Build Log
Typography Has to Belong to the Product
An exemplar should transfer engineering discipline, not make every site look related. The v6 typography work separated those ideas and gave Aussie Leave Calculator a more independent visual voice.
Architecture is reusable; identity is not
Beatles Answers had already proved a useful structure: shared layout rules, a named colour skin, a dark-mode variant, custom properties, and versioned stylesheet references. That architecture is maintainable because responsibilities are clear. Copying its visual personality would have been a different decision, and the Knowledge Manager record explicitly rejected it.
Aussie Leave Calculator retained its berries-and-cream palette and component geometry. It replaced Plus Jakarta Sans and Fraunces with Public Sans for interface and body copy and Bitter for headings. The change preserved usability while making the product feel less like a reskinned sibling.
Self-hosting is both visual and operational
The two variable-font files are served from the site itself and preloaded where needed. This avoids a third-party font request, reduces a privacy dependency, and keeps the exact type assets inside the release. Font licence files travel with them so the release records not only what renders but why it may legally ship.
A repeatable patch updated page preloads and the shared CSS cache key across the full tree. The audit rejects retired font names, inline style attributes, and page-level style blocks. That means the new identity is enforced as a system rather than left as a visual suggestion.
What became standard
Reference projects define the quality floor: readable source, component discipline, responsive behaviour, metadata completeness, and verification. Each product still needs its own palette, typography, imagery, and tone. That distinction now sits in the website standard because this release made the failure mode concrete.
You can see the result across the main guide, the Articles hub, and the Build Log index.