| Design looks cluttered | Delete decoration first, then double the gap between groups; never add boxes to "organize" (→ critique.md) |
| "Looks off," cause unknown | Run gates in order: grayscale, squint, alignment count (→ Output Gates); full symptom chains in critique.md |
| Everything looks equally important | Rank all content 1-3; style only rank 1 as prominent, demote the rest to body style |
| Picking fonts | One family, weights 400/700; add a second family only to split display vs text roles (→ fonts.md) |
| Picking colors | 60-30-10 split; one accent hue; neutrals tinted with 2-5% of the accent's saturation (→ palettes.md) |
| Text hard to read | Check measure 45-75ch, line-height 1.5, contrast 4.5:1 before blaming the typeface |
| Mobile layout | 44pt/48dp touch targets, 16px minimum body (also prevents iOS input zoom), primary actions in bottom thumb zone |
| Slide deck | One idea per slide, 24pt text floor, max 6 lines of text per slide (→ slides.md) |
| Poster, thumbnail, social post | One-glance artifact: single message, readable at 10% zoom (→ graphics.md) |
| Form, table, or dashboard | Component-level rules in ui-screens.md |
| Chart or data display | Zero-baseline bars, direct labels, one hue for magnitude (→ data-viz.md) |
| HTML email | Tables and inline CSS, 600px body, Outlook renders with Word (→ email.md) |
| Dark mode requested | Not inversion: lighten surfaces to show elevation, desaturate accents 10-20%, white text at ~87% opacity (Material) (→ dark-mode.md) |
| Contrast, CVD, motion sensitivity | Floors and non-color encodings in accessibility.md |
| Print or PDF deliverable | 300 DPI, bleed, CMYK, margins (→ documents.md) |
| Any other visual task | Apply Core Rules in order 1-7: hierarchy, then spacing, then type, then color |
