# Mexican Graphic Vernacular — style guide for coding agents

> Generated from the Aesthetary record for **Mexican Graphic Vernacular**.
> Research: **Graded, not yet sourced** · Build guidance: recorded in 6 of 8 research dimensions.
> No source attached. 2 claims graded by our research brief.

## How to use this

Paste this file into your agent as context before asking it to design or build something in this visual language. It states what is established, what is our interpretation, and what nobody has established. Treat all three differently.

**The most important section is "Not researched yet".** Its purpose is to stop you and your agent inventing rules that sound right and are not recorded anywhere.

## What this language is

**Defining:** Framed compartments in relief line, frame weight as rank, saturated flat colour

**Recognise it by:** Relief-engraved linework with the heavy even weight and dense cross-hatching of type-metal and zinc printing, laid into bounded compartments with hand-painted signage lettering and fully saturated flat colour. The diagnostic condition is the compartment plus the relief line: the surface divides into framed cells each carrying one image and its caption, and the line weight is a printing constraint rather than a drawing choice. Pulp shares the cheap-print economics but not the compartment structure. Circus shares ornate wood-type display but organises a programme rather than a grid of cells.

**Family:** Rooted Traditions
**Era:** 19th-century, contemporary

## What it is not

Commonly confused with these. Getting the difference right matters more than getting the surface right:

- Pulp
- Circus

## Established rules

Grouped by what kind of claim each is. A requirement of the language and our own interpretation are not interchangeable.

**How to read each rule.** Every rule states two separate things, and neither stands in for the other:

- **Kind of claim** (the heading): Graded by our research brief · No source attached · From our catalogue entry · Graded by our research brief · No source attached · Our reading.
- **Evidence** (how it is established): Graded by our research brief · No source attached (`DOCUMENTED`) · From our catalogue entry (`SUPPORTED`) · Our reading (`CURATORIAL`) · Not researched yet (`UNKNOWN`) · No grade recorded (no grade in the record). Where a claim has its own canonical label, the Evidence line gives that label instead of the grade.
- **Product area**: which of the twelve areas the rule belongs to (Layout, Typography, Color, Imagery, Surface, Interface, Motion, Motif, Technique, Form, Hierarchy, Density), mapped from its raw area label in bold. "Context" means the rule is about the Aesthetic (its name, origin, lineage) rather than a part of the design. "Not mapped" means the raw area has no single area yet.
- The code in brackets is the `grade` field at `implementationConstraints.tokenRules.value.rules[].provenance.grade` in https://aesthetary.com/data/mexican-graphic-vernacular.json. "From our catalogue entry" means: Stated in Aesthetary’s existing catalogue entry. An outside source is named only where one is linked to the claim.

### Graded by our research brief · No source attached

_A research brief graded this documented, but no source is attached yet. A grade is not a source._

- **imagery** — Imagery: relief engraving.
  - Kind of claim: Graded by our research brief · No source attached · Evidence: Graded by our research brief · No source attached · Product area: Imagery

### From our catalogue entry

_Carried over from Aesthetary's original catalogue entry. The reasoning behind it was never recorded._

- **typography** — Typography: hand-painted signage.
  - Kind of claim: From our catalogue entry · Evidence: From our catalogue entry · Product area: Typography
- **color** — Colour: saturated.
  - Kind of claim: From our catalogue entry · Evidence: From our catalogue entry · Product area: Color
- **form / motif / surface / technique** — Relief line and compartment are free. Calavera imagery is restricted: usable only in its documented festival context, never as generic skull ornament.
  - Kind of claim: From our catalogue entry · Evidence: From our catalogue entry · Product area: not mapped

### Graded by our research brief · No source attached

_A research brief graded this documented, but no source is attached yet. A grade is not a source._

- **register** — Posada's calaveras were satire before they were festival imagery. La Calavera Garbancera mocked Mexicans who hid Indigenous roots to imitate European fashion; Rivera renamed and popularised her decades later, and the international profile came later still.
  - Kind of claim: Graded by our research brief · No source attached · Evidence: Graded by our research brief · No source attached · Product area: Context (not a design area)

### Our reading

- **hierarchy** — Rank by cell position and frame weight.
  - Kind of claim: Our reading · Evidence: Our reading · Product area: Hierarchy

## Positions by area

The overall position recorded for each area. "No overall position recorded" means rules exist for the area but no position above them; the rules still apply. It is not the same as "Not established", which means nobody has researched the area.

- **Layout** — Specified
- **Typography** — Specified
- **Color** — Specified
- **Imagery** — Specified
- **Technique** — Specified
- **Interface** — Outside this language. The area does not apply; this is not a gap in the research.

## Coverage — what has been looked at

One row per research dimension a research pass considered. "Not researched yet" (`UNKNOWN`) means exactly that; a dimension can carry an Aesthetary recommendation and still be unresearched, and those are different things.

| Research dimension | Evidence | Resolved by | Carries a rule |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Composition | Specified · Graded by our research brief | follows the recorded claim | yes |
| Typography | Specified · From our catalogue entry | follows the recorded claim | yes |
| Hierarchy | Specified · Our reading | Aesthetary decided | yes |
| Colour | Specified · From our catalogue entry | follows the recorded claim | yes |
| Density | Not specified by the source | Aesthetary decided | no |
| Imagery | Specified · Graded by our research brief | follows the recorded claim | yes |
| Form/motif/surface | Not researched yet | follows the recorded claim | yes |
| Motion | Not researched yet | Aesthetary decided | no |

Unresearched: Motion. Where a rule appears for one of these it is Aesthetary's implementation recommendation, not a property of the language, and its Evidence line above says so.

## Withheld — not missing

- Intent is withheld. What this language means, and to whom, is reserved for people with standing in the community it describes. Do not author it, do not infer it from the formal claims below, and do not treat its absence as permission.
- This record carries an open cultural review. Restrictions recorded here are protocol outputs, not style preferences, and nothing here closes it.

**A withholding is a decision, not a gap.** Do not complete it, do not work around it, and do not treat the formal claims above as a licence to infer what has been withheld.

## Not researched yet

Nobody has established a position for this language on:

- Surface
- Motion
- Motif
- Form

**Do not fill these in.** An absent position is absent research, not permission and not a blank for you to complete. If the work needs a decision in one of these areas, make it on other grounds and do not attribute it to this language.

## Grade your own work

14 checks: 7 mechanically testable, 6 needing a person to look, 0 needing a source Aesthetary does not hold, 1 with no recorded position. 2 further research dimensions produced no rule (Density, Motion). This rubric is silent on them. 1 context rule is listed apart: known about this Aesthetic, not something to check finished work against. Scores do not add up. A failure against a required rule and a departure from something we invented are not the same result, and no total should let them cancel.

### Recognition — does this read as the intended Aesthetic?

- **[visual_human · recognition signature · Evidence: No grade recorded]** Strip every logo, word and borrowed image out of your work, then show it to someone who knows the collection. Do they land on this Aesthetic? The signature to hold is: Relief-engraved linework with the heavy even weight and dense cross-hatching of type-metal and zinc printing, laid into bounded compartments with hand-painted signage lettering and fully saturated flat colour. The diagnostic condition is the compartment plus the relief line: the surface divides into framed cells each carrying one image and its caption, and the line weight is a printing constraint rather than a drawing choice. Pulp shares the cheap-print economics but not the compartment structure. Circus shares ornate wood-type display but organises a programme rather than a grid of cells.
  - _If it fails:_ The work may be competent and still read as a different Aesthetic, or as none. Nothing below matters until this passes.

### Fidelity — are its defining rules present?

- **[visual_human · Graded by our research brief · No source attached · Evidence: Graded by our research brief · No source attached]** Does your work hold this? Imagery: relief engraving.
  - _If it fails:_ The result is not this Aesthetic. This is a requirement of the language, not a preference.

### Implementation — were those rules translated appropriately into this medium?

- **[visual_human · From our catalogue entry · Evidence: From our catalogue entry]** Your work may depart from this — but knowingly, not by accident. Typography: hand-painted signage.
  - _If it fails:_ A defensible departure, and you should be able to say why you made it.
- **[visual_human · Our reading · Evidence: Our reading]** Your work may depart from this — but knowingly, not by accident. Rank by cell position and frame weight.
  - _If it fails:_ A defensible departure, and you should be able to say why you made it.
- **[visual_human · From our catalogue entry · Evidence: From our catalogue entry]** Your work may depart from this — but knowingly, not by accident. Colour: saturated.
  - _If it fails:_ A defensible departure, and you should be able to say why you made it.
- **[visual_human · From our catalogue entry · Evidence: From our catalogue entry]** Your work may depart from this — but knowingly, not by accident. Relief line and compartment are free. Calavera imagery is restricted: usable only in its documented festival context, never as generic skull ornament.
  - _If it fails:_ A defensible departure, and you should be able to say why you made it.

### Avoidance — known failure modes, neighbour drift, cloning

- **[mechanical · recorded failure mode · Evidence: No grade recorded]** Check your work against this: No calaveras as generic decoration.
  - _If it fails:_ A failure mode recorded in our research brief: recorded judgement about what weakens this Aesthetic, not a requirement of the language.
- **[mechanical · recorded failure mode · Evidence: No grade recorded]** Check your work against this: No Day of the Dead iconography outside its documented context.
  - _If it fails:_ A failure mode recorded in our research brief: recorded judgement about what weakens this Aesthetic, not a requirement of the language.
- **[mechanical · recorded failure mode · Evidence: No grade recorded]** Check your work against this: No explanatory copy about what the tradition means.
  - _If it fails:_ A failure mode recorded in our research brief: recorded judgement about what weakens this Aesthetic, not a requirement of the language.
- **[mechanical · recorded failure mode · Evidence: No grade recorded]** Check your work against this: No "fiesta" palette clichés.
  - _If it fails:_ A failure mode recorded in our research brief: recorded judgement about what weakens this Aesthetic, not a requirement of the language.
- **[mechanical · recorded failure mode · Evidence: No grade recorded]** Check your work against this: No treating a living tradition as a historical period.
  - _If it fails:_ A failure mode recorded in our research brief: recorded judgement about what weakens this Aesthetic, not a requirement of the language.
- **[mechanical · declared closure · Evidence: No grade recorded]** Check your work against this: Not open: authoring register-level meaning.
  - _If it fails:_ This one is closed, not open. The record says generation must not go here.
- **[mechanical · declared closure · Evidence: No grade recorded]** Check your work against this: Not open: decorative use of festival iconography..
  - _If it fails:_ This one is closed, not open. The record says generation must not go here.

### Accessibility — the Aesthetic preserved without its inaccessible practice

- **[unassessable · no recorded position · Evidence: Not researched yet (`UNKNOWN`)]** Does this Aesthetic conflict with any usability floor? Nobody has recorded one for it.
  - _If it fails:_ Nothing — and that is the problem. An unrecorded conflict is not an absent one. Hold AA on reading matter and decide the rest on other grounds.

### Context — known about this Aesthetic, not a check

Where the Aesthetic comes from, what it is called, how it sits among its neighbours. Use it to understand the work; do not score finished work against it.

- Posada's calaveras were satire before they were festival imagery. La Calavera Garbancera mocked Mexicans who hid Indigenous roots to imitate European fashion; Rivera renamed and popularised her decades later, and the international profile came later still. _(Graded by our research brief · No source attached · Evidence: Graded by our research brief · No source attached)_

**Not covered at all:** Density: Not specified by the source; Motion: Not researched yet. These research dimensions produced no rule, so there is no check. Treat them as unscored, never as passed and never as failed.

## Rules for the agent

1. Do not invent rules for any area listed under **Not researched yet**.
2. Do not treat an absent position as permission to do anything you like — say that the language has no position, and decide on other grounds.
3. Keep our interpretations separable from the language's own requirements. If asked to justify a choice, cite which kind of claim it came from.
4. If you need something this record does not contain, say so rather than producing a confident answer from the aesthetic's name.
5. When you self-score against "Grade your own work", score only checks marked `mechanical`. Declare `visual_human` and `evidence_dependent` checks unjudged rather than guessing, and never score an `unassessable` one.
6. Evidence "Not researched yet" (`UNKNOWN`) is never a failure. It means nobody researched the dimension, so departing from what is written there costs nothing and must not be reported as a defect. "No grade recorded" is not a grade either: do not treat it as our decision or as an outside source.

## Provenance

- Record: `mexican-graphic-vernacular` · status `draft` · research `partly_researched`
- Full structured record: https://aesthetary.com/data/mexican-graphic-vernacular.json
- Human-readable record: https://aesthetary.com/a/mexican-graphic-vernacular.html
- This file is a snapshot. The record may have changed since; check the page above.

_Aesthetary is an alpha. Where a page says nothing, nobody has done the work yet._