DESIGN.md — Taiho Ventures (`poster-modern-cvc`)

Per-style brand authority for src/styles/poster-modern-cvc/. Produced and maintained by columbus-design-md-builder. Read by columbus-design-author at scaffold time and by columbus-design-iterator on every refinement. Treat sections 1–7 as canonical truth.

1. Aesthetic Anchor

Primary family: Playful Color (Mailchimp / Cal.com lineage — saturated flat blocks, confident energy, color used as primary content rather than decoration) Secondary remix: Editorial Minimalism (Linear / Stripe lineage — typography discipline and grid rigor, so the playfulness reads as institutional confidence rather than consumer toy) Reference brands: Mailchimp-early (saturated color blocks, the brand-as-poster) × Pentagram-for-The-Met (institutional-grade made playful via type and color) × mid-century Penguin Books (geometric covers, confident composition, color as graphic content) Visual atmosphere: Saturated, flat, confident. The page reads like a Pentagram-designed institutional brochure that decided to have fun with its own brand colors. Color is set in flat ink-like blocks. Numerals are set huge and unsentimental. The 千 character (from the Taiho corporate mark) recurs as a graphic motif rather than a logo lockup. No gradients, no shadows, no biotech stock imagery — the brand's existing palette and mark do all the visual work.

2. Brand Voice

Adjectives: plainspoken, declarative, dry, unsentimental, peer-to-peer Says:

"Taiho Pharmaceutical is a Japanese specialty pharma company focused on oncology, allergy and immunology, and urology."
"We invest in early-stage therapeutics — preclinical through proof of concept."
"We usually show up on the cap table next to the institutional firm leading the round."

Avoids:

"We believe…", "We partner with…", "We empower…", "We bridge…"
"Pioneering", "cutting-edge", "best-in-class", "transformative", "next-generation", "world-class"
"Get started", "Learn more", "Explore our portfolio", "Discover how"
Any sentence whose primary job is rhetorical lifting rather than telling the reader something true

Sample sentences:

Taiho Pharmaceutical is a Japanese specialty pharma company. Taiho Ventures is the venture arm. We invest in early-stage oncology, immunology, and urology — preclinical through proof of concept — and we usually show up on cap tables next to the institutional firm leading the round.

$400M under management. We co-invest. We don't lead.

If you're building in oncology, immunology, or urology and you've got a syndicate forming, we're worth a conversation.

3. Color Palette & Roles

Mode: light only — the poster aesthetic depends on saturated ink on paper; dark mode would invert the metaphor

Dominant: #8A532C Taiho Sepia (--poster-modern-cvc-sepia) — body type, structural rules, headline weight on neutral panels, the calm anchor of the system Accent (primary): #E31B13 Taiho Red (--poster-modern-cvc-red) — sharp punctuation, CTAs, key figures, single-color hero tiles Accent (energizer): #FABE00 Taiho Yellow (--poster-modern-cvc-yellow) — big-number panels, highlights, hover states, the second saturated tile in a hero composition Surfaces: #FAFAF6 paper ground (--poster-modern-cvc-paper), #F2EFE8 muted panel (--poster-modern-cvc-muted), #1A1A1A hairline (--poster-modern-cvc-rule) Notes: Colors are used as flat ink-like blocks — never gradients, never tinted, never with opacity-fades. A tile is one solid color. A page is composed of tiles. The three brand colors carry roughly equal weight across a full page; if Sepia is doing too much heavy lifting, the page has drifted toward gen-2 warm-editorial and needs more Red and Yellow tiles. The paper ground is a slightly desaturated off-white — not Anthropic cream #FBF7F0. If the page feels warm-and-cozy, the ground is wrong.

4. Typography Rules

Headline font: Manrope — https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Manrope:wght@200;500;800&display=swap — weights 800 (display, oversized numerals), 500 (sub-headlines) Body font: Manrope — same family, weights 500 (body) and 200 (large editorial body, optional) Pairing principle: single typeface, weight-driven hierarchy. The contrast is 800 vs 200 (or 800 vs 500), not size alone. Tabular figures are mandatory — font-feature-settings: "tnum" everywhere numbers appear. Weight extremes: 200 vs 800 (when the editorial body weight is in use), otherwise 500 vs 800 Size scale: H1 6rem (display numerals can go larger — see §5), H2 3.5rem, H3 2rem, body 1.0625rem, caption 0.75rem Max font sizes per page: 3 Banned (do not use): Inter, Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, system stacks, Space Grotesk, Geist, PP Editorial New, any serif typeface as default body or display, any handwritten or "playful" novelty face — the playfulness lives in color and composition, not in the typeface itself

5. Layout & Density

Grid: 12-column with bento-grid breaks. Tiles span 4–12 columns, deliberately varying in width and height. Some sections are full-bleed single-color tiles; others are 2- or 3-tile compositions; rare sections are dense info-grids of 4–6 small tiles. Container max-width: 1440px Section rhythm: varied — saturated tile, then airy whitespace, then dense info-grid, then a single oversized numeral on paper. Punch, breathe, punch. Never two saturated sections in a row without a paper-ground breath between. Min container padding: 24px mobile, 64px desktop Asymmetry / overlap commitments: Oversized numerals ($400, 27, 2014) can push beyond their containing tile and bleed into adjacent whitespace. The 千 character can appear at 60–80vh sizes layered behind copy, or repeated as a quiet pattern in a margin. Tile edges are hard — no rounded corners, no shadows, no border-radius on color blocks.

6. Atmosphere & Media

Hero treatment: solid (intentional). One large saturated tile, or a 2–3-tile composition. Not a gradient. Not a photograph. Not a 3D render. Atmospheric layers: minimal — a very faint paper-grain texture on the #FAFAF6 ground (4–6% opacity, evokes print rather than digital noise). The 千 character used graphically — oversized layered behind copy, repeated as a pattern in margins, or as a spot graphic mark. Shadow style: none. Everything is flat. Any drop shadow is a regression. Media stance: decorative-abstracts-only — color blocks, oversized numerals, the 千 character, geometric shapes (circles, triangles, hard-edged blocks). No photography. Stance reasoning: Taiho's existing brand mark and three-color palette already constitute a complete visual language. Photography of scientists, lab benches, glassware, microscopes, or hands-on-pipettes would (a) dilute the palette, (b) drag the page toward generic biotech-VC stock cosplay, and (c) compete with the typographic and geometric system that's doing the actual rhetorical work. Even spare, hard-edited founder portraits are out — this style commits to type and color, not human imagery.

7. Do's and Don'ts

Do:

Treat Taiho Sepia, Red, and Yellow as flat ink — set them in solid blocks, never as gradients or tints
Hammer numerical figures oversized ($400M, 27 portcos, 2014, therapeutic-area counts) and let numbers do the rhetorical work that copy used to
Use the 千 character as a graphic motif — oversized, layered, repeated, used as a spot mark — not as a logo lockup
Write declarative sentences. The reader is a peer who already knows the category; respect their time
Vary tile sizes and colors deliberately — a uniform grid of equal tiles reads as a feature page, not a poster
Use the off-white paper ground #FAFAF6 as the connective tissue between saturated tiles
Use first-person CTAs in the brand's voice: "How we co-invest", "What we mean by strategic", "Talk to us"

Don't:

Use Inter, Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, system stacks, Space Grotesk, Geist, or any serif body/display
Use purple gradients on white, or any AI-center gradient — gradients are out entirely on this style
Use the three-up icon-card feature grid (the universal SaaS slop pattern)
Use hamburger nav on mobile — keep nav declarative and visible
Write CTAs like "Get started", "Sign up", "Learn more", "Explore" — they're banned phrases
Use copy-deck verbs: "bridge", "empower", "unlock", "pioneer", "deliver", "transform", "leverage", "drive"
Use stock photography of scientists in lab coats, gloved hands with pipettes, abstract DNA helices, microscopes, or any biotech-cliché imagery — and don't replace it with AI-generated versions of the same
Use serif body type or Anthropic cream backgrounds (#FBF7F0 family) — both pull the page toward gen-2 warm-editorial, which a sibling style already covers
Use shadows, drop-shadows, or border-radius on color blocks — flatness is the rule
Use rhetorical-lifting headlines ("Bridging breakthrough science with global commercialization"). If a sentence is doing copy-deck cosplay, replace it with what's actually true

8. Agent Prompt Guide

For any agent reading this file:

Read this DESIGN.md in full before writing any code, copy, or styling for poster-modern-cvc.
Treat sections 1–7 as canonical truth. Don't override them inline.
Reject any change that violates the Don'ts in section 7. Surface the conflict to the user rather than silently picking one side.
If the user is asking for something this DESIGN.md doesn't cover, propose an addition to this file rather than introducing the decision in component code.
If the user is asking to change something in this file, route the request to columbus-design-md-builder rather than editing the file inline.
When sections conflict: section 7 (Don'ts) wins over everything; section 1 (Anchor) wins over sections 3–6; section 2 (Voice) is independent.
The single largest risk on this style is gen-2 brand-bleed (warm cream + serif + sepia-only + single-column editorial). If the page starts to feel cozy, archival, or magazine-warm, the style has drifted — pull it back to flat saturated tiles and the three-color palette in roughly equal weight.

9. Notes & References

Created: 2026-04-29 Last updated: 2026-04-29 Source URL: legacy site at https://www.taihoventures.com (research material captured under research/) External references:

Taiho corporate brand guide: research/Taiho-ventures-basic-branding-v0.pdf (canonical brand colors and 千 communication mark)
Site brief: research/TOI2601_TVL Site Brief_v3.docx (audience, mandate, business objectives — note the brief specifies "premium, disciplined, credible" for the institutional read, which this style honors via grid discipline and typography while pushing the playful brief through color and composition)
Legacy site copy: research/legacy-web-copy/ (for content reference only — voice and IA are being replaced)
Sibling style coverage: gen-2 warm-editorial and institutional-modern slots are already covered by other concepts in src/styles/. This style deliberately occupies the playful-but-credible slot instead.

Additions log:

2026-04-29: Initial DESIGN.md captured by columbus-design-md-builder. Direction picked from a three-option menu (Poster-Modern Color-Block / Risograph Art-Press / Maximalist Editorial Magazine). Voice register calibrated explicitly during the interview — plainspoken/declarative/dry, no copywriter punch.

Landing

Open detail →

desktop 1440×900

09-poster-modern-cvc/landing

mobile 390×706

9:41

09-poster-modern-cvc

Open →

DESIGN.md — Taiho Ventures (poster-modern-cvc)