--- name: museum-has-its-own-visual-identity description: "⭐ OWNER RULING (2026-07-21, restated — he had said it before and Dispatch briefed against it): THE MUSEUM IS NOT THE TERMINAL. No bezel, no device chassis. It does NOT have to stay fully in the Fallout/CRT theme — it gets its OWN feel. The terminal aesthetic belongs to the exhibits, not to the walls around them." metadata: node_type: feedback type: feedback originSessionId: 1060dea9-0dc3-42b4-958d-2a6f7a6c0c58 modified: 2026-07-21T16:11:58.792Z --- **Owner, 2026-07-21 (verbatim):** *"mockups look good except that it's in the terminal bezel, I told you the museum should have it's own feel to it, doesn't have to stay fully in theme ya know ? Shouldn't have a bezel at all tbh"* ⚠ **"I told you"** — this was already said and Dispatch had not recorded it, then briefed Fable with the OPPOSITE instruction ("the Fallout/RobCo CRT terminal aesthetic… the museum should look like an artifact of the project it documents", listed under HARD CONSTRAINTS). A whole design pass came back wrapped in the terminal bezel as a direct result. **Dispatch's brief caused the miss, not the design model.** ## THE RULING - **NO BEZEL. No device chassis, no machine housing.** Not a reskin of the app. - The museum **does not have to stay fully in theme.** It is allowed its own visual language. - It is a museum **ABOUT** a Fallout-themed terminal — it is not itself one. ## THE FRAMING THAT FOLLOWS (Dispatch's, offered to the owner — confirm before treating as his) A gallery does not paint its walls to match the paintings. The **exhibits** carry the CRT/phosphor identity — the screenshots, the mockups, the captured app states are already saturated with it. If the container is also terminal-themed, the artifacts stop reading as artifacts and the whole thing becomes one flat green surface. **Contrast is what makes the exhibits legible as exhibits.** ## WHAT STILL BINDS (do not drop these while changing the aesthetic) - ⚠ **The CLARITY VETO** — *"in theme but not confusing"* — still applies, now in its more general form: legibility beats aesthetic, always. - **MOBILE FIRST** — design and verify at 360px and 412px. The owner is almost exclusively on Android. - **WCAG 2.1 AA.** - No build step, no external dependencies, no CDN, free tier only. - Owner's stated ambition: *"I really want the museum to look graphicly insane… like really good visual representations."* Its own identity must be MORE striking than the bezel version, not plainer. Related: [[design-overhaul-direction]], [[bezel-fidelity-pass]] (that one governs the APP's device shells — do not apply it to the museum), [[popup-card-style-standard]], [[parked-diegetic-audit]] (the clarity veto's origin).