# Fable Synthesis — Comparative Review of the Six Explorations Ten Strands FY25–26 Annual Impact Report · exploration round · August 2026 This document reviews the six directions produced from the two approved creative leads — three River (**Aerial Current**, **River Ledger**, **Confluence**) and three California Plants (**California Bloom Map**, **Field Guide**, **Growing Canopy**) — against the seven agreed criteria, selects the strongest of each lead, and specifies what production should preserve, simplify, and commission. All six are browsable from the review launcher (`index.html`, keys 1–8). --- ## 1 · Scorecard Ratings: ● strong · ◐ adequate · ○ weak. Criteria from the synthesis prompt. | Criterion | R1 Aerial | R2 Ledger | R3 Confluence | P1 Bloom Map | P2 Field Guide | P3 Canopy | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1 · People stay central | ◐ | ● | ● | ● | ● | ◐ | | 2 · Donor skim < 2 min | ◐ | ● | ◐ | ◐ | ● | ○ | | 3 · Local→statewide legible | ◐ | ◐ | ● | ◐ | ○ | ● | | 4 · Clean PDF translation | ◐ | ● | ◐ | ◐ | ● | ○ | | 5 · Mobile order complete | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | | 6 · Optimistic + credible | ● | ● | ● | ◐ | ● | ● | | 7 · Accessible WordPress by Oct 16 | ◐ | ● | ◐ | ◐ | ● | ○ | Notes behind the marks: - **R1 Aerial Current** is the most cinematic and emotionally charged direction — the drenched deep-water field with photographic "landings" is genuinely striking — but its long dark passages slow the skim, the scroll-drawn spine is scenery rather than structure, and its print expression requires a full light-mode reinterpretation. It photographs beautifully; it reads more slowly than a funder in a hurry deserves. - **R2 River Ledger** is the only direction where the organizing metaphor *is* the reading experience: the current is a ledger, each bend is an entry, and skimming six headlines takes about thirty seconds. Inline expansion (native `details`) beats dialogs for both accessibility and print. Its risk is the inverse of its strength — without disciplined photography and generous scale it could drift toward utilitarian. - **R3 Confluence** tells the systems-change story better than anything else in the round: five colored strands (a direct Ten Strands identity nod) visibly braid, carry each story, and physically merge into the momentum band. Its costs are real: the braid SVG needs per-breakpoint tuning, color-as-meaning demands care (the key/legend is mandatory, never color alone), and the diagonal energy fights the skim slightly. - **P1 California Bloom Map** delivers the geographic promise of the theme and the map+index dual affordance is the correct accessibility pattern. But the map is the highest-maintenance artifact in the round (marker collision management, region accuracy sensitivities, an annual re-layout as stories change), and on mobile it demotes to decoration — meaning the flagship visual is absent where half the audience reads. - **P2 Field Guide** is the strongest people-first structure of the six: every entry leads with a person, states "what bloomed" in one bold sentence, and the specimen-plate grammar (`No. 01–06`, Observed / Habitat / Cultivated with) is a *named system*, not scaffolding. It prints almost verbatim. Its weakness is criterion 3: a catalog shows instances, not convergence. - **P3 Growing Canopy** owns the best single idea of the round — *scroll position as altitude*, soil to sunlight — and the reveal is memorable. But the memorability is the cost: the arc only pays off if you traverse it, so skimming fights the concept; mid-gradient text needs constant contrast management; and the print adaptation is a reinterpretation, not a translation. ## 2 · Selections ### Strongest River: **R2 · River Ledger** It wins four of seven criteria outright (skim, print, mobile, schedule) and loses none badly. It is the direction most likely to survive contact with real content — late quotes, missing photos, an eighth story added in September — because entries are structural, not compositional. For an audience of funders who decide in two minutes, the ledger *is* the pitch. **Design rules to preserve** - One continuous blue current, drawn at constant weight, running the full length of the story section; every entry physically attached to it. The line never becomes decoration — if it doesn't connect entries, it doesn't appear. - Mile-marker grammar (`Mile 01…06`) as the report's single numbered system. No other section gets numbers. - Three-layer skim per entry, in this order: meta line (name · role · place · program) → headline sentence → expand affordance. The headline must carry the outcome on its own. - Inline expansion with native `details`/`summary`; no modal for stories. `beforeprint` opens all entries. - White field, ink text, blue structure; orange and yellow reserved for markers, pull quotes, and the donate act. - "What your support made possible:" appears verbatim inside every opened entry. - Gauge-readings momentum block stays a ruled list, never a metric-card strip; every figure keeps its source label. **Simplify for production** - Drop the hero's animated bend SVG if timeline pressure appears — the drawn current in the story section carries the concept alone. - The per-entry accent color (`--bend`) can collapse to two alternating accents without loss. - Entry-detail two-column layout can become single-column (photo above text) everywhere, not just mobile, to cut breakpoint QA. **Desktop content map** (widths: content max 1280px, reading column ~720px) ``` ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Sticky masthead · anchors · Donate │ ├──────────────────────────┬─────────────────────┤ │ H1 Local Ripples, │ Hero photo │ │ Lasting Waves + deck │ "Mile 00" caption │ │ [Read the river ↓] │ │ ├──────────────────────────┴─────────────────────┤ │ Why a river? Why education? (2-col prose) │ │ Leadership line + attribution │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ IMPACT YOU MADE POSSIBLE │ │ ○──Mile 01── meta / headline / [Full story +] │ │ │ └─ (open: photo | story, quote) │ │ ○──Mile 02── … (× 6–8 entries) │ │ ○──Mile 06── │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ GAUGE READINGS · ruled 4-row list, blue field │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Supporter quote │ Donate close + CTA │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Financials · donors · partners · staff/boards │ │ (standard sections, thin current as rule) │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ``` **Mobile content map**: identical order, single column; the current moves to a slim left rail (~3.4rem) with compact mile chips; entry details stack photo-first; gauge rows become stacked figure-over-caption; nothing depends on the rail being visible. **Component list** 1. Masthead (logo, anchor nav, Donate) — sticky, one breakpoint 2. Hero split (headline block + captioned photo) 3. Prose duet (2-col intro) + leadership line 4. Ledger rail (continuous current + mile chip) 5. Ledger entry (`details`): meta line, headline, expand pill, detail grid (figure + body + pull quote + fine print) 6. Gauge reading row (figure + caption + source) 7. Supporter quote block 8. Donate close 9. End-matter sections (financials table, donor roll columns, partner list, staff/boards) 10. Print sheet styles **Motion spec** (all 180–450ms, ease-out quart; full reduced-motion fallbacks) - Hero current: single stroke draw on load, 1.6s, once. Reduced motion: pre-drawn. - Entry expand: 350ms opacity+8px rise on the detail block; chevron 45° rotate 250ms. Reduced: instant. - Mile chip: on entry scroll-into-view, chip border warms from rule-gray to blue, 300ms, once per session. Reduced: static blue. - No parallax, no looping ambient motion anywhere. **Print adaptation strategy** The ledger prints as itself. `@media print`: hide chrome, force all `details` open (JS `beforeprint` already in prototype), current becomes a 2pt rule with mile chips, entries break-inside avoid, blue momentum field inverts to white with ink figures. The PDF is the same document at 11pt — this is the direction's decisive advantage and why it fits the "PDF spins off after the site" schedule. **Assets to commission** - No illustration commission required. Needs: one strong horizontal hero photograph (existing library viable), one photo per story at ~1200px (mostly existing), and a photo-treatment pass (consistent crop/tone). Optional: a designer's refinement of the mile-chip and bend geometry as SVG — days, not weeks. ### Strongest Plants: **P2 · Field Guide** The most person-centered structure in the round, with a genuinely ownable editorial voice ("Observed · Habitat · Cultivated with · What bloomed"), near-verbatim print translation, and the lowest technical risk of the three Plants directions. The bloom marks are designed geometry, not clip art, and they scale from favicon to chapter icon. **Design rules to preserve** - The specimen grammar is sacred and appears *only* here: `No. NN`, four labeled fields, "What bloomed:" in poppy. It is the report's one named system. - Person photo always larger than the bloom mark. Flowers are marginalia; people are the plates. - Every bloom mark is bespoke geometry per story (network-bloom for the network, twin leaves for the pair, branching form for the leader) — visibly one family, never repeated identically. - The "flowers are designed marks, not botanical records" disclaimer stays, satisfying the species-accuracy constraint by construction. - White plates on thin rules; bright green + poppy as the guide's two inks; gold only inside marks and the momentum block. - Inline `details` field notes; `beforeprint` opens all. **Simplify for production** - The six bloom marks can launch as three forms used twice; grow the set later. - Hero specimen animation (stem draw + petal open) can ship as a static mark. - The plate's three-column desktop grid (No./mark · photo · body) can drop to two columns (mark inline with title) with minimal loss. **Desktop content map** ``` ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Sticky masthead · anchors · Donate │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Guide cover: series line, H1, deck, │ │ specimen mark, [Open the guide ↓] (centered) │ ├───────────────────────────┬────────────────────┤ │ How to read this guide │ Legend card │ │ (theory of change prose) │ Observed/Habitat/… │ │ Leadership line │ │ ├───────────────────────────┴────────────────────┤ │ IMPACT YOU MADE POSSIBLE │ │ ── No.01 mark │ photo │ name+role │ │ │ │ specimen fields │ │ │ │ WHAT BLOOMED + note ▸ │ │ ── No.02 (mirrored) … (× 6–8 plates) │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ RANGE & DISTRIBUTION · ruled list, green field │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Supporter quote │ Donate close │ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ End matter (financials, donors, partners…) │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ``` **Mobile content map**: cover → how-to (legend below prose) → plates stacked (No.+mark row, photo, body) → range list stacked → supporter/donate → end matter. Already fully linear; zero content behind the visuals. **Component list** 1. Masthead · 2. Guide cover hero · 3. How-to duet + legend card · 4. Plate (entry number, bloom mark SVG, figure, specimen `dl`, bloomed statement, `details` field note) · 5. Range row · 6. Supporter quote · 7. Donate close · 8. End matter · 9. Print styles **Motion spec** - Cover specimen: stem draw 1s → petals scale-open 700ms, once on load. Reduced: static. - Plate bloom marks: scale .5→1 + fade, 550ms, when plate enters viewport, once. Reduced: static. - Field-note expand: 350ms rise; chevron rotate. Reduced: instant. - Hover on marks: gentle 1.08 scale, 200ms. Nothing loops. **Print adaptation strategy** Each plate becomes a full page (photo, fields, note printed open); bloom marks become chapter icons; the legend prints inside the front cover; range list inverts to white. Structure is already page-shaped — translation, not redesign. **Assets to commission** - The one real commission of either selection: a designer pass on the bloom-mark family (6–8 marks, single geometric system). Small, contained scope — an illustrator-week, not a campaign. Photography: one portrait-leaning image per story; the current library covers prototype needs but 2–3 stories (Anne, CYCP, SCCYCI) deserve dedicated shots if any budget exists. ## 3 · Hybrid recommendation — one, and only because it is materially stronger **"Ledger to the Sea": River Ledger structure × Confluence's merge moment.** R2's only real weakness is criterion 3 — the ledger shows sequence, not convergence. R3's braid solves exactly that, and its mechanism is cheap to graft: give each ledger entry's mile chip and accent one of the five strand colors, then, at the transition into the momentum section, let the single blue current fan into the five colored strands that visibly merge into the full-width band carrying the gauge readings (R3's `merge-lines` component, already built). Print carries it as colored margin rules joining a five-color band on the momentum spread — also already prototyped. This is not splitting the difference: it is one bounded component (one SVG band + a color token per entry) added to the winning structure, and it converts the ledger's weakest criterion into a strength while preserving every skim/print/schedule advantage. No other hybrid in the round passes that bar — in particular, grafting the Canopy gradient onto the Field Guide was considered and rejected (it reintroduces Canopy's contrast-management cost for atmosphere, not comprehension). ## 4 · What carries forward regardless of selection - The three-layer skim pattern (meta → headline → expand) tested well in every direction that used it; make it the site-wide story contract. - "What your support made possible" as a literal, repeated sentence is the donor frame doing its job — keep it verbatim in each story. - Native `details` beat dialogs in every criterion that matters here (a11y, print, WordPress); reserve dialogs for nothing. - All six directions kept the momentum data as labeled, sourced, editorial figures — hold that line against any late-stage "make it a dashboard" pressure. - Prototype-data labeling (`PROTOTYPE DATA`, `TBD`) must survive until final FY25–26 content lands; the labels are load-bearing for credibility with this audience. *Prototypes: `concepts/river-ledger/` and `concepts/plants-field-guide/` (selections), with the merge component in `concepts/river-confluence/`. Review all eight from `index.html`.*