Continuity Cards

A family tree you can hold.

The facts, kept. The person, held.

A family tree is a spreadsheet nobody but the person who built it will ever open again. Continuity Cards exists to end that — to take the names, dates, and places someone already spent months tracking down, and turn them into an object the rest of the family will actually pick up.

We keep the facts exactly as true as the tree says they are. When a birth date is missing, we say so. We don't invent a warmer version of someone's history to fill a gap — the accuracy is the inheritance, not the decoration around it.

Format follows thebrand.md. Archetypes from Iconic Fox. Source of truth: brand.md.

Archetype Mix

— how the brand thinks

Sage (primary, 55%) · Caregiver (secondary, 35%) · Innocent (undertone, 10%). Formalizes the founder's own description of the voice — "warm family archivist" — into the Iconic Fox framework.

Primary

55%

The Sage

Core desire: Truth / wisdom

The whole product is a truth-keeping exercise — a GEDCOM file's facts, preserved and organized without embellishment. "Archivist" is the noun in the founder's own description; the job is accuracy, not decoration.

Gives: Precision · Credibility · Calm

Secondary

35%

The Caregiver

Core desire: Service / protection

The reason the facts matter is the family they belong to. Every print-spec constraint — big type, no clutter, legible at arm's length — exists because the people at the table are elders who deserve to read their own history without squinting.

Gives: Warmth · Attentiveness · Protection

Undertone

10%

The Innocent

Core desire: Safety / simplicity

A light undertone, not a lens — the pleasure of turning over a card and seeing a face you recognize. Guards against tipping into cold data-tool Sage or saccharine scrapbook Caregiver.

Gives: Simplicity · Wholesomeness

Why not the others? Not Ruler — a family tree isn't a hierarchy to govern. Not Creator — the app organizes an existing tree; it doesn't invite the user to design from scratch. Not Explorer — the research already happened before the GEDCOM file exists; this product starts after the discovery is made.

Message Pillars

— rules that govern voice

Truth first

Every fact on a card traces back to the imported tree. The AI adds context, never invents a fact.

Built to finish

One guided path from import to an ordered deck, not an open-ended tree that never stops growing.

Legible at the table

Big type, big generation banners, readable at arm's length by design, not as an accessibility afterthought.

A gift, not a chore

Ordering a deck should take less effort than the research that made it possible.

IS / IS NOT

✓ A keepsake

✗ A research tool

✓ Warm

✗ Precious or twee

✓ Plainspoken about the facts it has

✗ Ornamental about the facts it's missing

✓ Dignified

✗ Solemn — family history holds birthdays too

✓ Built for the whole family, 65+ included

✗ Built for citation-chasing hobbyists

✓ A finished object

✗ An eternally-growing tree

Phrases

— marketing & in-product

"A family tree you can hold."

"Built to be read at arm's length."

"The facts, kept. The person, held."

"One tree. A deck for every branch."

"History you can deal out at the table."

"Six of twelve stories written."

Tonal Rules

— we say · never say

Import a GEDCOM file → pick a proband → build a family-tree deck

Upload your file to begin the onboarding flow

6 of 12 stories written

The album is halfway bound

Order this deck

Submit purchase request

No context cards yet — add one from the palette

No data available

date unknown

N/A

✨ Story / Regenerate

Generate AI content

Color

— palette tokens

Primary

#2B2118

Ink

Text, headings — 14.72:1

#FAF7F0

Cream

Page background

#FFFFFF

Surface

Card and panel surface — not text, exempt

#5F5142

Sepia

Secondary text, labels — 7.16:1

#E7DFD1

Border — Hairline

Decorative dividers only — 1.16:1, exempt

#8F7D5C

Border — Defined

Input borders, actionable boundaries — 3.73:1 UI ✓

Status — fill (UI) and text (deep)

Token	Fill (bars / dots)	Text (status word)
Moss Delivered · Completed · Active	Dual-duty — `#3E5C46` used as both fill and text (6.95:1, AA ✓). No separate deep shade needed.
Burgundy Cancelled	Dual-duty — `#7C2D3A` used as both fill and text (8.56:1, AA ✓). No separate deep shade needed.
Gold Submitted · In Review · Printing · Shipped · Paused	`#A07D2B` 3.59:1 · UI only	`#7A5D1C` 5.76:1 · AA ✓

Rule

Status as fill → the shade marked "fill." Status as text → the shade marked "text" (or the dual-duty shade for Moss/Burgundy). Never the other way around.

Accent

#A07D2B

Gold — Fill

Button fill, focus rings, banner accents — 3.59:1, UI only

#7A5D1C

Gold — Deep

Links, gold as a sentence — 5.76:1 AA ✓

Rule — filled buttons

Gold Fill and its label text are two separate contrast checks. Ink on Gold Fill measures 4.10:1 — short of body-text AA, but clears the large-text minimum (3:1). Button labels must be bold, ≥14px. White label text (3.84:1) should be avoided; use Ink.

Avoid

Gold Foil (#C9A227) in the digital product — 2.26:1, fails even as a UI element. Print/decorative only.
The pre-Heirloom purple accent (#6d3bd4) still in the app's inline styles — a holdover, not part of this palette.
Any bright, saturated color outside this palette. Heirloom reads muted on purpose.
Gold Fill as body text or a sentence — see the status rule above.

Typography

— names in Playfair, everything else in Source Serif

Display & body

Eleanor Whitfield

Born 12 March 1931 in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Married Harold Whitfield, 1952. Mother of three.

"Playfair Display", Georgia, serif (display) · "Source Serif 4", Georgia, serif (body, 17px base)

Numeric / tabular data

6 of 12

stories written

font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums — no separate monospace family

Guardrails

— non-negotiable

No bookbinding metaphors — ever. Founder-mandated (2026-07-28). Progress copy uses plain counts ("6 of 12 stories written"), never "the album is halfway bound."
No paragraph of text on a printed card. The AI narrative lives in the app only.
Never invent a fact that isn't in the tree. A missing birth date reads "date unknown," not a warm guess.
Gold is a UI accent, never running text. Use Ink or the deep status shade for anything read as a sentence.
Keep operator/admin surfaces plainer. Campaign pivots, CRM notes, and template editing are Sage without the Caregiver warmth.
Never make a customer squint. Every type/contrast/density choice answers to a 65-year-old reading at arm's length.

"Would someone's grandmother read it without her glasses, and believe every word of it?"

Accessibility

— brand commitment, not a checklist

A product built for readers 65 and up fails its own premise if it fails WCAG AA.

The three-encoding rule

Every status indicator communicates through at least two of three channels: color, shape, and word.

Contrast minimums

Element	Min ratio
Body text	4.5:1
Large text (18pt+ or 14pt+ bold)	3:1
Non-text UI	3:1
Decorative	exempt

Tooling

npx lighthouse <url> --only-categories=accessibility — score, target ≥0.95
npx @axe-core/cli <url> — itemized violations
brew install --cask color-oracle — color-blindness simulator (Moss vs. Burgundy is the one to check — deuteranopia confuses green/red, and those two carry opposite meanings)
Chrome DevTools → Rendering → Emulate vision deficiencies

Continuity Cards · Brand v1 · Source: brand.md