school

Command: school — Conscious Design Direction

Purpose

Force a named, justified aesthetic choice before any token or component exists — the single biggest lever against a prototype defaulting to generic AI-generated design patterns (see memory/01-design-schools.md for the calibration list of overused defaults to actively avoid unless the brief asks for them specifically).

When to run it

• Always, as part of init, before tokens.
• The prototype "feels generic" or "could be any brand" — re-run to re-anchor the direction.
• User phrasing: "make this feel more [X]", "pick a design direction", school.

What it does

1. Read the brief's subject matter, audience, and any stated visual references. If the brief pins down a direction, follow it exactly.
2. Where the brief leaves it open, choose deliberately from memory/16-design-movements-guide.md (all 20 Visual Aesthetics & Design Movements: Swiss, Flat, Material, Minimalism, Brutalism/Neo-Brutalism, Bauhaus, Skeuomorphism, Glassmorphism, Maximalism, Industrial, Bento Box, Aurora Mesh, Neumorphism, Corporate Memphis, Cyberpunk, Claymorphism, Isometric, Kinetic Typography, Organic/Amorphous, Frutiger Aero/Y2K) and memory/17-storytelling-industries-ux.md (4 Storytelling Archetypes, 8 Industry Registers, 8 UX Philosophies) — never by defaulting to whichever is most common in training data.
3. Actively avoid the three AI-design tells unless the brief calls for one specifically: warm-cream + terracotta serif, near-black + single acid accent, broadsheet-hairline-columns-everywhere applied indiscriminately regardless of subject.
4. Document the choice in one short paragraph: which school, why it fits this subject/audience, and the one signature element the direction will be remembered by.
5. This decision governs every later token value and component style — tokens/components implement it, they don't re-decide it.

Output convention

design-system/brand.json
  "school": { "direction": "...", "rationale": "...", "signatureElement": "..." }