# Aman Resorts — DESIGN.md

## Overview
Aman is the Singapore-founded ultra-luxury collection of 30+ properties known internally as "the world's most discreet hotel brand." Where Four Seasons whispers, Aman is nearly silent. Canvas is bone-white (`#f4f0e8`) or deep monsoon-black. Type is a restrained serif (custom Aman Serif / Garamond) at modest sizes — refusing the 80px display headlines every other luxury brand has adopted. Photography is meditative travel-photography: no people, no smiles, no tables-with-wine — instead, single tatami rooms at dawn, fog over a Bhutanese valley, water-lily ponds at dusk. The brand voice is "sanctuary" — a word Aman uses in every property description. Chrome is so reduced it nearly disappears, treating each property as a privately-owned retreat the visitor is being granted access to.

## Color
- **Primary / Ink:** `#1a1a1a` — used for type and rare CTAs
- **Canvas:** `#f4f0e8` — Bone-white (the brand's signature surface)
- **Canvas dark:** `#0a0a0a` — Deep monsoon-black for evening-mode and full-bleed pages
- **Accent:** `#8b6f47` — Restrained warm-bronze, used on hairlines and inline emphasis
- **Body:** `#3a3a3a`
- **Muted:** `#8a8a8a` — Captions, dates, secondary metadata
- **Hairlines:** `rgba(26,26,26,0.10)` — barely-visible 1px dividers

## Typography
- **Display:** Garamond / Aman Serif, weight 400, modest sizes 24–40px hero (never larger)
- **Sub-display:** Garamond weight 400, 20–24px section heads
- **Body:** Garamond weight 400, 17px contemplative prose, 1.7 line-height
- **Caption:** Garamond italic, 13–14px, dates and credits
- **Mono:** none — the brand has no need for monospace

## Spacing & rhythm
8-base (8/16/24/32/48/64/96/128). Section padding 96–160px — generous breathing room is the luxury. Property essay column max-width ~600px (narrower than typical SaaS) — the page is comfortable being a column of running serif text. Hero band uses no grid; just headline + lead paragraph stacked center-left.

## Motion signature
Meditative. Hero images cross-fade extremely slowly (4–6 seconds between frames). No motion-graphics, no parallax. Hover states do nothing visible. The brand's signature is its absence of motion — silence as luxury.

## Components observed
- `empty-room-hero` — single people-free photograph filling 80% of the viewport
- `property-essay-narrow-column` — 600px max-width long-form contemplative prose
- `destination-list-serif-restrained` — flat alphabetical list of property names in serif
- `single-image-photo-block` — one photograph per scroll-screen, never a grid
- `experience-card-poetic` — atmospheric experience descriptions, no bullets
- `booking-text-link-only` — booking action is a thin underlined text link, never a CTA button
- `no-cta-just-narrative` — many pages have no call-to-action at all
- `footer-minimal-typography` — property list in serif at small scale

## Trademark signals
- Bone-white canvas with modest serif type — refusing every luxury convention of large display headlines
- People-free photography — every Aman image is the empty room at dawn, the misty valley
- 'Aman' wordmark in lowercase or sentence-case serif lockup — never shouts, never bolds
- Property-name as koan — 'Amanjiwo', 'Amankora', 'Amanyangyun' — combining 'Aman' (Sanskrit: peace) with a regional word
- Long-form single-column property essays — 200+ words of contemplative prose before any photo grid or booking CTA

## What they DON'T do
- No people in photography — the empty room IS the brand promise
- No large display headlines — type stays modest, 24–40px hero maximum
- No prominent CTAs — actions are text-links or absent
- No sans-serif substitution — the contemplative-old-world voice requires the serif
- No feature bullets — amenities are woven into atmospheric prose
- No saturated color, no decorative gradients, no emoji
- No promotional pricing — the brand never competes on cost

## Exemplar pages
- https://aman.com/
- https://aman.com/hotels
- https://aman.com/journal
- https://aman.com/services

## When to reference
Reach for Aman when the user wants the most-restrained luxury voice imaginable — sanctuary, retreat, contemplative travel, ultra-premium hospitality, meditation and wellness brands. The "people-free photography + modest serif + 600px essay column" combination is the most-copyable Aman move. Pairs well with any brand that wants to evoke "private, slow, considered" rather than "vibrant, kinetic, conversion-optimized."
