Length: 600–900 words, plus heavy visual content. Asset: this chapter is the visual centerpiece of the case study. Treat layout at Eye Magazine fidelity. White space is not empty.
Opening sentence
Lead with the central idea of the brand in a single declarative sentence.
Template: "MERIDIAN is [single conviction]."
Examples of the register:
- "MERIDIAN is calm civic infrastructure made visible."
- "MERIDIAN is the brand a city's transit system would build for itself if it had the budget."
- "MERIDIAN is the conviction that public hardware deserves the same design discipline as private software."
State the conviction cleanly. Do not qualify. Do not list. One sentence.
Section order (mandatory)
The chapter must move through these in this order. Reordering is a signal that the conviction is not yet held.
1. The Logomark and Wordmark
- Construction notes for the logomark — the geometric primitives, the proportional system, the optical alignment.
- At least one optical adjustment explained. (Real type design and real logo construction always involve at least one optical correction that the math does not give you. Show one. Annotate it.)
- Wordmark spacing and the relationship of wordmark to mark.
2. The Color System
- The signature color, defended in writing. Cultural reasoning + perceptual reasoning + accessibility reasoning. All three.
- The neutral palette and its temperature decision (warm or cool, and why).
- WCAG contrast ratios for every brand color against every brand surface, in a table.
- A note on how the color survives translation to HDR (Meridian Light) and to physical paint / vinyl for civic surfaces.
3. The Typography System
- The display face and its license. Defend the choice — what no major competitor uses, what the variable axes give you that a static face would not.
- The variable axes used expressively, with at least one example showing the axis interpolating in motion or scale.
- The UI face (separate from display) and the size scale.
- The case study itself must be set in this typography. If your tokens say -0.02em tracking on display sizes, the case study's display sizes use exactly that.
4. The Named Motion Springs
Show the four springs (Settle, Decisive, Glacial, Spatial) as a single hero motion clip — a panel arriving four times, once per spring, side-by-side at the same start and end positions. The viewer should perceive the difference without being told what to look for.
Annotate one frame from the Settle clip showing the 1.5% overshoot.
5. The PBR Material Library
A single hero render showing all four materials in one composition — Cobalt, Glass, Stone, Light — under the discipline lighting from 05_checklists/lighting_discipline.md. One render is enough; this is the still that proves the brand's 3D bench is real.
6. The Sonic Logo
Embedded as audio. Two takes: -28 LUFS spatial-anchored version, -16 LUFS video-deliverable version. One paragraph on the motif — what the interval is, why that interval, what a major-key resolved triad would have made it sound like instead.
Closing
Two to three sentences. Restate the central conviction in slightly different language than the opening. The chapter ends on the conviction, not on a deliverables list.
Production notes
- This chapter is where typography in the case study most matters. Set headers in the display face at the documented sizes. Set body at the relaxed leading from 01_tokens/typography.tokens.json.
- White space must be allowed to do work. Eye Magazine fidelity means the page can breathe; the temptation to fill every region with annotation must be resisted.
- One full-bleed image per section is enough. Resist galleries of variants.
Draft notes (delete before publishing)
- Central conviction sentence (final version):
- Optical adjustment annotated on logomark:
- Signature color defense — cultural / perceptual / accessibility paragraphs:
- Hero motion clip — recorded at what frame rate, exported how:
- PBR hero render — lighting setup, HDRI source, color management:
- Sonic logo motif — interval, instrument, length, LUFS at each variant: