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Brand brief — Cinematic Taiho CVCDESIGN.md▸

DESIGN.md — Taiho Ventures (Cinematic Taiho — parent-brand absorbed)

Per-style brand authority for src/styles/19-cinematic-taiho-cvc/. Forked from 12-cinematic-perf-cvc on 2026-05-01. Read by columbus-design-author at scaffold time and by columbus-design-iterator on every refinement. Treat sections 1–7 as canonical truth.

Lineage note (2026-05-01): This style is a sibling of 12 — same cinematic-dark anchor (Peloton × Apple Vision Pro × Patagonia Films), same Bebas Neue + IBM Plex font system, same video-led hero — but the Taiho parent identity is absorbed in structurally, not held back as "reserved sparing." The full Taiho triad (Sepia, Red, Yellow) is in active rotation, the navbar wears the actual Taiho Communication Mark, and one fold breaks the dark to a sepia heritage ground. The peer concept (12) reads as a cinematic VC that happens to be Taiho; this concept reads as Taiho Ventures.

1. Aesthetic Anchor

Primary family: Cinematic Dark — full-bleed motion, near-black ground, single signal accent, editorial pacing. Secondary remix: Editorial Minimalism (Apple product-page lineage) — for negative-space discipline, single-statement folds, and the switch-palette-for-one-fold heritage move that Apple uses on long product pages. Reference brands: Peloton (cinematic-dark with single red signal, athletic-condensed display type) × Apple Vision Pro product page (full-bleed pacing, statement-per-fold restraint, palette-shift fold breaks) × Patagonia Films (documentary photographic gravity, no stock imagery) × Taiho Pharmaceutical parent identity (humanist-classical wordmark, brushstroke logomark, sepia/red/yellow triad — absorbed structurally, not bolted on). Visual atmosphere: Dark, in-motion, premium — but explicitly Taiho. The page reads like the opening of a documentary about a Japanese parent company's venture arm, not a generic biotech tearsheet. Heavy condensed Bebas Neue headlines anchor each fold; the parent's humanist Optima-style wordmark appears at structural moments (navbar lockup, anniversary mark, footer colophon). Taiho Red is a structural signal (one block per fold); Taiho Sepia is the ground for one heritage fold that breaks the dark; Taiho Yellow is the secondary data accent (mandate ticks, one-mark portfolio metric). Film grain across all surfaces gives the dark warmth so it reads as cinematographic, not technological. Brushwork is forward-declared (see §6) and will land via the in-repo library.

2. Brand Voice

Adjectives: plainspoken, knowledgeable, measured, self-aware, unhurried. Says: "we co-invest alongside the lead", "ten years and four hundred million, no rush", "this is the part most cap tables don't have", "we're at the table when the science is right", "the mandate page should save you a meeting". Avoids: "empower", "unlock", "elevate", "leverage", "ecosystem", "synergy", "bridge X to Y", "where science meets commercialization", "cutting-edge", "next-generation", "Get started", "Sign up", "Learn more", "Contact us", any tagline shape. Sample sentences:

We've been doing this for ten years. Most of us came from the bench or the clinic, and we co-invest alongside the firms doing the heavy lifting on the science. We're rarely the lead, and that's the point — we come into a round when the syndicate is already strong, and what we add is the part most cap tables don't have: a parent company that can actually make the molecule, run the trial, and sell it in Japan.

3. Color Palette & Roles

Mode: dark Dominant: #0A0A0A (--cinematic-taiho-cvc-ink) — page background; not pure black, a hair of warmth so film grain reads Surfaces: #14141A (--cinematic-taiho-cvc-surface) card backgrounds, #1F1F26 (--cinematic-taiho-cvc-muted) muted card, #2A2A32 (--cinematic-taiho-cvc-border) hairlines and borders, #F5F2ED (--cinematic-taiho-cvc-paper) body type and headlines against dark.

Triad — used structurally, in rotation, not as decoration:

Heritage anchor: the parent Communication Symbol uses all three triad colors together in the logomark (sepia capsule, red brushstroke, yellow disc). When the icon appears anywhere in the design, it's the only place all three appear at once — a single brand-coded artifact.

Notes: No gradients. No glows. No soft fades. Color is set in flat blocks. The only legitimate gradient anywhere is the bottom-up dark scrim over hero video so text reads — and that scrim is a media-legibility tool, not a color decision.

4. Typography Rules

Display font: Bebas Neue — https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Bebas+Neue — weights 400 (only weight available; that's the point). Cinematic display moments — hero, fold headlines, anniversary statement, case-study quote marks. Wordmark face: the parent's humanist-classical wordmark (rendered as the included taiho-single-wordmark.svg). Used wherever "TAIHO" appears as identity rather than display copy — navbar lockup, footer colophon, anniversary mark. Do not re-typeset "TAIHO" in Bebas anywhere — always use the SVG wordmark. "Ventures" and "Ventures, LLC" and similar continuation tokens after the SVG wordmark are typeset in IBM Plex Sans (not Bebas) — the humanist-grotesque pair reads as institutional rather than athletic. Body font: IBM Plex Sans — https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans — weights 400, 700. Data/mono font: IBM Plex Mono — https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Mono — weights 400, 700. Portfolio metrics, fund stats, dates, captions on case-study photography, MediaFrame proof labels. Pairing principle: Three-and-a-half families, four jobs. Bebas (cinematic display), Taiho wordmark SVG (institutional identity), IBM Plex Sans (body + "Ventures" continuation), IBM Plex Mono (data + proof chrome). The Taiho wordmark is "half" because it's an SVG asset, not a font we typeset with. Weight extremes: 400 body vs 700 display-emphasis only. No 500 or 600. Bebas comes in one weight by design. Size scale: H1 6rem (cinematic display), H2 3.5rem, H3 1.75rem, body 1rem, caption 0.875rem. Banned (do not use): Inter, Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, system stacks, Space Grotesk, any free serif (Playfair, Spectral, Cormorant, Merriweather — gen-2 biotech-VC attractors). The Taiho wordmark SVG is the only humanist letterform that appears on the page; trying to pair a free serif with it dilutes the identity.

5. Layout & Density

Grid: Full-bleed cinematic primary. Hero occupies 100vh under motion video. Body sections alternate between (a) full-bleed media folds and (b) 12-col content folds with content anchored bottom-left or center, never centered-symmetric. Container max-width: 1440px outer; content within tops out at 1100px so reading lines stay disciplined inside the wide cinematic frame. Section rhythm: Dense → airy → heritage break → dense → airy. Hero (dense, dark, motion + Taiho-Red flag) → Mandate (airy 12-col content with yellow ordinal ticks) → Anniversary heritage fold (sepia ground, palette-shift break, the parent moment) → Portfolio (dense, dark, real portfolio logos on muted-card grid) → Case study (airy dark, single documentary still + pull quote) → Intake (airy dark, structured form). The heritage fold is the rhythmic pivot — it's the moment the cinematic-VC concept reveals itself as Taiho's venture arm, not a generic firm with red accents. Min container padding: 24px (mobile), 80px (desktop). Asymmetry / overlap commitments: Hero copy anchors bottom-left over the video, never centered. The anniversary heritage fold uses an asymmetric editorial split — Bebas display anchored top-left on sepia, parent-mark watermark bottom-right at large scale (the only place the full color logomark gets to breathe). Case study pull-quote hangs into the margin to overlap photography. Section labels sit in the left margin as small Taiho-Red mono ticks.

6. Atmosphere & Media

Hero treatment: Full-bleed motion video, with a bottom-up dark scrim (transparent at top → 95% --cinematic-taiho-cvc-ink at bottom) so display type reads. The scrim is a legibility tool, not a color decision. Atmospheric layers: 4% film-grain noise across the entire page (every surface, including cards and the sepia heritage fold). 1px hairlines in --cinematic-taiho-cvc-flag (Taiho Red) under section labels — these are the only place red appears at sub-block scale. Shadow style: Dramatic — 60px-blur, 30%-opacity shadows under photography to lift cinematic stills off the dark surface. No shadows on type, cards, or UI elements. Media stance: video-led (hero) + editorial-photography (case study + heritage fold) + brand-asset-tile (portfolio strip uses real company logos directly from /public/brand/portfolio/ — no generated stand-ins). MediaFrame proof chrome (DCP plate aesthetic): When src is undefined, the MediaFrame renders a film-slate plate proof — 1px Taiho-Red hairline border on a --cinematic-taiho-cvc-muted ground, mono PLATE NN / NN upper-left, format note upper-right (16:9 · 60fps · doc), italic IBM Plex Sans status line at the bottom (Awaiting cinematographer.). Cinematic-dark equivalent of style 18's washi proof chrome — same src-undefined-renders-proof mechanic, brand-coded for the dark. Stance reasoning: The cinematic anchor lives or dies on motion. Hero is microscopy / late-stage clinical b-roll / Asia-bridge cityscape footage. Stock biotech imagery (DNA helix renders, gloved hands with pipettes, abstract molecular visualizations) is explicitly out — it's the AI-center of the category. Supporting media is editorial photography: 4:5 portraits for team, 16:9 documentary stills for case studies (Cullinan / Arcus / Orna / Harpoon). Portfolio = real brand logos, no generated stills. Brushwork — forward-declared (NOT YET IMPLEMENTED): The Taiho logomark contains a sumi-style brushstroke gesture (red horizontal + yellow disc on the sepia capsule). A repo-local library is being authored that will produce on-demand brush-mark assets. When that library lands, brushstrokes will appear structurally — under display headlines as a single hand-drawn red stroke instead of a 1px hairline rule, and possibly as a section-divider mark between the heritage fold and the portfolio fold. Until then, sections that will eventually carry brushwork still ship with the 1px hairline rule fallback. Do not author ad-hoc brush SVGs in components in the meantime — wait for the library.

7. Do's and Don'ts

Do:

Don't:

8. Agent Prompt Guide

For any agent reading this file:

9. Notes & References

Created: 2026-05-01 (forked from 12-cinematic-perf-cvc 2026-04-29 baseline) Last updated: 2026-05-01 Source URL: n/a (real brand, no existing brand guide beyond the Taiho parent-company communication mark spec — see external references) External references:

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