The rulings
2026-08-28, ruled 2026-08-23
The icon is the wordmark's own first letter
Reviewing the favicon set, Andreas caught that the U shown everywhere was a separately generated serif letter, a different drawing from the logo's own. It is now cropped straight out of the wordmark, and every derivative is rebuilt from that crop, each one in both versions.
What it beat: keeping the drawn U and re-tracing it. Why: the icon and the wordmark can no longer drift apart, because the icon is part of the wordmark. The letter is also sturdier: its thinnest feature is 21.2 percent of its width against the old drawing's 9.8, which at a 16 pixel tab is five pixel stems instead of two.
Record: logo-usage.md v4.2. The five icon path files traced from the retired drawing are retired outright.
2026-08-25
The test for a new chrome object is rewritten
The old rule asked whether a new object carries a fourth meaning or is just a second gear, and that question was being answered in the workshop. A ratchet wheel passed it on a technicality and still read as a gear. The rule now: before generating anything, write the one sentence the reader should think when they see the object. If that sentence needs a caption to arrive, the object is wrong, whatever it measures.
What it beat: the earlier fourth meaning test. Why: a reader sees a toothed wheel and thinks what they thought about the gear. Objects whose meaning takes three inferences do not arrive at all.
Record: imagery-and-motion.md section 3.1b. The ratchet wheel is kept as an object and is not an explainer, because it has no sentence.
2026-08-23
Imagery gets its own document, and motion keeps one exception
The old motion first document became an imagery first one. It closed the open question on how a colour photograph becomes a house image, added the founder portrait as a set of numbers a photographer can be briefed from, gave the generator its own section with a prompt guard and a label rule, and rendered the one motion exception as frames.
What it beat: leaving photography as a rule with no method. Why: a jury condition on the direction is that real photography replaces the AI moods before anything ships externally, and a photographer cannot be briefed from a ban list.
Record: imagery-and-motion.md v1. Both briefs are rendered as A4 templates under 04_TEMPLATES/03_BRIEFS/.
2026-08-22, evening
Six open calls closed on one rendered surface
The audit band's viewport cap is measured at two named viewports, with the smallest phone exempt by design because the module is meant to scroll there. Barlow 600 is retired, because no step set it after the label moved to the second display voice. The warm secondary ink is re-solved by one hex step so every secondary holds seven to one on paper. The chrome frame carries the not audit key, so the audit build stops emitting a material it never paints.
What it beat: in each case, the option that left a rule sitting in a README instead of on a token. Why: a rule encoded on the token cannot be missed by a builder who never reads the README.
Record: 260822_UNF_phase4-rulings_v1.md. Applied as tokens 3.1.1 the same day.
2026-08-22
The raster stays the source of the mark
A full vector set was built and matched to the raster cutout at 98 percent silhouette agreement. Andreas looked at the two side by side and said no. The raster cutout stays the source of every derivative that shows the chrome. The vector set is kept as auxiliary path files for a cutter, an embroidery or engraving path, or a print job that needs a path.
What it beat: promoting the vector, which would have removed the size ceiling. Why: the vector's chrome is a constructed gradient and reads flatter than the photographic reflections in the original. Ninety eight percent silhouette agreement does not buy the material. He chose the material.
Record: 260822_UNF_marks-vector-ruling_v1.md. The consequence is a 1600 pixel ceiling on the sized cuts, above which a mark is re-rendered from the source cutout rather than upscaled.
2026-08-22, afternoon
Three elements of the losing candidate are taken into the winner
The scale gains a second display voice at the steps between the label and the title, so a page can speak at head size without shouting in the condensed face. The palette gains one orange with exactly one job, the audit band, and a warm secondary ink for documents where the cool one reads clinical against the warm paper.
What it beat: heat as a fourth signal, and heat replacing vermilion as the primary. Why: recognition stays on vermilion. Heat and vermilion sit ten degrees apart in hue, so the two are kept apart by a layout rule rather than by a hue gate, and that reasoning is written down so nobody adds the gate by reflex.
Record: 260822_UNF_struck-into-broadside-ruling_v1.md, decided on a rendered comparison page. Applied as tokens 3.1.0. Two families, so the at most two families criterion still holds.
2026-08-22
Chrome is an ingredient, in exactly three places
A chrome fill with ink text on it was ruled a catastrophe, and the two tokens that made it possible were deleted. Chrome survives as the mark, as three cutout explainer objects on paper, and as a one pixel hairline frame. The single colour ink derivative of the wordmark is out everywhere. The chrome wordmark is locked: the original cutout is the light version, the black chrome remap is the dark version, and a lighter remap is the reserve. Vermilion is the primary signal, blue the secondary, acid the tertiary.
What it beat: chrome as a surface, meaning bands, slabs, buttons and chrome type. Why: it was rendered and it did not work. The escalation was tried at three levels on one page and the answer came off that page, not off an argument.
Record: 260822_UNF_fusion-rulings_v1.md.
2026-08-22
Broadside is the base
Three directions were built as whole rendered pages and judged by five lenses against twenty criteria. Broadside won three of the five and was picked by Andreas on the rendered comparison. In his words, it reads as very high value, and the paper look gives the page a tactile quality: not only clean and light, but touchable and very modern at the same time.
What it beat: the incumbent chrome direction, which won two lenses, and a third candidate which won none. Why: it was the only direction whose loudness survives print, social and merch with zero substitution rules, which answered an open question in the brief by construction rather than by promise.
Record: 260822_UNF_direction-decision-broadside_v1.md, binding. Promoted to tokens 3.0.0 the same day.
2026-08-15, superseded
The quiet first pass is reversed
The first identity was judged too old, too classical, too quiet and too monotone. All four words pointed at the same four things, and all four were reversed: the serif, the warm cream ground, the single word accent, and the polite type scale. The instruction that followed was to start two to three times louder and let headlines run to the edge.
What it beat: the calm heritage register, and a second louder route that was rejected as too colourful and too noisy. Why it is here even though it is superseded: it is the reason the current identity is loud, and the taste instruction it carries has never been withdrawn. What survived untouched: the two grounds as a concept, the ramp measured off the mark, the layer model, the palette measurement tooling, and the rule that colour never grades a person.
Record: 260815_UNF_direction-decision_v1.md. The direction it named was itself superseded on 2026-08-22.
2026-08-11
Which name goes on a document
Official and legal documents carry the entity, Voyage Digital Ltd. Everything else a client sees carries the brand, Unforged. The two marks never share a document.
What it beat: putting both on everything. Why: Unforged has no legal entity, so it can never be a party to an agreement. The client sees Unforged deliver and Voyage Digital contract.
Recorded as a hard rule in the workspace instructions. The invoice template renders both settings so the difference is visible rather than remembered.
2026-05-04
The slogan
Stop being the best-kept secret. Hyphenated, always. Locked in substance, twice re-confirmed, with the second founder's agreement on record since April 2026. The formal founder vote is a formality, not a blocker.
Why it holds: it names the client's exact problem in six words without insulting them. The companion line under it says the same thing warmly.
Recorded in brand-core.md section 4 and in the contradiction log at its section 12, item 7.