Bandmakers — the polish pass

Every screen measured against the Apple design skill and the researched industry standards. What changed, what rule it broke, and why it is better.

The texture was being used as wallpaper

apple-design §15 · hierarchy from weight + size + leading — not from repeating one style

Space Mono caps was on 113 places plus all 44 buttons — weekdays, durations, ticket counts, statuses, every button in both apps. theme.ts already said “use sparingly… section labels only”; the code did the opposite. A strong texture repeated everywhere stops reading as character and starts reading as a template. It is now on 54 places, all of them genuine section headings.

Numbers were a grid of boxes

dataviz · a boxed tile grid is the stock dashboard look; rows let values line up

Four bordered tiles in a 2×2 all fight for attention, so nothing reads as more important than anything else. As rows, the labels line up in one column and the figures in another, so they can actually be compared — and the money section now leads with one headline figure instead of four of equal weight.

Choosing something painted the row black

apple-design §16.4 familiarity · iOS marks a choice, it does not repaint it

The selected row inverted to solid ink. On a list of seven branches that is a full-width black bar shouting at you — and an inverted row is a spreadsheet highlight, not a considered choice. iOS picks with a checkmark and leaves the row alone; the weight change on the label carries the rest.

Me was doing two unrelated jobs

apple-design §16.6 simplicity · burying everything in one place looks minimal but is not simple

The staff Me tab was your profile and the console for running a music academy: identity, a wall of 41 permission words, then sixteen admin rows under three headings. Splitting them is the fix; restyling the same pile would not have been. Sixteen rows moved to their own screen, in five short groups — a group stops being scannable past about six rows.

Three sections, and only two looked alike

apple-design §16.4 familiarity · things that look the same must behave the same

Photos & clips had three parallel sections — but two were wrapped in a card and one was a bare button. It also never said whether you had any clips, so it failed wayfinding: a screen must answer “what’s there?”. And every heading repeated the button beneath it (YOUR PHOTO over Add a photo), which is the weak-mapping smell. It is a list of three things you can add, each with a state — so it is rows.

Text you could not properly read

WCAG 2.2 · 4.5:1 for body text — measured against every surface, not the easiest one

Contrast was calculated for every text colour against paper, card and paperDeep. Three failed: the grey under every name and hint at 3.25:1, the warning colour carrying “4 unpriced” at 3.54:1, and the yellow accent at 2.98:1 — failing even the large-text bar, so the word we chose to highlight was the least legible thing on screen. All now clear 4.5:1.

What else changed

smaller fixes, same rules

Where this came from

two research passes, ~300 cited rules

What I could not do

honest limits

The bug I would not have found by looking

RESEARCH_STANDARDS E14/E24 · loading must never be mistakable for empty

The ten-step audit, run in full

from RESEARCH_STANDARDS.md