# Pin & Bloom — Visual Brief v0.1

**Status:** locked for provisional GPT Image 2 generation  
**Model:** gpt-image-2

## Visual thesis

A sunlit pocket conservatory built from cut paper, matte enamel, and restrained brass. The board
reads like a beautifully printed mechanical diagram that becomes alive when solved.

## Pillars

1. **Light, not dark:** warm ivory canvas, daylight, generous breathing room.
2. **Mechanical clarity:** every overlap, pin, socket, and destination is readable at phone size.
3. **Botanical reward:** leaf, petal, moth, seed, and vine forms make restoration emotionally legible.
4. **Premium restraint:** no toy-plastic gloss, casino sparkle, neon bloom, or generic wood planks.

## Locked invariants

- Flat 2D orthographic front view
- Portrait gameplay topology even when a reference board is landscape
- One central layered automaton; three fixed trays below; minimal HUD above
- No perspective depth, isometric angle, 3D render, camera rotation, or hidden back faces
- Braces use visible cut-paper layering; pins are circular with engraved symbols
- UI remains outside the playable object and never covers a legal pin
- Images contain no production text; labels live in Markdown and editable UI

## Palette roles

| Role | Color |
|---|---|
| canvas | warm ivory #F7F0E3 |
| primary ink | slate #253342 |
| mechanism accent | restrained brass #C88A3D |
| success/leaf | green #5FA47A |
| active/coral pin | coral #E87567 |
| information/sky pin | sky #7FB7D8 |
| alternate/lilac pin | lilac #9B8BC4 |
| error/jam | brick #B94E48 |

Color is never the only encoding. Pin families pair circle/triangle/leaf/star engravings with color.

## Shape and material language

- Large rounded botanical silhouettes
- Thin slate outlines with consistent weight
- Shallow printed-paper occlusion shadows only
- Matte enamel pin heads; small restrained brass centers
- Braces look cut and printed, not photorealistic wood or metal
- Trays resemble low ceramic seed dishes with symbol embossing

## Typography and icons

Use a friendly humanist rounded sans direction with open counters and clear numerals. Production
font must be licensed and selected later. Icons use two-pixel-equivalent slate strokes, rounded
caps, and one idea per glyph. No generated text is accepted as final typography.

## Motion and VFX

- Inspect: 120 ms outline breathe, no scale bounce
- Release: quarter-turn pin, vertical lift, curved tray path, 300–450 ms
- Brace clear: authored slide vector with paper shadow collapse
- Match: three quiet ceramic notes and a small seed-ring ripple
- Bloom: 1.2–2.0 s unfolding with two restrained pollen arcs
- Reduced motion: instant state changes plus 150 ms fades

## Anti-references

Avoid dark sci-fi panels, steampunk grime, glossy 3D toy renders, isometric boards, realistic
workbenches, generic wooden screw boards, candy-match UI, casino particles, excessive bevels,
oversaturated neon, dense presentation sheets, fake device frames, watermarks, and added text.

## Master-board strategy

1. Generate gameplay-master.png from the locked invariants.
2. Visually verify topology, dimension, palette, and readability.
3. Generate world-language.png using gameplay-master.png as the style reference.
4. Generate ui-language.png using gameplay-master.png as the style reference.
5. Record every prompt, output, and QA decision in asset-manifest.json.