System
Patterns
How the parts combine into whole surfaces. Most inconsistency does not come from the components. It comes from assembling them differently every time.
In active development
- What this section covers
- How components combine into whole surfaces: page templates, section rhythms, report layouts, proposal and presentation structures.
- Why it matters
- Most inconsistency does not come from the parts. It comes from assembling them differently every time.
- How it connects
- Patterns sit above the Components and below the finished work in Website Examples.
Where this stands
Five domains, each with its boundary already drawn
The hard part of a pattern library is not the patterns. It is deciding what belongs in it, because a pattern that duplicates a foundation is worse than no pattern at all.
-
Website
Component specifications, page templates and the token mappings a developer can implement directly. The handoff layer between this system and any website build.
-
Reports
The most mature of the five. Audit and diagnostic report structures, print geometry, and the evidence conventions that make a finding checkable.
-
Proposals
How a recommendation is laid out so the reasoning arrives before the price, and so the scope is legible to someone who was not in the conversation.
-
Presentations
Slide geometry, which is the hardest surface in the system: type on a projected canvas reaches a reader at a fraction of its nominal size.
-
Social
Fixed-canvas compositions, where the page edge and the reading measure both stop applying and something has to replace them.
The rule that keeps a pattern honest
A pattern may compose what the foundations decide. It may never restate it. If a pattern specifies a type size, there are now two sources for that size and one of them will be wrong within a year.
The same applies in the other direction. Website repositories consume these specifications; they do not redefine them. When an implementation constraint forces a change, the change is agreed here first and recorded, rather than patched downstream and quietly back-propagated.
What is blocking the rest
One open question, and it is a real one. Whether spacing and layout are absorbed into the grid chapter or specified separately has not been decided, and patterns sit directly on top of that answer. Writing page templates before it is settled would mean writing them twice.
The report patterns are the ones you can see
The illustrated chapters are built on the report pattern at full production density, including the print geometry. They are the closest thing this system has to a finished pattern.