Potatuhs · The Fall Vertical · Brand Guidelines
POTATO
LITERATURE
The potato is the prism. Nothing is off-topic.
Section 01 · proposed
Brand Overview
The deepest-lore vertical. Odie O'Dool is the flagship the universe orbits — Brett's Mickey Mouse.
Potato Literature explores everything through the potato lens — history, finance, war, sports, myth. Two layers, never confused: Odie's Epic, the epic-poem spine and inner canon authority, and the three public books the world meets first. Beneath both sits a published floor: two real KDP books, in print since before the IP had a name.
- Mission [context: vertical spec]
- Dump the mountain — the lore dump IS the productive act. Count the worldbuilding Tolkien-grade, then shape flow into the three-book spine, then reach readers.
- Vision [proposed]
- A library people descend into: public book → wonder → follow → the epic underneath.
- Audiences [proposed → ICP run]
- Readers of earnest absurdism · lore divers (the wiki-binge temperament) · haiku-a-day casuals. PLACEHOLDER — no ICP run yet; derive at the ideal-customer-profile session.
Personality [proposed]
- Bottomless
- Every answer opens two doors. Tolkien-grade depth is the texture, not a bug.
- Earnest
- A potato epic written completely straight. The absurdity is never winked at.
- Mythic
- Floods, seraphs, obsidian planets, a rainbow that births snakes. Scripture-cadenced.
- Homespun
- It all comes back to a shack with a well in the floor. Cozy first, cosmic second.
Construction principles
- Two layers, never confused. Public/shareable routes through the three books; canon respects Odie's Epic as authority. [context: layer-clarity gate]
- The shack persists; everything else resets. Only what maps to the shack's contents carries across iterations. [context: canon rule]
- The potato is the prism. Nothing is off-topic; every subject routes through the lens. [context: vertical heuristic]
- Canon terms are load-bearing. "The void" is not "dreamscape." Yoomi/Oomi/Soomi are not moon/earth/sun. Substitutions fail review. [context: canon-term integrity gate]
- Scaffolding stays invisible. Sefirot order The Odie Tree internally and never reach the reader's eye. [context: sefirot-scope gate]
Section 02 · proposed
Logo System
One real mark exists: the PL monogram, extracted from the site's own favicon. Everything else is scaffolded, loudly.
Clear space & minimum size [proposed]
½T½T
Clear-space unit: ½T — half the monogram tile's width on all sides. Minimum sizes: 24px screen · 12mm print (the letterforms carry a 4-unit stroke; smaller and the ink border closes).
← 24px floor
- Use the monogram at tile ratio, ink border intact
- Sit it on paper, paper-warm, or the room dark
- Keep ½T clear space — verse never touches the mark
- Set the name in Bowlby One SC until a wordmark exists
- Recolor the gradient fill or the ink stroke
- Place it over illustration or busy verse pages
- Outline, extrude, glow, or drop-shadow the letterforms
- Rotate it, or crop the tile into a circle avatar without the border
Section 03 · proposed
Color
Ink on paper, inside a dark reading room — with one accent color per book. Every swatch below renders from its token.
Inherited — the Potatuhs tri-orange [context: umbrella]
- Fiery Orange
- --brand-start · #E16416
- Morning Sienna
- --brand-mid · #E19816
- Golden Shade
- --brand-end · #E1C916
Structural — the page [context: site tokens]
- Ink
- --ink · #1C1917
- Paper
- --paper · #FFFFFF
- Paper Warm
- --paper-warm · #FDF5EB
- Brand Gradient
- 180° vertical · start→mid→end
The Reading Room — brand-owned [context: site tokens]
- Room
- --room · #1A1612
- Room Foreground
- --room-fg · #F4EBDD
The room is the darkness the spread floats in — warmer and browner than the umbrella's ink. It frames the page; it never becomes a card surface or a button.
Library accents — one color per book [context: trilogy tokens]
- Down the Hole
- --book-hole · #E16416
- Into the Void
- --book-void · #6690A3
- Through the Aether
- --book-aether · #7272AB
- Lore (internal)
- --book-lore · #B08D3E
Accents mean books, not moods. Void blue and Aether violet are the umbrella's own secondary hues (Air Force Blue, Glaucous) — inherited pigment, brand-owned meaning. Parchment gold marks the writers'-room bible and never ships to production. [context]
Contrast — measured, recorded honestly
| Pair | Ratio | WCAG AA | Rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ink on Paper | 17.5 : 1 | PASS (AAA) | Default prose |
| Ink on Paper Warm | 16.2 : 1 | PASS (AAA) | Default prose |
| Room-fg on Room | 15.2 : 1 | PASS (AAA) | Reading-room text |
| Ink on Golden Shade | 10.5 : 1 | PASS | Text on gradient: always ink |
| Muted on Paper | 5.7 : 1 | PASS | Secondary text |
| Hole orange on Room | 5.2 : 1 | PASS | Accent text on dark |
| Void blue on Room | 5.2 : 1 | PASS | Accent text on dark |
| Lore gold on Room | 5.8 : 1 | PASS | Accent text on dark |
| Aether violet on Paper | 4.5 : 1 | BORDERLINE (4.46) | Large text / accents only |
| Brand orange on Paper | 3.5 : 1 | Large only | Eyebrows ≥ bold 14px, never body |
| Void blue on Paper | 3.4 : 1 | Large only | Accents, spines, chips |
| Subtle on Paper | 2.9 : 1 | FAIL | Decorative meta only, never information |
Ratios computed from token values at extraction (WCAG 2.1 relative luminance). Book accents on light paper are chrome, not prose — that is the rule, not a workaround.
Section 04 · proposed
Typography
Four faces, one hierarchy: shout the title, speak the interface, sing the verse, whisper the apparatus.
Display · Bowlby One SC · inherited
ODIE O'DOOL
Body · Outfit · inherited
Outfit carries the interface and documentary prose — tab bars, buttons, this sentence. Weights 300–800 licensed via Google Fonts.
Apparatus · JetBrains Mono · utility
Canto IV · The Middle Path · Page 12 of 40
Verse · EB Garamond · brand-owned
Odie O'Dool, both a potato and fool,
Soaked in drool, he dreamt of jewels.
Ohm the Boo, who had consumed the sky,
Whisked away into the potato's mind.
[context: The Odie Tree, Canto I — verbatim]
EB Garamond is the voice of the lore itself — all cantos, letters, prefaces, and epigraphs. It is the one face no sibling vertical carries: the serif is the brand.
Hierarchy
| Level | Face | Token | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hero / Title | Bowlby One SC | --text-hero…h2 | Book titles, section titles — fixed names only, never dynamic data |
| Verse & epigraph | EB Garamond | --text-body-lg, lh 1.65 | All canon text; italic for meanings and asides |
| Body / UI | Outfit 400–800 | --text-body | Documentation, navigation, buttons |
| Eyebrow | JetBrains Mono 700 | --text-label · trk 0.32em | Canto numbers, folios, running heads [context: magazine CSS] |
- Reserve Bowlby One SC for fixed titles — the umbrella's title-only ration applies
- Set all canon text in Garamond; let verse keep its own line breaks
- Track mono eyebrows 0.22–0.34em, uppercase
- Keep verse measure ≤ 60ch, line-height ≥ 1.6
- Set dynamic content (dates, counts, user text) in the display face
- Fake italics or bold the Garamond beyond 600
- Use the serif for buttons or navigation chrome
- Stretch, outline, or stroke any face, ever
Section 05 · proposed
Iconography
The ornament language leads — the apparatus of a printed book. For product surfaces, the Literature utility set now lives here.
The ornament kit [context: magazine CSS]
Canto seal — closes every chapter spread
Dashed hairline — footers, folios, apparatus rules
Solid divider bar — 72px, under cover eyebrows
book-open
pen-tool
bookmark
library
scroll-text
newspaper
quote
The Literature set — moved in from the Potatuhs umbrella guidelines. Lucide, 2px stroke, sized 16/20/24, ink only; for product surfaces (reader controls, fullscreen, page-nav). The apparatus itself stays ornament, not icon.
Color rule: ornaments are ink or brand-start, one per surface. Ornaments never take book accents — accents belong to bindings and chrome, not apparatus.
Section 06 · proposed
Photography & Illustration
No illustration exists yet — and the site says so honestly, with reserved art slots. This document inherits that discipline.
The site's own pattern, rebuilt from tokens: a dashed frame with a diagonal wash that reserves consistent space per canto. [context: _canto.module.css]
Art direction — proposed, unlocked [invented]
- Illuminated, not cartooned
- The lore reads like scripture; its art should read like plates in an old folio — composed, bordered, worth engraving.
- Gem-lit
- The cosmogony is made of sapphire floods, ruby magma, obsidian shells. Light sources are mineral, saturated, specific.
- Cozy-cosmic ratio
- Every cosmic image keeps one homespun anchor (the shack, the well, a mug); every cozy image keeps one wrong detail.
Section 07 · proposed
Mascots & Characters
Odie O'Dool and the dramatis personae of the Epic — a roster extracted verbatim from canon. No character art exists yet.
The flagship
Odie O'Dool — both a potato and fool. Brett's Mickey Mouse; the character the whole universe orbits. He dies nightly — that's the premise, not a bug — and the shack keeps what he leaves behind.
Dramatis personae [context: odie-tree.ts, verbatim roles where canon gives them]
- Ohm the Boo
- who had consumed the sky
- Sally the Bovine Queen
- the dairy heiress; empress in decline
- Pepe the Skipper
- of the S.S. Dream
- The Seraph C
- serenades the cinderous forest
- The Prophecy O
- the telling that tells itself
- Elumo of the Smoke
- departed from a Flame
- Eluma of the Mist
- the feminine mist
- Ida, Morning Glory
- beloved of Nightshade Orie
- Orie, Nightshade
- released Odie from purgatory
- Gale
- Deacon of the Wind
- 1000 Blue Morphos
- wings laced with signs
- The liana vines Divine
- Wrath in the left hand, Kindness in the right
- Characters appear wherever their book's layer allows — public cast in public surfaces
- Keep epithets intact: "Ohm the Boo," never just "Ohm" in display copy
- Bobo and Allison (the Elemental realm) may bridge into Hot Potato Games surfaces
- Inner-canon figures never front marketing before their book ships
- No character speaks in the umbrella's UI chrome
- Never expose sefirot names beside characters — scaffolding stays invisible
Section 08 · proposed
UI Components
The reader's chrome: umbrella buttons and cards, the tab bar, and the one component no sibling has — the page itself.
Buttons — inherited, live
Tab bar — the bookshelf [context: TabBar]
The page — brand-owned
8.5×11 hard ratio, soft --sh-page shadow — the only soft shadow in the system. The page floats; chrome sits.
In situ — the reader, composed from this section
CSS-only composite — same tokens, no images: the page in the dark room, shelf chips below, one primary action.
Section 09 · proposed
Shadows & Borders
Two elevation languages, strictly separated: hard ink offsets for everything you press — one soft shadow for the thing you read.
badges, chips
buttons at rest (hover 6px)
cards at rest (hover 12px)
THE exception: the page alone floats on a soft double shadow [context: site tokens]. Nothing else in the system may use blur.
Borders
Structural border: 3px solid ink — the site's own weight, matching the umbrella's pending 2px→3px update. Apparatus rules are 1px dashed ink-25 [context]. Shadowed elements never lose their border.
Radii
No --r-xl: the site's scale stops at 16 [context]. Pages themselves are square-cornered — paper doesn't round.
Section 10 · proposed
Motion
Quicker than the umbrella, quieter than a game: motion here is a librarian — it turns pages and gets out of the way.
The signature — the page turn
rotateY from the spine · --dur-turn 0.8s · --ease-out. Concept extracted from the MagazineViewer; spec values proposed.
Easing, live
Durations [context: site tokens — deliberately faster than umbrella]
| Token | Value | Umbrella | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
--dur-fast | 0.12s | 0.15s | hover, press |
--dur-normal | 0.22s | 0.3s | tabs, drawers |
--dur-slow | 0.4s | 0.5s | reveals |
--dur-turn | 0.8s | — | the page turn (proposed) |
Reduced motion: reveals render immediately, the page turn becomes a crossfade, ambient loops stop. Respected in this document — toggle your OS setting and re-scroll.
Section 11 · proposed
Layout
The atom of layout is a real sheet of paper: 8.5×11 inches at 96dpi, half-inch margins, no exceptions.
The page hard spec [context: verbatim site tokens]
--page-w | 8.5in × 96dpi = 816px |
--page-h | 11in × 96dpi = 1056px |
--page-margin | 0.5in = 48px |
| Spread | two pages, side by side, in the dark room |
Identical to the potatuhs-magazine renderer — the same sheet drives KDP print, the site's reader, and shareable exports. Web pages exist to hold this sheet, not the reverse.
Document containers — inherited
Spacing — site scale, 4px base [context]
4 · 8 · 12 · 16 · 24 · 32 · 48 · 64 — denser than the umbrella's ladder (which jumps 16→100). A recorded deviation, kept: books need finer rhythm than landing pages.
Section 12 · proposed
Voice & Tone
The lore-dump register is a feature, not a tic. Inside the books, scripture-cadenced verse; around them, Butter's one-line brevity.
"Odie O'Dool, both a potato and fool, soaked in drool, he dreamt of jewels."
The invocation — every telling opens on this line. [context: Canto I & the Golden Path letters, verbatim]
Tone by context
| Surface | Voice | Sample |
|---|---|---|
| Canon text | Epic, interior-rhymed, earnest — never ironic about itself | "The liana vines Divine, surfaced from the waters in the sky." |
| Book marketing | Butter: smooth, one line, no extra words | "Three books down the well. Start at the top." |
| UI chrome | Quiet apparatus — mono, uppercase, informational | Page 12 of 40 · The Odie Tree |
| Error states | Homespun, in-world but clear | "That page hasn't been written yet." |
the void— the place itself, whole, never softenedYoomi · Oomi · Soomi— their names, verbatimthe shack·the well— the anchorscanto·spine·telling
- "dreamscape," "limbo" — substitutions for the void
- "moon / earth / sun" — translations of Yoomi/Oomi/Soomi
- Explaining the joke, winking at the camera
- The retired always-been-here tagline, in any form
Section 13 · proposed
AI Policy
The writers' room already wrote the hard rule. This section elevates it to a stance.
AI-assisted, canon-guarded.
| Surface | AI's role |
|---|---|
| Intake (headcanon capture) | Transcribe verbatim. "No interpretation. No invention." [context: writers-room protocol] |
| Canon | Never authors. Promotion is explicit and human — "lock this" or it stays intake |
| Page composition & rendering | Welcome — Claude composes magazine pages on the canonical CSS [context] |
| Published verse | Brett's hand. AI may typeset, never write, a canto |
| Cover / plate art | PLACEHOLDER — generated-art stance undeclared; needs Brett's call before any book cover ships |
- Data boundary [context]
- The writers'-room bible is local-only — the Lore tab never ships to production, and canon markdown never enters the public bundle. Same rule for third-party AI tools: canon stays in the building.
- Disclosure [placeholder]
- PLACEHOLDER — no disclosure rule declared for AI-assisted composition in published artifacts. Propose: colophon credit per book. Unconfirmed.
- Contractors [placeholder]
- PLACEHOLDER — no vendor rule exists (no vendors exist). Declare before the first commissioned plate.
Section 14 · proposed
Sub-brands & Ecosystem
Potato Literature is the Fall vertical of Potatuhs. Inside it, the architecture is a bookshelf: one accent color per binding.
The library — assignment table [context: trilogy tokens + vertical spec]
| Work | Layer | Accent | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 101 Potato Haikus | Published floor (KDP, 2019) | umbrella tri-orange | In print |
| Scary Stories from the Potato Shack | Published floor (KDP) | umbrella tri-orange | In print · ISBN 9798853295230 |
| The Odie Tree | Book Six — 10 cantos + "The Rainbow" preface | umbrella tri-orange | Live on site |
| Down the Hole | Public trilogy · enter/wonder | --book-hole | Forthcoming (dev-only) |
| Into the Void | Public trilogy · soar/mania | --book-void | Forthcoming (dev-only) |
| Through the Aether | Public trilogy · the comedown | --book-aether | Forthcoming (dev-only) |
| Odie's Epic | Inner canon — authority over all threads | none — it has no public face | Writers' room |
| Lore bible | Internal apparatus | --book-lore | Never ships |
Hard shared core
Tri-orange palette · ink structural set · Bowlby One SC + Outfit · pill buttons with hard ink shadows · the umbrella's contrast rules and title-only display ration.
Recorded deviations — brand-owned
EB Garamond as the canon face · the dark Reading Room workspace · the soft page shadow · faster motion durations · the denser 4px spacing ladder · book-accent architecture · the 8.5×11 page atom.
Section 15 · proposed
Asset Naming & Governance
Three authorities, cleanly split: this spec for the brand, the writers' room for the canon, the umbrella where both are silent.
Naming
| Brand assets | {brand}-{category}-{label}-{season}.{type}potatoliterature-cover-odietree-1.png [context: umbrella] |
| Reader pages | page_NNNN_slug.tsx — sparse hundreds, so 0150 slides between 0100 and 0200 [context: repo] |
| Intake | YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md, tagged by series, append-only [context] |
Authorities & propagation
- Brand
- This DESIGN.md + tokens.css. The site's
src/styles/tokens.cssmirrors it after each lock — one direction, spec → site. - Canon
writers-room/canon/— locked rules, edited only on explicit promotion. Intake is verbatim and append-only. [context]- Where silent
potatuhs-design/DESIGN.mdgoverns. This spec records deviations; it never quietly forks.
Every section of this book is PROPOSED. Shred it in review; the shack will keep what survives.