Mr Call Designs visual formatting compliance skill — palette, type scale, page structure, and layout audits for the mcd site.

Jon says: “format this,” “format check,” “is this formatted right,” “audit the CSS,” “page formatting,” “squarespace formatting,” “John Pawson restraint,” “dark headers light paragraphs,” “Roman numeral sectioning,” “typography check,” or pastes HTML or CSS for review. This skill replaces the Format mode formerly in Ship.

01 · Operating Principle Color is never how hierarchy reads. Size and case do that work. Restraint is the brand. If the design needs a flourish to be understood, the design is wrong.

02 · Typeface Inter, weight 400, every surface. No bold. No italic. No serif. No weight changes. No second font. Hierarchy through size, case, and tracking — never weight, never color. Fallback: system sans-serif at 400.

03 · Case Headings and subheadings run UPPERCASE. Body and prose run sentence case. Captions, labels, and dates run UPPERCASE, tracked. The wordmark MR CALL DESIGNS runs UPPERCASE, 0.5em tracking.

04 · Gallery White #FFFFFF — page background. Confirmed.

05 · Parchment (Manila) #FAF9F6 — accent blocks, index/TOC boxes. Confirmed 2026-07-28, supersedes the prior #F2F0E9 provisional reading.

06 · Soft Concrete #DEDEDE — borders, rules, dividers between blocks. Confirmed 2026-07-28, supersedes the prior #BABABA reading.

07 · Body Grey #5A5A5A — paragraphs, excerpts. Provisional — closest visual read of the 4th Site Styles swatch, hex not yet confirmed.

08 · Meta Grey #9A9690 — captions, dates, labels. Carried from v2, not yet re-confirmed.

09 · Charcoal #1D1B1B — primary text, nav, buttons. Confirmed.

10 · Production Type Scale Base size 16px. Heading 1 2rem, Heading 2 1.1rem, Heading 3 0.8rem, Heading 4 1rem — all at 3rem line-height, 0em letter-spacing, no transform. Paragraph 1 1rem, Paragraph 2 0.8rem, Paragraph 3 0.6rem — all at 1.5rem line-height, 0em letter-spacing, no transform. Button (tertiary): 0.18em letter-spacing, uppercase, exact size unconfirmed — the picker read a slider step of “7/7,” not a literal rem or px figure.

01 · Buttons Hollow only. 1px Charcoal outline, transparent fill, Charcoal text. On hover: fills solid Charcoal, text inverts to Gallery White. No color besides ink and white — ever, on any button, on any page, including BUY / CTA buttons on review pages. Button text: Inter 400, uppercase, 0.18em letter-spacing. No filled buttons anywhere — the old Signal Red BUY button treatment is retired in full.

02 · Link Behavior Default: no underline, color inherits surrounding type. Hover dims to 65% opacity — that is the only signal of interactivity. Opt-in only via class="link-underline" for rare citations, mailto links, and index items.

03 · Block Bullets Strip Squarespace’s default black-square category bullets. Categories read as plain tracked text, never a filled marker.

01 · Layout Single column. Maximum text width 640px web, 6.6 inches print. Left-aligned body. No sticky rails. No two-column heroes. No card backgrounds.

02 · Form Fields No border-radius. No box. Single 1px Soft Concrete bottom border. Transparent background. Input text 0.6rem Meta Grey, 0.10em tracking.

03 · Print Margins US Letter: 0.85in all sides. A4: 22mm all sides. Bleed: add 0.125in per side.

04 · What Never To Do No bold, no italic except direct quotation, no serif, no second font. No filled buttons, no accent color as infrastructure, no shadows, no gradients, no animations. No pure black #000 — use Charcoal #1D1B1B. No tracking on body text. No card backgrounds, no two-column heroes, no sticky rails. No fake lifestyle staging. No link underlines without the opt-in class. No black square category bullets.

01 · Review Ledger Exception Confirmed 2026-07-28. The Review Ledger template — hero score, pull quote, Construction / Design / Comfort / Scorecard slabs — is exempt from the typeface and weight rules above, for two elements only: the pull quote runs in Playfair Display, italic, weight 400; the hero score and scorecard numerals run at weight 600, not 400. This exception applies only to the Review Ledger. Every other surface stays Inter 400, no second font, no weight changes.

02 · Legal Ledger Pattern Confirmed 2026-07-28. Legal and governance pages (Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Accessibility) use a scoped wrapper — a single ID plus a universal selector rule forcing font-family, font-weight 400, font-style normal, and letter-spacing 0 with !important — to fight Squarespace style bleed. Content chunks into blocks: 4em top padding, 1px Soft Concrete top rule, none on the first block. Each block opens with an uppercase, 0.05em-tracked block title. Roman-numeral sectioning applies where a document has multiple registries. The first paragraph in an opening block can carry the lede treatment — Charcoal instead of Body Grey, reserved for one framing sentence. Enumerated points lead with a bold inline tag — 01 · Label — followed by prose in the same paragraph, not a separate heading.

03 · Index Matrix / TOC Box Manila background, 1px Soft Concrete border, 2.5em padding. A small uppercase label in Meta Grey sits above a stack of plain links in Charcoal — no underline by default, underline on hover only.

04 · Updated Ledger Footer A closing metadata block: stacked uppercase caption lines in Meta Grey, each on its own line, no bullets or separators between them.

Format runs after Audit passes and before Ship’s Publish mode. If Format returns REWRITE, fix the CSS or HTML before Publish runs. Run every check against a page or block before calling it done:

MCD Format Check
Palette — pass or fail, list any wrong hex codes used.
Type Scale — pass or fail, list any size violations. On Review Ledger pages, Playfair Display italic on the pull quote and weight 600 on the hero score and scorecard numerals are pass, not violations.
Link Discipline — pass or fail, list any unauthorized underlines.
Button Fill — pass or fail, list any filled or colored button.
Category Bullets — pass or fail, note if black squares are present.
Layout — pass or fail, note any banned moves.
Verdict — one sentence.
Required Fixes — numbered list, or none if pass.

This skill does not write the review, does not audit doctrine or voice, does not run the pre-publish Section 27 gate, and does not attach SEO metadata or run publish QA. Those live in Review, Audit Bible mode, Audit Gate mode, and Ship, respectively.

01 · Body Grey Hex Exact hex for the Body Grey swatch, the 4th in the Site Styles picker — currently a visual estimate, unconfirmed.

02 · Button Size Exact button size value — the picker showed a slider at step “7/7,” not a literal rem or px figure.

Continued reference to this skill after a recorded date shift below confirms the update is in effect.