Four numerals

Four numerals are the agenda: 3 4 5 6 stand across the viewport at poster scale, each one the day's own clock, filled with that day's hours and standing on its own Austin ground, so the shape of the programme is read before a single title is. There are no day tabs anywhere on the site; the numeral you are on is the chapter, the ruler and the scope of any question.

The story

The first second is four flat colour bands, limestone, Barton Springs teal, dusk orange and Sunset Red granite, each carrying a black outlined numeral about 450 px tall. All four are set in one instance and on one clock: a single labelled ruler in the Monday band prints 08, 12, 16 and 20, and its hour ticks carry on across every seam, so the four days compare at a glance. Inside every numeral the day is drawn from 08:00 to 21:00: a solid black band for every slot with a speaker, a hatched band for lunch, breaks and receptions, nothing where nothing happens. Monday's 3 is dense in the morning and hatched late into the evening reception; Thursday's 6 is solid only in its top third and hollow below 12:30, which is the half day, told by the letterform. The outline is the union of the glyph's contours, so no overlap ever draws a seam across a counter.

The facts line runs along the top edge on the band grid, one fact per band: ETS27 · Energy Thought Summit, Free Your Mind, Austin, Texas · May 3–6, 2027 at the reading size, and Tickets. Under the four numerals runs the composer, a 2 px rule with a caret: type in the Monday band, three suggestion verbs on the rule in the Tuesday and Wednesday bands. Under the rule the fork's other verb, scroll, carries its table of contents in the Monday band, and the asked line sits under the 6 in the Thursday band: "Is Thursday a half day? Yes, the 6 ends at 12:30." The bottom of the screen is left to the four grounds.

Scrolling takes one breath on black and then reads the days in order. FREE, YOUR and MIND are hairline words justified to one measure, each at the instance that fills it; while the screen rises into view each word enters at the condensed cut and widens as it climbs, and at rest the three always fill the measure. Then each chapter is one ground colour, the numeral scroll-locked on the left at the same instance the poster used (one 3, not two) and the sessions pouring down the right in Unsound's slot grammar. As the rows arrive the numeral compresses to the condensed cut, and every visible row is pinned by a one-pixel leader to its hour on the numeral's stroke: level out of the counter to the glyph's edge, then across to the row, never through the letter. The answer the mind has already composed sits directly under the Tuesday chapter, where answers insert. The people section is the same four numerals filled with the ETS26 speakers' real portraits, labelled as sample data, with the names and roles set as a running paragraph below. Tickets sit on a second black screen under a hairline 2027 fitted to the measure, with two tiers, two phases and the real Eventbrite prices. Place is honest: Austin, venue announced soon. The footer is the lab notebook: snapshot 2026-10-13, 77 speakers, 50 sessions, sample data.

Typography

• Anybody (Google Fonts, wdth 50–150, wght 100–900) is the only display and text face; Martian Mono (wdth 75–112, wght 100–800) is the instrument readout.
• Numerals: wght 900 at wdth 68.75, one instance shared by the poster, the chapters at rest, the answer and the people section. The poster sets all four on one glyph height, fitted by the narrowest band (about 450 px ink at 1440×900, never overflowing); chapter numerals are 580 px ink and compress from wdth 68.75 to 50 as their rows arrive; the answer's 4 is static at the shared instance.
• Theme words FREE, YOUR, MIND: wght 100, justified to the measure at one shared height set by the narrowest word at its widest (about 276 px ink at 1440: MIND at wdth 150, FREE about 146, YOUR about 137); 150 px on the phone. The year 2027 on the tickets screen: wght 100 fitted to the measure, static.
• Reading size 17 px: session titles wght 800, names wght 700, roles and descriptions wght 300, the dates and city in the facts line wght 800 at wdth 115, the mind's say line wght 400 at wdth 125 (the mind speaks wide), the composer input wght 500 at wdth 62 (typing is compressed).
• Label size 11 px: Anybody wght 600 uppercase tracked +0.09 em for the facts, kickers, tracks, format badges, place tags, tags and the two fork verbs; Martian Mono wght 400 tracked +0.06 em only where an instrument speaks: hour marks on the ruler, session times, prices (wdth 112, wght 800), the source footnote and the state lines.
• Two text sizes, 17 and 11; display sizes come from the fit, and display leading is the glyph itself.

Colour world (hex)

• Limestone #EDE8DC: Monday and the 3; also people, place and the footer.
• Barton Springs #288C7D: Tuesday and the 4; also the composed answer, which lives under the 4.
• Dusk #E8782A: Wednesday and the 5.
• Sunset Red granite #CD7C77: Thursday and the 6.
• Ink #111111 on all four grounds (4.6:1 on the teal, 6.4:1 on the dusk, 6.3:1 on the granite, 14:1 on limestone); hatch lines in the same ink.
• Black #0E0E0E with limestone type for the two breath screens (theme, tickets).
• No gradient, no accent, no tint, no photograph anywhere except inside the people numerals. The four grounds are held at 100 %; over the poster the fixed facts strip carries the same four grounds, so the numerals slide under the facts instead of through them.

Layout grammar

• 1440×900 first screen: four full-height bands; the facts line fixed along the top edge, one fact per band, aligned to the band gutters and clear of every seam; per band a head line (day, session count), the ruler or its ticks and the numeral, a foot line (start → end, "open the 3 ↓"), the block centred in the band; then the composer rule across the full width (type in band 1, suggestions in bands 2 and 3), and under it the scroll verb with its contents in band 1 and the asked line in band 4; the bottom 100 px stay bare.
• Page order: poster, the breath, Monday, Tuesday, answer 01 (asked under the 4), Wednesday, Thursday, people, tickets, place. About 13,600 px at 1440×900.
• Chapters and the answer: a 46/54 grid with 48 px gutters; the numeral sticky at 64 px with the composer line under it; the rows column opens with a kicker (date, count, hours, "every slot on both pass tiers", the sample-data flag) and the day's one-line summary.
• Slot grammar per row: time in mono, format in a 1 px box, track in small caps, title heavy at the reading size, people as heavy names with light organisations and a flagged moderator; names and "moderated by" plus the name never split across lines. The pass tier is printed once in the kicker, and a row carries a tag only when it differs (Evening). Quiet slots (registration, meals, breaks, receptions) collapse to a single light line. Hairline rules between rows, no cards, no radius, no icons.
• The answer's rows answer the question asked: the time and the people, no titles (the titles are in the chapter directly above).
• The hour axis is 08:00 → 21:00 on every numeral so the days compare; adjacent sessions are separated by 1.5 px gaps so a run of 10-minute slots reads as bars, not a block.
• Leaders: from each visible row's start hour on the numeral's actual outline, level to the glyph's box edge, then to the row's time line, clamped to the viewport and redrawn per frame; the hovered row's leader thickens to 2 px.
• Below 1100 px the poster folds into two by two. Phone at 390: the facts set as two lines (brand and theme; city, dates and tickets), then the two-by-two poster with all four days in the first screen (one labelled ruler per row, the hour axis vertical, nothing rotates), then the composer with its three suggestions as three lines, the scroll verb and the asked line; chapters put the numeral above its rows and drop the leaders, the hour returning to the row; the theme words stack justified to the width; people, tickets and place become one column.

Motion and life

• Load: the bands pour into the numerals from above, staggered by hour (260 ms plus 42 ms per band on a spring curve); settled by about 1.5 s, so the captured frame is the poster.
• Scroll: each chapter numeral's width axis follows chapter progress (shared instance → wdth 50), the leaders follow; each theme word enters at the condensed cut and widens to fill the measure as it climbs; one style write per frame per numeral, no scroll library, no inertia.
• The composer caret blinks; the asked line holds its first question for 14 s and then rotates three moderated questions every 8 s.
• The fixed facts line takes the ground of the section beneath it and flips to limestone ink on the black screens, so rows pass under it cleanly.
• Reduced motion: no pour, no squeeze, no widening, every element at its rest state, and the asked line keeps its first question. Nothing else moves: no marquee, no cursor follower, no weight wiggle, no blur, no bloom.

The fork and the mind

• The fork is printed as two verbs that weigh differently. "scroll ↓ the four days in order" is a label with its table of contents (the standard route is the page read top to bottom: days, people, tickets, place). "type" is the 2 px rule under the numerals, the heaviest line on the page (the mind rearranges the page). No two equal cards anywhere.
• The composer is that rule with a caret and three suggestion verbs along it: who speaks tuesday (under the 4) · what does a pass cost · where is it. In every chapter a second rule under the numeral reads "ask inside the 3", because the numeral you are on is the scope of the question.
• The omnipresent assistant lives in the chrome: the fixed facts line and the asked line under the 6 that answers from the data (is Thursday a half day, when early prices end, where the venue is), set as a question and an answer in the page's own grammar rather than a widget.
• One answer is already composed on the page as section 01, directly under the Tuesday chapter: "asked under the 4 · scope: Tuesday, May 4", the question "Who's speaking Tuesday" as the heading, a 43-word say line in the wide axis, the eleven Tuesday speaker slots as time and people, and a mono source footnote. The material change is the 4 itself, re-filled by the question so that only the slots with a speaker stay solid and the meals and receptions turn hollow; a mono state line under it reads "re-filled by the question · speaker slots solid · meals and receptions hollow". Thinking, when wired, is the bands re-filling and the leaders re-drawing, never a shimmer or a dot row.
• Older answers stay as numbered sections under their numerals; the standard route and the mind share one grid, one type system and one set of grounds.

What to build next

• Wire the composer to the mind: an answer inserts as the next numbered section under the scoped numeral; the bands animate between fills; the suggestion verbs become the three most-asked questions on that chapter.
• Rows expand in place (description, portraits, add-to-calendar) without leaving the chapter; the leader thickens for the open row as it does on hover.
• Replace the track line with the room once the venue is announced; add "now" as a moving hairline on the ruler during the summit, driven by Austin time.
• Subset Anybody for the numerals and year with the API's text parameter; precompute the glyph ink metrics and outline profiles instead of the runtime raster scan; move the width-axis binding to CSS scroll-driven animations when named view timelines on SVG text prove reliable.
• Accessibility: focus outlines and a skip link to the composer are in; next, announce the answer section to screen readers when it inserts and give each numeral a text equivalent of its day's shape.

Risks

• The Exat clone: if the hour bands, the shared clock and the leaders were ever dropped the page would collapse into a type specimen with an agenda bolted on. The data inside the counters, the leaders and the Austin grounds are the concept, not decoration.
• Mono as garnish (tell 4): mono is confined to times, hours, prices, the source and the state lines; badges and place tags are Anybody. Keep it there as the site grows.
• Legibility versus scale: the poster's instance (wdth 68.75) is the narrowest at which every counter stays open with the bars switched off; a narrower cut buys height and loses the 5 and the 6. The chapter squeeze ends at wdth 50, where the 5's bowl closes to a slit, which is acceptable only because by then the day's rows have been read.
• Real portraits cropped by a glyph may read as playful to a utility executive; the fallback is the same numerals filled with the names in small type.
• The page is about 13,600 px at 1440×900 because the agenda is all there; it should be measured on hotel wifi.
• The asked questions are written for the mockup; they must come from moderated real questions before shipping.

The round-one version the jurors scored is kept unchanged in v1/.