Arah2/.agents/skills/design-taste-frontend/references/research.md

# The study

Everything numeric in this skill comes from here. Cite these figures; do not round them up or invent
others.

## Contents

1. Method and its limits
2. Scores
3. Where the idea comes from
4. Headlines
5. Type
6. Devices: what separates strong from weak, and what does not
7. Colour and shape
8. Imagery and page structure
9. What the inspector says about the gallery itself
10. The 25 highest-scored sites and their ideas
11. How the skill was tested
12. The October 2026 study: 100 Sites of the Day
13. The app-screen study

## 1. Method and its limits

- **Sample.** 248 sites collected on 5 October 2026: 156 from One Page Love (the latest gallery pages
  and the category listings) and 92 Awwwards Sites of the Day (the three most recent listing pages).
  247 loaded; 246 were re-measured with the final probe.
- **Capture.** Headless Chrome at 1440×900 and 390×844. For each site: the first viewport, five more
  frames while scrolling with real wheel input, the mobile first viewport, and a measurement pass in
  the page (computed styles, text geometry, colours, fonts actually loaded).
- **Panel.** 21 model reviewers each studied about 12 sites from the screenshots and the measurements,
  described them (idea, hero, type, colour, imagery, layout, sections) and scored them the Awwwards
  way: design 40%, usability 30%, creativity 20%, content 10%. These are model judgements from still
  frames, not human jurors and not the real Awwwards scores. Batches mixed both sources so each
  reviewer saw a spread.
- **Usable sets.** 235 sites were usable for the panel (12 showed only a preloader, an entry gate or a
  bot wall). 202 were measurable for typography (a page with at least 25 words and a detectable
  headline). "Top" below means panel score 7.5 or higher (82 measurable sites); "weak" means under 6.5
  (23 measurable sites).
- **Limits.** One capture per site on one day. Some heroes were caught mid-animation or behind a cookie
  notice. WebGL-heavy sites are under-described by text measurements. The eyebrow detector counts any
  small short label directly above a large heading, so it over-counts against the panel's stricter
  reading (60% measured against 35% observed). Motion was inferred from frames, not watched. The sample
  is whatever the two galleries had recently featured; it is fashion as much as quality.

## 2. Scores

| | All 235 | One Page Love (151) | Awwwards (84) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Median overall | 7.2 | 7.1 | 7.5 |
| Middle half | 6.8–7.6 | | |
| 8.0 or higher | 25 sites (11%) | | |
| 7.5 or higher | 90 sites (38%) | | |
| Under 6.5 | 29 sites | | |

Median by criterion: design 8, usability 7, creativity 7, content 7. Among the top 25: design 9,
usability 7, creativity 8, content 8. Usability is the one line that does not rise with the rest: the
best sites are no easier to use than the average one. Do not copy their gates, preloaders, tiny text
or hidden navigation.

## 3. Where the idea comes from

The clearest pattern in the panel's notes: high scores go with a concept taken from the subject, and
low scores go with its absence. The weakest entries' ideas were recorded in words like "none beyond the
standard dark SaaS launch formula", "no visual idea beyond clarity", "no strong idea". The strongest
were sentences only that subject could own (section 10).

Recurring engines among the 7.3+ sites, each the basis of a direction in the library:

- **The product demonstrates itself.** A colour picker's loupe reads the page's own background; a list
  tool is sold with tiny working lists; a photo app's page is a wall of its own output.
- **The page is an artefact from the subject's world.** A wedding site that is the invitation; an
  archive as tabbed folders; a coupon with a cut line; a portfolio as a contact sheet.
- **The name is the hero.** Wordmarks as wide as the screen, a photograph set inside the name like a
  letter, a name split to opposite corners with the page between.
- **One motif from the subject drives everything.** A tool's octagonal section as button, mask and
  loader; two circles for two accounts; a café's stripes.
- **Dressed as another category.** A money app as a streetwear drop; an industrial roaster as a design
  object; a parcel service as a fairground.
- **The place carries it.** One full-bleed view and a name along the bottom edge.
- **A fixed stage.** A title or object stays put while content swaps beneath it.
- **One section, one colour.** Flat fields as chapters.
- **Radical understatement.** A 27px headline and tiny live demonstrations, carried through completely.

Hero types, by the panel's classification (top sites against weak sites): full-bleed media with type
over it 16% / 10%; giant wordmark 14% / 0%; typographic poster 13% / 7%; text beside media 10% / 3%;
**centred statement with media below 7% / 24%**. The centred headline over a screenshot is the weak
sites' signature layout.

## 4. Headlines

| Hero headline | All | Top | Weak |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Words, median | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Words, middle half | 3–9 | 2–8 | 3–8 |
| Characters, median | 32 | | |
| One line at 1440 | 47% | | |
| Two lines or fewer at 1440 | 70% | 71% | 83% |
| Two lines or fewer at 390 | 57% | | |
| Three lines or fewer at 390 | 82% | | |

Awwwards heroes are shorter (median 4 words, 76% within two lines) than One Page Love's (6 words, 66%).
Section headings have a median of 3 words. Length does not separate strong from weak; nearly everyone
in the gallery writes short headlines. The two-line limit in this skill is a house rule that most of
the gallery already meets on desktop and that takes care to meet on a phone.

## 5. Type

| | All | Top | Weak |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Hero size, median | 72px (5.0vw) | 6.0vw | 4.7vw |
| Hero size, middle half | 3.0–7.6vw | 2.5–9.7vw | 2.7–6.1vw |
| Largest text on the page, median | 6.4vw | 8.4vw | 5.0vw |
| Largest text, upper quarter starts at | 10.4vw | 12.5vw | 6.7vw |
| Hero on a phone, median | 40px | | |
| Hero tracking, median (middle half) | -0.01em (-0.03 to 0) | | |
| Hero leading, median (middle half) | 1.0 (0.95–1.1) | | |
| Body size, median (middle half) | 16px (14–18) | | |
| Headline ÷ body, median | 4.3 | 4.7 | 4.0 |
| Typefaces carrying 3%+ of text | one 31%, two 45%, three 22% | | |
| Distinct font sizes, median | 8 | | |

Hero weight: regular 48%, medium 18%, semibold 6%, bold or heavier 22%, light 6%. Capitals 24%.
Centred 39% overall, 52% on weak sites. Display classes by the panel: neo-grotesk 48%, transitional
serif 11%, geometric sans 10%, condensed 6%, extended 6%, old-style serif 4%, custom lettering 4%.

Strong sites push the extremes: their biggest type is bigger and their range is wider. Weak sites
cluster in the middle.

## 6. Devices: what separates strong from weak, and what does not

Measured in the page unless marked (panel).

**More common on weak sites (the data supports avoiding them):**

| Device | Top | Weak |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Icon-topped feature cards (panel) | 1% | 28% |
| Rows of identical cards with a small icon (measured) | 7% | 26% |
| Pill badges (panel) | 14% | 34% |
| Pill-shaped label above a heading (measured) | 5% | 26% |
| Tiny uppercase letter-spaced labels, any | 16% | 57% |
| Tiny uppercase letter-spaced labels, three or more | 6% | 43% |
| Gradient fills (not counting scrims) | 22% | 52% |
| Gradient text | 2% | 13% |
| Shadows on resting elements, any | 24% | 48% |
| Shadows, five or more | 10% | 30% |
| Emoji in the page | 10% | 26% |
| Eyebrow labels (panel) | 32% | 45% |

**No real difference:**

| Device | Top | Weak |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Backdrop blur anywhere | 32% | 39% |
| Italic-serif accent word (panel) | 4% | 7% |
| Thin rules, any | 61% | 52% |

**More common on strong sites (banned here anyway, as house style):**

| Device | Top | Weak |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Monospace labels (panel) | 44% | 24% |
| Monospace anywhere outside code (measured) | 45% | 26% |
| Index numbering (panel) | 38% | 21% |

Monospace captions, index numbers and ruled grids are the present fashion of award sites. They are
excluded from this skill by the owner's choice, not by the data: they are the devices generators copy
first, and a page that cannot lean on them has to find structure in space, tone and scale.

## 7. Colour and shape

- Dark page ground 41%; pure white 25%; pure black 12%; a warm off-white 13%.
- Scheme (panel): monochrome plus one accent 23%, light neutral 22%, dark neutral 14%, several flat
  colours 13%, two-tone 12%, photographic 9%, one colour field 6%.
- Primary buttons are neutral (black, white, grey) on 52% of sites. One site in 246 has a terracotta
  button; none has a violet one.
- Median number of distinct section grounds: 2 on top sites, 1 on weak sites.
- Button shape: top sites square (0–2px) 52%, fully round 23%, small radius 19%, medium (9–16px) 6%.
  Weak sites fully round 59%, medium 24%, square 18%.
- Media corners are square on 73% of sites; where rounded, the median radius is 12px.
- Buttons in the first viewport: none on 55% of top sites and 39% of weak ones.

## 8. Imagery and page structure

- Hero media covers at least half the first viewport on 60% of sites (top 68%, weak 48%) and nearly
  all of it on 50% (top 56%, weak 39%). No hero media: 15%.
- Video is present on 49% of sites and a canvas element on 49% (top 62%, weak 35%).
- Images per page, median: 24 overall, 37 on top sites, 5 on weak ones.
- Imagery kind (panel): mixed 32%, photography 14%, generative or WebGL 13%, product interface 12%,
  3D render 11%, illustration 9%, video 6%, type only 3%. Median panel score is lowest for
  illustration-led (6.9) and product-interface-led (7.1) pages and highest for video and type-only
  (7.5).
- Page length, median: 8.7 screens and 575 words (middle half 1.6–14.4 screens, 250–956 words). A
  quarter of the sites are a single screen or two.
- Navigation: a median of 3 links; fixed or sticky on 66%.
- Density (panel): airy 46%, balanced 45%, dense 9%. Alignment: centred 33%, mixed 31%, left-anchored
  17%, modular grid 13%, free 6%.
- Asked to describe each site's most interesting sections, the panel picked a pricing, testimonial or
  FAQ section only 7, 12 and 9 times across 235 sites. Where strong sites have them at all, they are
  not where the design effort goes, and they avoid the stock form.

**From the panel's written notes on the 114 sites scoring 7.3 or more** (hand tallies, approximate;
`layout.md` turns these into practice):

- Outer margins of 32px or less on about 45; 80px or more on about 8. A centred 700–1300px container
  on about 15, several of them the pages the panel called stock.
- Text anchored to a fixed off-centre line on about 22. Text docked in corners or at opposite ends of
  a baseline on about 25 and 15.
- Two or three type sizes with nothing between on about 30; no note describes a graded five-step
  scale.
- One thing per screen on about 20. A full background colour per section on about 20; alternating
  light and dark on about 12.
- Every section recomposed on about 14; one planned exception to the page's own system on about 14.
- No conventional top navigation bar on about 45; small corner links on about 22; a single link or
  button on about 10.
- Endings: the name at full width about 18, the hero repeated inverted about 12, a closing scene of
  its own about 14, no footer or a single line about 22. Link-column footers are mentioned only as
  criticism.
- Motion (inferred from frames): autoplaying video about 50; pinned or fixed stages about 40; text
  reveals about 30 (blur-in 10, masked line rises 8, scroll-tied word colouring 7); horizontal strips
  about 27; marquees about 26; media swapped behind a fixed element about 15; scroll-linked scaling
  about 12. Rare: hover effects (4 mentions), parallax (6), accordions (5), bounce or spring motion
  (none). About 10 strong sites show little or no motion at all.
- How weak sites fail (54 sites under 6.8): the category's stock template about 20; centred headline,
  pill badge, two buttons and a screenshot about 9; stock modules after a distinctive hero about 8,
  plus about 17 in the middle band; a characterless default typeface about 13; text too small or too
  faint about 13; never saying what the thing is about 12.
- Faults of the best sites (90 at 7.5 or more), not to be copied: text at 9–13px about 24;
  information hidden behind the concept about 20; the idea running out mid-page about 15; text over
  footage with no scrim about 12; gates, preloaders and blank first paints about 12.

## 9. What the inspector says about the gallery itself

Running this skill's own `inspect.mjs` rules over the 202 measurable gallery sites: the median site
has 4 `FAIL`s and only 4% have none. The rules that fire most: headline over two lines somewhere on
the page 60%, eyebrow-like label 60%, thin rules 50%, monospace 37%, shadows 32%, gradients 29%, index
numbering 29%.

So the house style is deliberately stricter than the gallery. It is not a description of award sites;
it is a narrower target inside what they do: their scale, their ideas, their imagery and restraint,
without the ornaments that have since become a uniform.

## 10. The 25 highest-scored sites and their ideas

The panel's one-sentence reading of each. Notice that every one names something only that subject
could own. (Several use devices this skill bans; take the idea, not the ornament.)

| Site | Source | Score | Idea |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| PP Neue Montreal | Awwwards | 8.6 | A typeface specimen dressed as a vintage city travel guide: the font named after Montreal is sold through guidebook titling, postcards and old tourist footage. |
| Seasats | Awwwards | 8.4 | Calm, dusk-lit seascapes sell autonomous boats as serene instruments, and the navigation is a column of stacked colour swatches taken from that sea-and-sand palette. |
| AI in Design Report 2026 | Awwwards | 8.4 | A research report laid out like a colour-blocked print annual: a video collage on top, an oversized tight grotesk title, and flat orange, lilac, sage and black blocks carrying stats, quotes and chapters. |
| House of Honey | Awwwards | 8.4 | A block-heavy wordmark pierced by a fine script: the bold-against-delicate contrast is repeated at every scale, with giant pink script behind quiet serif statements. |
| White Desert | Awwwards | 8.4 | One word, the destination, set a third of the screen tall over footage like a film title card; sheer scale stands in for remoteness. |
| Applied Imagination | One Page Love | 8.3 | An essay conceived on a flight is read as a descent: an altimeter ticks from 30,000 ft to zero while you scroll down through clouds to mountains at ground level. |
| Cursor Compile | One Page Love | 8.3 | The event name drawn as seven looping one-line curves in seven colours, more signature than logotype, on an otherwise whisper-quiet off-white page. |
| The New Industrials | One Page Love | 8.3 | A long-read essay laid out inside a drafting grid, where colour fields shift as you read and machine parts drift through the margins and finally assemble into the publisher's initials. |
| Wild | One Page Love | 8.3 | A studio essay in which everything decorative is drawn on one square-pixel grid: the hero heatmap, the icons, the diagrams, the lettering and the footer. |
| Hildén & Kaira | Awwwards | 8.3 | The agency name is cast in liquid chrome across the full width, and the same chrome becomes the objects that float through the page, tying the pitch to one material. |
| PX Push | Awwwards | 8.2 | A design subscription presented as a retro broadcast: the entire site is seen through a CRT screen, with a chrome logo token as its mascot. |
| Illoca | Awwwards | 8.2 | Software for architects sold as a drafting table: a two-colour illustrated studio on graph paper that the scroll pushes into until the drawing fills the screen. |
| Aspen Search | Awwwards | 8.2 | The page is a tile system with no margins: the two-word name is split across cells that alternate type, dithered image, black and one mint green. |
| Dragonfly Redux | Awwwards | 8.2 | A crypto fund presented as a terminal artefact: every picture is rendered in characters, framed by four letters of the name pinned to the viewport corners. |
| Monolog | Awwwards | 8.2 | A studio pitch run as an asymmetric sheet: a narrow left column carries the sales talk while a wide right column stacks a very heavy headline and the proof. |
| The Queue | One Page Love | 8.1 | An essay on queueing where the queue is the ornament: a line of drawn figures stands along the bottom of the hero and returns between chapters in changing period dress. |
| Paul Kalkbrenner | Awwwards | 8.1 | Swiss poster typography for a techno artist: the name as one black line with a photo set inside it like a glyph, then every chapter gets its own flat colour. |
| Vero New York | Awwwards | 8.1 | A keepsake treated like couture: a slow close-up film opens, then a white sculpture of a dress stays pinned at centre while one sentence passes over it. |
| Depo Luxe | Awwwards | 8.1 | A film production roster shown as a full-screen reel in which every step is one film with only a title, a director and a client, set like credits at body size. |
| Longbow | Awwwards | 8.1 | The page is built on a visible four-column construction grid, and cars, cards and a giant condensed marquee are slotted into its cells like objects on an artboard. |
| Mosby's Files | Awwwards | 8.0 | An archive of architects presented as a physical stack of coloured index-tab file folders that you flip through. |
| Sarah & Matt Wedding | One Page Love | 8.0 | The site is the invitation: a letterpress-style card opens the page, and its ornaments and small typographic parts become the components for everything after it. |
| Zara Webb | One Page Love | 8.0 | A one-woman newborn-care practice presented like a hand-made keepsake: a mascot rabbit, scalloped and flower-shaped cut-outs, candid film photographs. |
| Noho | Awwwards | 8.0 | Furniture sold through people misusing it (wearing, balancing on, hiding behind chairs on flat colour backdrops) while the interface stays quiet. |
| Juggle | One Page Love | 8.0 | The headline literally drowns: a flat blue field rises to half height and the lines below the waterline change colour. |

Full notes on any studied site: `node scripts/draw.mjs --site <id>` (ids appear on direction sheets).

## 11. How the skill was tested

Six client briefs (an invoicing tool, a restaurant, a designer's portfolio, a ceramic product, a
guesthouse, a design conference), each with no photographs. For every brief a fresh agent built the
page three ways: with no skill (baseline), with another published design skill (atelier, three briefs)
and with this skill. Every build was photographed by `inspect.mjs` in the same way and judged blind
by a separate agent with the juror brief (Awwwards weights, anonymous A/B/C folders, screenshots
only). The skill was revised after each round from the jurors' reasons and the builders' notes.

| Round | Briefs | This skill | Baseline | Atelier | Wins |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | 4 | 6.6 | 7.7 | 6.8 | 1 of 4 |
| 2 | 3 | 7.1 | 8.0 | | 0 of 3 |
| 3 | 3 | 7.5 | 7.5 | | 1 of 3 |
| 4 (unseen briefs) | 3 | 6.9 | 7.9 | 7.5 | 0 of 3 |
| 5 (same three) | 3 | 7.7 | 7.8 | 7.2 | 2 of 3 |

Under the inspector, the final builds measured 0 FAIL each; the baselines measured 8 to 13 FAIL each
(eyebrows, monospace labels, 01/02/03 numbering, hairlines, gradients, shadows, three-line headlines,
text under 13px).

What the jurors rewarded, in the order they named it: an idea that belongs to this client and not to
the category (the competitor test); one live thing on the page; full content at a readable size; a
first screen with one dominant element and a real button; drawings of the subject with detail. What
they punished: a quiet page that read as empty, a small headline, text sliding over pictures or cut
at the top, a page recoloured mid-section, rows cut at the right edge, a large sentence over three or
more lines (read as a long headline whatever its markup), navigation that took over the first screen.
Each of these is now a rule in SKILL.md or a check in the inspector.

Limits: one juror per brief per round, so single scores carry about half a point of noise; the round-5
briefs had been seen in round 4; jurors are models, not people.

## 12. The October 2026 study: 100 Sites of the Day

A second study, made for v2.1, of the latest 100 Awwwards Sites of the Day (10 July to 17 October
2026), with a different aim from the first: where the pictures and footage sit, how pages move, and
the frame (margins, balance, empty space, titles). About three in four of these sites were also in
the first study.

- **Capture.** Headless Chrome at 1440×900 and 390×844 on 18 October 2026: four frames of the first
  4.5 seconds after load, every screen while scrolling with real wheel input (one frame at rest per
  step; the mid-step frames were cut from the top of the document instead of the viewport, so they
  were not used), five phone screens, and a measurement pass in the page: every picture and
  clip with its box, ratio, fit and corners; every section's content edges and pictures; blank runs;
  the CSS that loaded (curves, durations, keyframes, breakpoints, feature counts); the animations,
  transitions and script-driven moves that actually ran; GSAP tweens and scroll triggers where the
  page exposed them. Nothing a site owns (code, copy, pictures) is reproduced in the skill; only
  measurements and descriptions in our own words.
- **Panel.** One model reader per site studied its frames and measurements, described the idea, the
  first screen, the frame, every section, where each picture sits, the motion and what not to copy,
  and scored it the Awwwards way. 91 of 99 captures were usable (the rest showed a gate, a bot wall or
  a firewall page). Scores ran 6.7 to 7.9 (median 7.45); "top" means 7.5 or more (36 sites), "lowest"
  under 7.3 (16).
- **What it changed.** Where pictures and footage go: `imagery.md` §12. What strong pages do with
  motion, new tokens, recipes and the gimmicks to avoid: `motion.md` §2, §4–6 and §9–10. Empty space
  and the frame: `layout.md` §4–5. New compositions in `library/heroes.json` and `sections.json` and
  notes on media and motion in `library/sites.json` (`draw.mjs --site <id>`).
- **Headline numbers.** Pictures fill a median 16% of a scrolled screen, but in whole screens: 42% of
  screens hold none and 19% are 90% picture or more. The median page carries 7 pictures (top 8,
  lowest 2) and 42% carry footage (half of the top sites, one of the 16 lowest). 94% of pictures have
  square corners. Strong ease-outs are the curves that ran (expo and quint out); the median of all
  that ran on a site is 420ms. 60 of 99 open on a loading screen, and a third of the usable pages were
  still unreadable 4.5 seconds after load, with no gain in the design marks. About 1 text section in
  100 leaves half the width empty; the outer margins of strong pages match to a few pixels; 82% of
  text sections open with a heading; 15 of 97 first screens never say what the thing is, and those
  lose usability points.
- **Limits.** One capture per site on one day; a WebGL scene can render blank in a headless browser;
  the scroll-linked frames are partly an artefact of smooth-scroll libraries; one reader per site, so
  single scores carry about half a point of noise.

## 13. The app-screen study

For dashboards and app screens (v2.1), a separate study of 23 real product screens chosen by the
owner (17 products, 17 light and 6 dark, at 1440–1512px): each screen measured from its pixels by a
reader with full-resolution crops, six cross-cutting reports (shell, data and charts, tables and
forms, visual language, taste, styles), and a synthesis into `references/app-screens.md` and
`library/app.json` (seven styles, five shells, screen patterns). The screenshots stay private; the
skill carries only the measurements and the rules. Blind test rounds of app screens built with and
without the skill then shaped the warnings at the top of that file.