100 lines
5.0 KiB
Markdown
100 lines
5.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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name: quieter
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description: Tones down visually aggressive or overstimulating designs, reducing intensity while preserving quality. Use when the user mentions too bold, too loud, overwhelming, aggressive, garish, or wants a calmer, more refined aesthetic.
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---
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Reduce visual intensity in designs that are too bold, aggressive, or overstimulating, creating a more refined and approachable aesthetic without losing effectiveness.
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## MANDATORY PREPARATION
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Invoke /frontend-design — it contains design principles, anti-patterns, and the **Context Gathering Protocol**. Follow the protocol before proceeding — if no design context exists yet, you MUST run /teach-impeccable first.
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---
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## Assess Current State
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Analyze what makes the design feel too intense:
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1. **Identify intensity sources**:
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- **Color saturation**: Overly bright or saturated colors
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- **Contrast extremes**: Too much high-contrast juxtaposition
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- **Visual weight**: Too many bold, heavy elements competing
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- **Animation excess**: Too much motion or overly dramatic effects
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- **Complexity**: Too many visual elements, patterns, or decorations
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- **Scale**: Everything is large and loud with no hierarchy
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2. **Understand the context**:
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- What's the purpose? (Marketing vs tool vs reading experience)
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- Who's the audience? (Some contexts need energy)
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- What's working? (Don't throw away good ideas)
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- What's the core message? (Preserve what matters)
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If any of these are unclear from the codebase, ask the user directly to clarify what you cannot infer.
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**CRITICAL**: "Quieter" doesn't mean boring or generic. It means refined, sophisticated, and easier on the eyes. Think luxury, not laziness.
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## Plan Refinement
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Create a strategy to reduce intensity while maintaining impact:
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- **Color approach**: Desaturate or shift to more sophisticated tones?
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- **Hierarchy approach**: Which elements should stay bold (very few), which should recede?
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- **Simplification approach**: What can be removed entirely?
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- **Sophistication approach**: How can we signal quality through restraint?
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**IMPORTANT**: Great quiet design is harder than great bold design. Subtlety requires precision.
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## Refine the Design
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Systematically reduce intensity across these dimensions:
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### Color Refinement
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- **Reduce saturation**: Shift from fully saturated to 70-85% saturation
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- **Soften palette**: Replace bright colors with muted, sophisticated tones
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- **Reduce color variety**: Use fewer colors more thoughtfully
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- **Neutral dominance**: Let neutrals do more work, use color as accent (10% rule)
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- **Gentler contrasts**: High contrast only where it matters most
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- **Tinted grays**: Use warm or cool tinted grays instead of pure gray—adds sophistication without loudness
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- **Never gray on color**: If you have gray text on a colored background, use a darker shade of that color or transparency instead
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### Visual Weight Reduction
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- **Typography**: Reduce font weights (900 → 600, 700 → 500), decrease sizes where appropriate
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- **Hierarchy through subtlety**: Use weight, size, and space instead of color and boldness
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- **White space**: Increase breathing room, reduce density
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- **Borders & lines**: Reduce thickness, decrease opacity, or remove entirely
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### Simplification
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- **Remove decorative elements**: Gradients, shadows, patterns, textures that don't serve purpose
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- **Simplify shapes**: Reduce border radius extremes, simplify custom shapes
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- **Reduce layering**: Flatten visual hierarchy where possible
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- **Clean up effects**: Reduce or remove blur effects, glows, multiple shadows
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### Motion Reduction
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- **Reduce animation intensity**: Shorter distances (10-20px instead of 40px), gentler easing
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- **Remove decorative animations**: Keep functional motion, remove flourishes
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- **Subtle micro-interactions**: Replace dramatic effects with gentle feedback
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- **Refined easing**: Use ease-out-quart for smooth, understated motion—never bounce or elastic
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- **Remove animations entirely** if they're not serving a clear purpose
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### Composition Refinement
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- **Reduce scale jumps**: Smaller contrast between sizes creates calmer feeling
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- **Align to grid**: Bring rogue elements back into systematic alignment
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- **Even out spacing**: Replace extreme spacing variations with consistent rhythm
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**NEVER**:
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- Make everything the same size/weight (hierarchy still matters)
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- Remove all color (quiet ≠ grayscale)
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- Eliminate all personality (maintain character through refinement)
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- Sacrifice usability for aesthetics (functional elements still need clear affordances)
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- Make everything small and light (some anchors needed)
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## Verify Quality
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Ensure refinement maintains quality:
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- **Still functional**: Can users still accomplish tasks easily?
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- **Still distinctive**: Does it have character, or is it generic now?
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- **Better reading**: Is text easier to read for extended periods?
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- **Sophistication**: Does it feel more refined and premium?
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Remember: Quiet design is confident design. It doesn't need to shout. Less is more, but less is also harder. Refine with precision and maintain intentionality. |