.
27. Every backdrop-filter uses blur(8px) saturate(140%) (or removes the filter inside a mobile media block).
28. No scale(1.x) hover on cards (only graph nodes 1.15; treemap uses inset border).
29. Breakpoints are exactly 640px and 1024px. No 768, 992, 1200.
30. No bounce, spring, or elastic in any transform or animation.

10.4 Voice & iconography

31. No ! in operator copy strings (outside legal, code, UGC).
32. No emoji codepoints (U+1F300–U+1FAFF) in operator chrome.
33. Every image has a paired [data-photo-source] attribute or .photo-attribution sibling.
34. No banned-CTA strings (regex: get started | explore | discover | unlock | join now | learn more | find out more | experience).
35. No Title Case headlines in h1–h3 (>50% words uppercase first letter and not all proper names).
36. No imports from lucide-react, @heroicons/*, @material-ui/icons, react-icons/*. Only Phosphor + local adinkra sprite.
37. No emoji in aria-label, alt, or button text.
38. No text-shadow in stylesheets (also in 10.1, mirrored here).
39. Toast text strings carry no !.
40. Marketing-pronoun we / our / us capped at 2 per page in marketing directories (colophon, legal, about exempt).
41. Every adinkra glyph used appears in research/canon-appendix-adinkra.json.
42. No multi-color icon SVGs in the sprite (single fill or stroke per symbol).

Canon · 11Walkback registry

This v1.0 entry does not supersede any prior Baobab canon (none existed). It supersedes the design memos at research/2026-05-12-redesign-*.md, which become informational. Future revisions register here.

Version	Date	Change	Authored by
v1.0	2026-05-12	Initial canon. Wordmark + B monogram, three font families, cream substrate, four destinations, motion + window pattern, voice register, photo + texture, anti-patterns, 42-point compliance checklist.	Claude session (PM) synthesizing four parallel section leads.