I wrote thirteen design rules and obeyed all of them
The document was rigorous, every rule held, and the product came out looking like a council website.
I wrote a design constitution for Cetus. Thirteen hard rules, each one defensible on its own, with a long document behind them explaining why.
Then I followed it. Every screen passed every rule. The result looked like a site where you renew a parking permit.
Most of the thirteen were about restraint. What not to colour, what not to move, what not to add, where not to put a shadow. Obey thirteen of those in a row and you get a product with nothing in it.
I deleted the document on 2 September 2026, along with the four files it had spawned. The rebuild started from a reference I actually measured, screenshot by screenshot, instead of from a set of rules I had argued myself into.