The UnderstoryNotes from the understory.A season of observations from the chestnut plots, published in chapters.Begin the first entryEntry 14 · The chestnut plotRidge survey · AprilVol. III · Spring

Demo brand · a reader-supported field journal on Appalachian forest ecology

EditorialTier: Premium

Field Journal

A reading-first composition where evidence, texture, and observation carry the story.

Feeling: The visitor has opened a considered record, not a marketing funnel.
Composition: Editorial masthead → opening note → image-led chapters → annotated evidence → reflective close.
Motion: Curtain-like section reveals, gentle image settling, and quiet line growth between chapters.
Guardrail: Do not insert a generic SaaS hero, repeated three-card grids, or commerce CTAs without cause.
Best for: Publication · Field study · Artist story · Research narrative
Tier: Premium tier. This direction has a hand-built Builder template, so Builder renders its own composition, and it carries an extended build spec: section-by-section requirements, a type scale, an alternate palette and a motion spec.

Capability sources

react-bits
motion-primitives
launch-ui

The prompt works in any AI tool. Build this in Irie hands this direction’s agreement to Builder through a short-lived link, and Builder shows you what it imported before it generates. If that link cannot be created, Builder still opens with the prompt on your clipboard. The agreement is a structured irie.direction.v1 file you can also keep or feed to any tool that reads it.

Premium build spec

What premium means here.

Field Journal has a hand-built Builder template, so Builder renders this composition instead of the shared generic one. It also carries the build spec below, which travels inside the downloadable agreement.

Editorial masthead
The record's name, its subject, the date range it covers, and one line of standfirst. Set like a masthead, not a navigation bar.
Most often goes wrongIt degrades into a logo with a tagline. A masthead states what this record is about; a logo bar states who is publishing.
Opening note
One specific observation with a place and a time, written in the first person, 60-120 words.
Most often goes wrongA value proposition in disguise (“we help brands tell their story”), which kills the premise in the first paragraph.
Image-led chapters
Three to five chapters, each with one image at a different crop and scale plus a heading and two or three paragraphs. The rhythm must vary: full-bleed, then inset, then paired.
Most often goes wrongEvery chapter uses the same image size and the varied rhythm collapses into a blog roll.
Annotated evidence
Artefacts with captions that carry provenance: what it is, where it came from, when it was made or measured.
Most often goes wrongCaptions restate the heading instead of sourcing the artefact, so the evidence proves nothing.
Reflective close
What is still unresolved, and one quiet action — read the next entry, subscribe, get in touch.
Most often goes wrongA hard conversion block is bolted on and contradicts every page above it.

Type scale

Display: Serif at 2.75-4.25rem (44-68px), line-height 1.05. A masthead, not a poster: if the display size needs to shout to work, the direction is wrong for the subject.
Body: 18-19px serif at line-height 1.7, measure held strictly to 60-68ch. This is the one direction whose body face is the display face's sibling rather than a neutral sans, so the measure has to do the work the contrast usually does.
Meta: 12-13px sans, uppercase, tracking 0.14em, for datelines, folios, and captions. The sans is the annotation layer and must never set prose.

Alternate palette — Cold archive

Canvas#E6E7E2
Ink#1F2225
Signal#4C6B57

Use when the subject is scientific, coastal, or urban rather than earthen. The warm tan key makes lab notes and marine survey work look nostalgic; the cool paper keeps the same reading-first posture without the sepia.

Motion spec

Trigger: Section enters the viewport at 20% visibility, once per element.
Property: clip-path: inset(0 100% 0 0) to inset(0) on headings and hairline rules; opacity 0 to 1 with a 2px translateY on paragraphs.
Duration: 600ms headings, 700ms rules, 400ms paragraphs, staggered 180ms.
Easing: cubic-bezier(0.22, 0.61, 0.36, 1) — an even, page-turning curve with no overshoot, because a bounce in an archive reads as a toy.
Never moves: Images never parallax and captions never animate independently of the image they belong to. Once a chapter has been read, nothing in it moves; text at 68ch cannot be read on a surface that is still settling.

Anti-patterns

A three-card “what we do” grid dropped between chapters.
Justified text with hyphenation disabled, which opens rivers at 60ch.
A drop cap on every chapter. One, at the opening note, or none.
Every image cropped to the same 16:9; the variety of the record is the argument.
A sticky call-to-action bar riding down a long read.
Pull quotes invented from the body copy to fill a column.

Direction film

Watch it move.

An eight-second pass through Field Journal — the palette, the composition, and the motion language the prompt asks for.

Field JournalField Journal

What premium means here.

Editorial masthead

Opening note

Image-led chapters

Annotated evidence

Reflective close

Type scale

Alternate palette — Cold archive

Motion spec

Anti-patterns

Watch it move.

Related directions.

Human Signal

Light Archive

Night School

Tight Tolerance

Field Journal