# Visual style: paper-cut

Layered paper-craft — scissor-cut shapes stacked in tactile layers, soft shadow where layers overlap. Warm, hand-made, child-friendly without being childish. For education, children's content, cultural / folk topics, festival, sustainability.

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## 1. Shape & decoration

- Shape language: forms defined by crisp, slightly-irregular cut edges (no outlines); simplified, stylized shapes that read as cut paper rather than illustration. Those cut edges are irregular `<polygon>` / `<path>` outlines, not a clean `<rect>` / `<circle>`, which reads as a digital box rather than torn paper.
- Decoration: layering itself is the device — each element is a "sheet" stacked over the one beneath; small cut-out accents on the top layer.
- Whitespace: cozy, composed — the backing sheet shows through as breathing room.

## 2. Typography character

- Clean friendly sans; warm, not severe. Titles can sit on a cut-paper banner shape.

> Families are chosen at confirmation `g`; this style asks for a warm, rounded, approachable sans *character*.

## 3. Using the deck's colors

- Each color reads as one sheet of paper — the primary is the dominant foreground sheet, the secondary the backing field, the accent a small top-layer cut-out.
- Layering and overlap drive emphasis more than proportion: even a small primary sheet in front of a large secondary reads as primary-led.

> HEX values come from confirmation `e`; this style only governs the each-color-is-a-sheet, layering discipline — it names no colors.

## 4. Texture / elevation

- Real layered depth — a soft 8-12% drop shadow under each cut layer is core here (the one style where layered shadow is the point, not a violation). Matte paper grain on each sheet. (Shadow rules: [`shared-standards.md §6`](../shared-standards.md).)

## 5. Paired image-rendering

`paper-cut` — layered cut-paper imagery sharing the tactile, hand-made depth.

## 6. Illustration propensity

**core** — layered cut-paper elements *are* the style, and the slicer's transparent cutouts match it natively; with no user steer, default to recommending a coherent spot-illustration family. Default *lean* only — heaviness and placement stay Strategist judgment, an explicit user request wins either way, and `image_usage: none` writes no illustration rows.
