2.3 KiB
2.3 KiB
balenciaga-post-2017 — Balenciaga (post-Demna era)
- School: Brutalist / Raw
- Vibe: Default browser styling weaponized, Helvetica at absurd scale, anti-luxury luxury
- Best for: Fashion / counter-culture / fragrance brands, "we're too cool to design this" positioning
- Touchstone: balenciaga.com (any 2018+ snapshot via Wayback), Vetements campaigns, post-2017 luxury anti-design
Palette
- Ink:
#000000 - Ground:
#FFFFFF - One muted off-white surface:
#F5F4F0 - No color. None. If a color appears it's in a single photograph and never as a UI element.
Typography
- Display & body: Helvetica or Arial — all weights, all sizes, only this one family
- Headlines often set in all-caps at hero scale (140px+)
- Body type small — 11–13px
- Mixing weight is fine; mixing family is not
Spacing: 8 / 16 / 24 / 40 — restrained, but not luxurious-spacious; more "we didn't bother to soften it"
Radius: 0
Shadow: none
Motion: none — pages don't animate. Hover at most changes underline.
Signature moves
- All-caps Helvetica headlines at extreme scale, tightly tracked, often left-aligned hard against the page edge
- Product photography is editorial / fashion-style — model + product, harsh lighting, awkward poses; never the smiling-stock-model pattern
- Navigation is plain text links, sometimes just a vertical list at the top of the page
- Captions and metadata stripped to minimum (model name, designer, location)
- No buttons styled as buttons — CTAs are underlined text links
Avoid
- Any font other than Helvetica / Arial
- Color
- Polished UI affordances (rounded buttons, drop shadows, hover effects)
- Decorative anything
AI prompt seed
Fashion editorial photograph, single model against a plain off-white #F5F4F0 backdrop, harsh direct flash, awkward static pose, deadpan expression, 4:5.
Don't use when
- The brand has no fashion / counter-culture claim — recipe will read as cosplay
- The audience expects to be "sold to" — Balenciaga's recipe ignores the audience on purpose
- Conversion is critical — this recipe converts the in-group, not the casual visitor
Same school — Brutalist / Raw:
are-na·bloomberg-businessweek-turley
Browse all 25 recipes: INDEX.md