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Brand brief — Sumi Aizome CVCDESIGN.md▸

DESIGN.md — Taiho Ventures (Aizome Sumi)

Per-style brand authority for src/styles/39-sumi-aizome-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: Warm Editorial × craft-house — Japanese editorial restraint, ma as a structural device, real brushwork as the figure (not the decoration), Mincho display heritage carried in Latin glyphs. Secondary remix: Heritage / archival — committed-bed color blocking lifted from a traditional aizome dyer's workshop. Hard cuts between indigo cloth and undyed cream, no gradient bleed. Reference brands: Toraya (500-year wagashi craft-house — restraint, single-object presentation, brush-and-paper craft) × traditional aizome dyer's workshops (committed indigo beds, shibori-resist patterning) × SR One (the "pharma heritage meets agile VC" execution explicitly named in the project brief as the gold-standard reference). Visual atmosphere: A pharma-CVC site dressed as a 500-year craft house. Committed indigo beds and committed cream beds, alternating in hard blocks, never gradient-bled. Brushstrokes in Taiho Sepia move across panels like cloth dyed and lifted from the vat. The page reads as patient capital made visual: every block is decided, every brush mark is real, the rhythm refuses to ingratiate.

2. Brand Voice

Adjectives: rationed, observant, anecdote-first, mechanically curious, declarative. Voice anchor: Gladwell — open with a specific company, person, molecule, or date; build mechanically toward a principle; never pitch. (Full fingerprint in anti-slop-copy/references/voices.md.) Voice sample:

A few years ago, a small group of researchers at Stanford did something curious. They took fifty Olympic athletes and fifty ordinary college kids and showed them the same set of optical illusions. The athletes saw them differently. Not better — differently. The lines bent the wrong way; the gaps closed where they shouldn't have. The researchers had stumbled onto something that turned out to be far stranger and more consequential than they could have known.

Says:

"Cullinan Pearl proved the build-to-buy model can work."
"Ten years on the same cap table is not patience as a virtue. It is patience as a method."
"A Japanese pharma calls when the Phase II reads."

Avoids: "premier", "ecosystem", "value-add", "leverage", "innovative", "transformative", "world-class", "best-in-class", "unlock", "harness", "synergies". Note: the project brief itself uses "premier pharma-backed value-add CVC partner" — this design intentionally does not.

Sample sentences:

We do not sprint. Therapeutics do not let you. A molecule clears Phase I or it does not; the timeline is set by biology, and biology is unmoved by fund cycles. Taiho was built around that fact.

Arcus needed three things at once: capital, a credible Western co-development partner, and a path into Asia. Most syndicates can offer the first. A few can offer the second. The third is rarer.

3. Color Palette & Roles

Mode: both — committed indigo dark bed AND committed cream light bed, alternating in hard color blocks (not via theme switch — both modes coexist on the page as adjacent committed sections).

Beds (committed surfaces):

#1B2845 (--sumi-aizome-indigo) — deep aizome, the color of natural indigo dyed three to five times; the committed dark bed.
#F1EBDA (--sumi-aizome-cream) — undyed natural cotton, slightly warm; the committed light bed.

Brushwork strokes (carried across both beds):

#8A532C (--sumi-aizome-sepia) — Taiho Sepia, brand book DIC 345 / PANTONE 168C. The primary brushstroke color, echoing the corporate 千 mark.
#FABE00 (--sumi-aizome-energy) — Taiho Yellow, brand book DIC 165. Tiny accent gestures only — single short strokes, never washes.
#E31B13 (--sumi-aizome-focus) — Taiho Red, brand book DIC 198. Single sealed-hanko-style marks only; reserve for one-per-page punctuation.

Type colors:

#1A1410 (--sumi-aizome-ink) — deepest ink, used on cream beds for headlines and body. Not pure black; carries warmth.
#F1EBDA (--sumi-aizome-cream) — cream used as type color on indigo beds.

Borders / hairlines:

#2E3A55 (--sumi-aizome-indigo-rule) — on indigo, for column rules and dividers.
#D8CFB8 (--sumi-aizome-cream-rule) — on cream, for column rules and dividers.

Notes: Zero gradients. Color is set in flat committed blocks. Brushstrokes carry color across beds; surfaces do not transition. The three Taiho corporate accents (sepia, yellow, red) live exclusively inside brushwork, never as block fills.

4. Typography Rules

Headline font: Cormorant Garamond — https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cormorant+Garamond — weights 300, 500. Body font: Bitter — https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Bitter — weights 400, 600. Pairing principle: Two serifs — Mincho-heritage Latin display × editorial slab body. Contrast lives between display elegance and craft-shop signage weight, not between serif and sans. No geometric sans anywhere; no mono. Weight extremes: Cormorant 300 for display headlines vs Bitter 600 for short emphasis blocks. No 400/600 hedge. Size scale: H1 4.5rem (display Cormorant 300), H2 2.5rem (Cormorant 500), H3 1.5rem (Bitter 600), body 1rem (Bitter 400), caption 0.75rem (Bitter 400 small caps with letter-spacing). Max font sizes per page: 3. Banned (do not use): Inter, Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, system stacks, Space Grotesk, Lora (Taiho Oncology brand-book default — sumi concepts deviate), IBM Plex Sans (Taiho Oncology brand-book body default), any geometric sans, any monospace, Spectral (used by the 38-sumi-toi-cvc sibling — this concept diverges).

5. Layout & Density

Grid: 12-col editorial with stronger marginalia — outer columns wider than 38's sibling, used for sidenotes, citations, and brushwork bleed. Body content occupies columns 3–10; columns 1–2 and 11–12 carry marginalia or brushwork escape. Container max-width: 1280px main, 1600px when brushwork bleeds beyond container. Section rhythm: Hard color blocks. Committed indigo section → hard cut → committed cream section → hard cut → committed indigo. No alternating Sky/Pebble. No gradient transitions. The hardness IS the brand commitment. Min container padding: 24px (mobile), 80px (desktop). Asymmetry / overlap commitments: Brushwork bleeds across section boundaries deliberately — a sepia stroke begun in an indigo block continues into the cream block below, crossing the hard cut. Copy stays inside the 12-col grid; the brush escapes it. That tension (rigid grid for text, gestural escape for ink) is the layout signature.

6. Atmosphere & Media

Hero treatment: Full-bleed indigo wash with sepia brushwork as the dominant figure — one large gestural composition per hero, like a shibori cloth unrolled. Wordmark and hero copy sit small in the lower-left, in cream type, deferring to the brushwork. Atmospheric layers: Subtle paper-grain texture on cream beds (low opacity, ~3–5%). No texture on indigo (the dye is the texture). No noise, no halftone, no gridlines. Shadow style: None. The brand commits to flat blocks; shadow would soften the commitment. Media stance: decorative-abstracts-only — the brushwork IS the imagery. Portfolio company logos appear as small marks within indigo blocks. No founder photography on indigo. Optional editorial portraits (high-contrast, cream-paper toned, monochrome) on cream beds only, in the team section. Stance reasoning: Photography fights the brushwork. The brand is one composition (brush + ink + cloth); additional photography splinters it. The corporate identity is itself a brush composition — the site honors that by letting brush carry visual weight rather than competing it with photo.

7. Do's and Don'ts

Do:

Use Taiho Sepia as the primary brushwork color — echoes the corporate 千 mark and bridges this concept back to brand identity.
Treat indigo and cream as committed beds — full color blocks, hard cuts between them.
Pair Cormorant Garamond (display) with Bitter (body slab) — both serif; the contrast is weight + width, not category.
Bleed brushwork across section boundaries; copy stays inside the grid, the brush escapes it.
Reserve Taiho Red and Taiho Yellow for one-mark-per-page accent gestures (sealed-hanko-style red dot, single yellow brush stroke).
Open headlines with a specific case (a company name, a molecule, a date, a person) before building toward principle. Cullinan Pearl > "Strategic Partnership."
Use the 10th anniversary moment as a single editorial mark on the home hero — small, dated, restrained.

Don't:

Use Japanese glyphs anywhere — kanji, hiragana, katakana, hanko character imprints. Latin only. The Mincho heritage lives in the typeface, never in the script.
Use Lora or IBM Plex Sans (the Taiho Oncology brand-book defaults — sumi concepts deviate).
Use Spectral (used by 38-sumi-toi-cvc — this concept diverges to Bitter).
Use gradient transitions between beds. Hard cuts only.
Use Sky / Pebble / Ocean / Clay alternating bed rhythm (that's the 38-sumi-toi-cvc rhythm — this one diverges to hard blocks).
Use brushwork as section dividers, watermark decoration, or background pattern. Brushwork is the figure, not the punctuation.
Write CTAs like "Get started", "Learn more", "Contact us", "Sign up". Use specific in-voice CTAs: "Tell us about the molecule", "Read the Cullinan Pearl case", "See the syndicate map".
Use any text color for headlines or body that isn't ink (#1A1410 on cream) or cream (#F1EBDA on indigo). Color lives in brushwork, never in text.
Use the corporate "TAIHO" wordmark inside body type. The wordmark is the wordmark; type is type.
Use the three-up icon-card feature grid. Anywhere.

8. Agent Prompt Guide

For any agent reading this file:

Read this DESIGN.md in full before writing any code, copy, or styling for 39-sumi-aizome-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.

9. Notes & References

Created: 2026-05-28 Last updated: 2026-05-28 Source URL: n/a (concept exploration grounded in /workspace/research/) External references:

/workspace/research/Taiho-ventures-basic-branding-v0.pdf — official corporate identity: 千 mark, Taiho Sepia (#8A532C), Taiho Red (#E31B13), Taiho Yellow (#FABE00). Brushwork colors in this concept echo this palette.
/workspace/research/TOI2601_TVL Site Brief_v4.docx — current project brief. Positioning, audience, tone, and required site features are sourced here.
/workspace/research/toi-may-2026/Taiho-TOI-branding-may-2026-compressed.pdf — April 2026 Taiho Oncology brand update (Clay/Earth/Pebble/Sky/Ocean palette, Lora + IBM Plex Sans). This concept intentionally deviates from this palette and type pairing while keeping the brushwork DNA.
/workspace/research/legacy-web-copy/ — existing site copy that serves as working content for launch.
Toraya (toraya-group.co.jp) — wagashi craft-house presentation; primary reference for restraint and single-object pacing.
SR One (srone.com) — explicitly named in the project brief as the gold-standard execution of "pharma heritage meets agile VC."

Additions log:

2026-05-28: Initial DESIGN.md captured by columbus-design-md-builder. Direction: Aizome Sumi — committed indigo + cream beds, sepia brushwork bridging to corporate 千 mark, Cormorant × Bitter pairing. Diverges from 38-sumi-toi-cvc on color register (indigo+cream vs warm-paper+Ocean teal), brushwork role (full-bleed wash vs section-break), page rhythm (hard color blocks vs Sky/Pebble alternation), and type pairing (Cormorant+Bitter vs Mincho+Spectral). No Japanese glyphs anywhere.

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