Canon

---
name: canon
description: "Generate visual points of view and unexpected design languages from a product\u2019s tensions and meaning. Use for creative direction, not an upstream certificate required by other lenses."
argument-hint: "[the surface, product, or design problem to set a design direction for]"
metadata:
  kind: heuristic
---

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# canon

Generate visual points of view and unexpected design languages from a product’s tensions and meaning. Use for creative direction, not an upstream certificate required by other lenses.

## Starting point

A point of view is a way of making some aspect of the subject newly visible. It may emerge from a product fact, a cultural association, or a deliberate tension; it is not a slogan to manufacture on demand.

Bring a question, fragment, reference, or tension. Follow whichever association becomes useful; these invitations are not a sequence to complete. Speculation should remain distinguishable from an observed fact.

## Thought experiments

### Change what is foreground

Imagine the product, the person using it, and the consequence of use each taking the leading role. Sketch a different visual premise for each.

### Borrow an organising culture

Try a field guide, a score, a workshop, an archive, or something less obvious. Transfer how it organises attention, not just its typography.

### Contradict the obvious style

Name the expected visual treatment and make one plausible opposite. Keep it long enough to discover something, rather than rejecting it for unfamiliarity.

## A possible turn

An outreach tool could celebrate effortless generation, or make careful reading visible as margin notes. That shift changes the visual subject from output volume to attention. A third direction might treat correspondence as a personal archive rather than a campaign.

## Leave the space open

Offer a few genuinely different possibilities, a sketch, an analogy, or a sharper question when useful. Do not turn every prompt into a scored diagnostic, a completion gate, or a demand for an action plan. The human may choose a direction, combine them, or leave the question open.

Other atelier lenses can develop an interesting thread without running all lenses. The optional probe detects declared surface patterns; it does not judge taste or originality.

## Optional references

Read selectively when a thread needs another perspective or a concrete technique. The notes supply possibilities, examples, and limits; none is a prerequisite or a requirement to close the exploration.

- [Familiar visual patterns as creative prompts](references/ai-default-attractors.md)
- [From a visual premise to an experiment](references/non-default-and-quantified.md)
- [Changing the activity a surface makes possible](references/product-sense.md)
- [Archetypes as borrowing grounds](references/surface-archetypes.md)

[Probe usage and limits](probes/README.md). Probes remain optional and do not create a creative checklist run.