is
A design brief for the first version of rhodi.ai — the outward-facing home of the Rhodia1 peer sourcing practice. Read it fully before beginning. The references are not a mood board. They are a lineage. Understand the distinction before you touch a pixel.
rhodi.ai is
rhodi.ai is the workshop to markcharmer.com's finished room. Where markcharmer.com is quiet, permanent, and uncoupled from social performance, rhodi.ai is the place where the practice is visible in process. It holds the briefing materials, the peer sourcing charter and agreement, the methodology, and eventually the open-sourced Rhodia1 code and frameworks.
It is not a product site. It is not a portfolio. It is not a landing page optimised for conversion. It is closer to a published broadsheet from a design collective — something that announces a practice through its own form, before it announces it through words.
The domain is deliberate: Rhodia — the notebook brand, with its strong association with Gino Lee and the analogue tradition — plus .ai, the medium of the practice. It sits at exactly the right margin. Not a claim. Not a stunt. A name that earns its meaning quietly. Note that it is rhodi.ai, not rhodia.ai — the compression matters. Autocorrect systems insist on restoring the missing 'a', correcting toward the familiar and the expected. Resisting that correction is itself a small demonstration of what this practice is about. The homogenising instinct of systems that smooth away the particular is precisely what the work here pushes against.
here
Not everyone. Specifically: designers, writers, technologists and practitioners who have enough of a formed sensibility to recognise what this is without being told. Drew Smith — designer, design strategist, automotive journalist, Sydney — arrived at the charter and responded "yes, yes, yes all the way down." That is the right reader. Design for that reader.
rhodi.ai is public-facing but not broadcast. It does not try to reach everyone. It tries to be exactly right for the people who need exactly this. If someone arrives and doesn't immediately feel something, that is acceptable. If someone arrives and feels they have found something they didn't know existed, that is success.
needs to do
On arrival: The reader should understand immediately — from the form of the page, before reading a word — that this is a designed space produced by people with a serious sensibility. The design is the first argument.
On reading: The reader finds what the practice is, who is behind it, what the peer sourcing model offers, and how to begin. In that order. Without being sold to.
Social engagement: Unlike markcharmer.com, rhodi.ai can and should have engagement mechanics — a way to signal interest, eventually comment features, a way for peers to contribute. The practice is conversational. The site should be too. But these should be designed with the same restraint as everything else. No like buttons. No view counts. No algorithmic amplification.
Connection to markcharmer.com: Present but quiet. A footnote, a link in the colophon, a reference in the about section. Not a banner.
lineage
These projects are offered as historical context for the kind of thing this aspires to be adjacent to. Study them. Do not copy them. The worst possible outcome is a pastiche. These references are not yet studied in detail within the Rhodia1 project — their proper exploration is a future undertaking, particularly for Tribe471. Use them as orientation, not instruction.
Published as a broadsheet, stapled, passed hand to hand. Drew from comics, pop art, NASA imagery. The form was the message. A practice that announced itself through a designed object before it announced itself through buildings. The energy, the optimism, the deliberate rejection of establishment conventions — that spirit is relevant here, not the aesthetic.
A magazine that became a type foundry that became a manifesto for digital typography. Each issue looked different because the argument was evolving. The design was the argument.
Rigorous Swiss-influenced typography made alive rather than cold. Eight issues, then it stopped because it was finished. Knew exactly when it was done. That discipline — knowing when to stop — is directly relevant.
Graphic design writing that didn't look like graphic design writing. Attracted exactly the kind of reader who needed to find it. Distributed through specialist bookshops, not newsagents. The practice and its documentation were the same thing.
The Rhodia1 type system as foundation, but with DM Mono doing more visible work than it does in the Library. This is a workshop. The monospace register signals that.
Display: Cormorant Garamond — titles, statements, moments of weight Body: Spectral — prose, documentation, charter and agreement text Labels: DM Mono — navigation, metadata, code references, technical elements
The Rhodia1 palette as a starting point. rhodi.ai may develop its own accent colour — something that distinguishes it from the Library's amber without breaking the family relationship. A considered divergence, not a random one. This is an open decision for the design process.
--paper: #f7f4ee (or a cooler variant — workshop, not reading room) --ink: #1c1a15 --ink-mid: #4a4540 --ink-light: #8a8278 --ink-faint: #c0b8a8 --accent: TBD — not amber, not slate green, something new
first version
The first version needs only these things. No more.
avoid
Hero images, stock photography, gradient backgrounds, card grids optimised for engagement, anything that looks like a SaaS product, motion for its own sake, dark mode as a default aesthetic choice, the word "ecosystem."
Avoid especially: making it look like markcharmer.com. They are related but distinct. rhodi.ai should feel like the workshop. markcharmer.com is the finished room.
looks like
Drew Smith arrives at rhodi.ai. Before he reads a word, he feels something shift. He reads the front page. He reads the charter. He finds the briefing materials. He understands what is being offered and why. He knows immediately whether it is for him.
It was for him. He said yes all the way down.
Design for that moment.
beginning
All available at markcharmer.com/library:
The Peer Sourcing Charter · Notes Toward a Peer Sourcing Agreement · The Colleague Model session notes · The Morning Layout Show, Day 1 Parts 1 and 2 · Emil Akzidenz Studio Brief
6 May 2026
Prompted by Mark Charmer
For use in Claude Design