This file archives the design alternatives we considered and rejected during the Cortex app brand art-direction phase. Nothing here is active spec — everything here lost to a better option. Preserved for portfolio reference, future audits, and the record of how the final decisions were reached. Active spec lives in app-brand-addendum.html v3.
Three directions were evaluated for the app body typeface system. Option B (DM Sans everywhere) was selected by the founder.
Option B: DM Sans everywhere. DM Sans carries brand identity from web into app; held up at 11pt on Retina after A/B review. The full spec is in §4 and §4b of app-brand-addendum.html.
SF Pro Text vs. DM Sans rendered at app type scale. The comparison was the decision artifact — seeing both families in context at 10–13pt.
| Style | SF Pro Text (system) | DM Sans (brand) |
|---|---|---|
| rowTitle 13pt · 500 | Always use guard let, not if let | Always use guard let, not if let |
| rowDetail 12pt · 400 | Procedural rule — added 3 days ago | Procedural rule — added 3 days ago |
| metadata 11pt · 400 | cortex/ · 2 days ago · 0.82 confidence | cortex/ · 2 days ago · 0.82 confidence |
| sectionHeader 10pt · 700 · ALL CAPS | Working Memory — 4 items | Working Memory — 4 items |
| timestamp 11pt · 400 | 14 minutes ago | 14 minutes ago |
SF Pro Text is hinted specifically for macOS rendering at 11–13pt. At 1x density (non-Retina displays, Remote Desktop, screenshots), it holds its weight and spacing exactly. It inherits Dynamic Type, participates in accessibility size scaling automatically, and renders with zero additional infrastructure cost. The tradeoff is legibility-over-personality — SF is invisible by design. In a tool that surfaces in every Claude session, invisibility may be a feature rather than a bug.
DM Sans has stronger brand identity — its slightly round, geometric character distinguishes Cortex from every other macOS tool at a glance. At 13pt it reads cleanly. At 11pt, browser rendering of DM Sans is softer than SF, particularly at 1x display density where hinting matters most. The rendering gap closes on Retina. Requires bundling the font files (~90KB) and registering them in the app — the P0 infrastructure item that must land before any font-sensitive P1/P2 work begins.
Why B won: Brand consistency across the full type system outweighs the 1x rendering risk — Cortex’s target user is almost exclusively on Retina MacBooks where the rendering gap closes. DM Sans was already doing real work (chips, section headers, onboarding); this locks it as the single body system instead of a split spec. Option C’s hybrid was the initial designer recommendation but introduced a two-typeface complexity that B avoids cleanly.