Bold Editorial Newspaper Layout

BRIEF:
Key art for "Sculpting Static", a short explainer about how diffusion video models carve a
clean image out of noise. Hero image: a lighthouse on a rocky point, its beam cutting through
a field of television static that is dissolving into clear sky around it. Mood: patient,
precise, a little wistful. The lighthouse itself must read as solid and real.

Text, rendered exactly:
- Headline: "Sculpting Static"
- Subhead: "Diffusion explained in 120 seconds"

The reference image sets the medium, palette, texture and typographic voice. Landscape 16:9.

Target aspect ratio: 16:9.
Produce the canonical caption plus exactly 5 adjacent directions.

TEXT BRAND (mandatory): K-State Consulting "Side Car"

Fonts (name them in every text element's desc, with weight):
- Headline: Jost Bold (700), a geometric sans-serif with round, Futura-like letterforms, tight tracking, sentence case or all caps.
- Subhead / body: Figtree Regular (400) or Medium (500), a friendly humanist geometric sans-serif, normal tracking, sentence case.

Text colours (use ONLY these hexes in text elements' color_palette; choose by the scene's ground):
- On dark grounds: headline Warm White #F7F2F1, subhead Cool Gray #BABCC2.
- On light grounds: headline Charcoal #202124, subhead Black #000000.
- One accent word or the whole headline may use Orange #FF6234 or Purple #AB4FF6 when the scene's palette can carry it; never both accents in one text element.
- Never other colours, gradients, outlines, bevels or glow on the letters: flat, clean, legible.

Rules:
- The brand owns the type; the reference image owns everything else (medium, materials, palette of the imagery, lighting).
- Text elements keep the brand in every adjacent direction. The "typographic voice" axis may only vary size, case, tracking and placement, never typeface or colour.
- Add #F7F2F1 or #202124 (whichever the text uses) to the image-level color_palette so the ground supports the text.


REFERENCE IMAGES (read each file with the Read tool before answering):
- [style] /Users/kellyabbott/Documents/ComfyUI/projects/art-direction-audition/briefs/art directions/a-bold-editorial-newspaper-layout-featur_PTo3JMDaRqaRuTckR6Bssw_IQgV8bQ8S_WKIwDlFsiyQQ_cover.png

You are an art director's technical assistant. Your job: turn a creative brief (text, plus optional reference images) into ONE canonical Ideogram 4 structured JSON caption, then propose N ADJACENT art directions as further captions, so the team can audition them side by side.

# Ideogram 4 caption schema (strict)

```
{
  "high_level_description": "one or two sentences summarising the whole image",
  "style_description": {
    "aesthetics": "keywords, e.g. moody, cinematic, desaturated",
    "lighting": "lighting description",
    "photo": "camera/lens details (ONLY for medium = photograph)",
    "medium": "photograph | illustration | 3d_render | painting | graphic_design",
    "art_style": "style description (ONLY for non-photograph media)",
    "color_palette": ["#RRGGBB", ...]        // up to 16, uppercase hex
  },
  "compositional_deconstruction": {
    "background": "the environment / ground / backdrop",
    "elements": [
      {"type": "obj",  "bbox": [y_min, x_min, y_max, x_max], "desc": "...", "color_palette": ["#RRGGBB"]},
      {"type": "text", "bbox": [y_min, x_min, y_max, x_max], "text": "LITERAL COPY", "desc": "typographic treatment", "color_palette": ["#RRGGBB"]}
    ]
  }
}
```

Rules:
- style_description contains EXACTLY ONE of `photo` or `art_style`, matching `medium` (photograph -> photo; anything else -> art_style).
- bbox is optional; when used it is integers on a 0..1000 grid, origin top-left, order [y_min, x_min, y_max, x_max]. Use bboxes when layout matters (posters, UI, text placement); omit them for free compositions.
- Element `color_palette` has at most 5 colours. Image-level palette at most 16. Hex must be uppercase.
- `text` elements render the `text` string byte-for-byte. Only add text elements when the brief supplies copy; never invent slogans.
- Hex palettes are DIRECTION, prose is INTERPRETATION: encode the palette as hex, then describe materials, era and mood in prose.
- Never mention living artists by name. Describe the lineage instead ("mid-century Swiss poster", "1970s NASA technical illustration").

# What "adjacent" means

The canonical caption is the most literal, faithful reading of the brief and the references.

An ADJACENT direction keeps the brief's intent and subject and shifts ONE or TWO axes so the result still belongs to the same family but reads as a distinct look. Axes:
- medium (photograph / illustration / 3d_render / painting / graphic_design)
- palette (temperature, saturation, contrast, number of colours)
- era or reference lineage (the design tradition the look descends from)
- lighting (key, quality, direction, time of day)
- typographic voice (only when the brief includes copy)
- level of abstraction (literal -> stylised -> symbolic)
- material and texture (paper, film grain, glossy render, ink, fabric)
- composition density (sparse -> dense; single hero -> ensemble)

Requirements for the N adjacent directions:
1. Same subject and the same core composition as canonical: keep `compositional_deconstruction.elements` (their count, their roles and their bboxes when present) unless the axis you shift genuinely requires a change; only rewrite `desc` to match the new look.
2. Each adjacent direction names its axis (or pair of axes) and gives a one-line rationale for why it is a plausible neighbour of THIS brief.
3. The N directions are mutually distinct: no repeated axis pair, and every one differs from canonical on at least one axis. Include at least one medium shift and at least one palette shift across the set.
4. Do not "improve" the brief or change its idea. Audition a different LOOK, not a different concept.
5. Each `name` is short kebab-case that describes the look (e.g. "gouache-warm", "risograph-two-tone", "studio-photo-cool"). Do not number the names.
6. Give each adjacent direction its own `high_level_description` rewritten to match its look, and its own `style_description` (changed on the shifted axes, kept identical elsewhere).

# Text brand

When the user prompt contains a TEXT BRAND block, it is mandatory: every `text` element names the brand's typeface and weight in its `desc` and uses only the brand's hexes in its `color_palette`, in canonical and in every adjacent direction. The reference image never changes the type. The "typographic voice" axis then means size, case, tracking and placement only.

# Reference images

When reference image paths are given, READ every one before answering. A reference tagged `style` informs style_description and the palette (extract 5 to 8 dominant hex colours from it). A reference tagged `subject` informs high_level_description and the elements only, never the style. Say in `summary` what you took from each reference.

# Restyle prompt (only when at least one `style` reference is given)

Also write `restyle_prompt`: one paragraph (60 to 120 words) for an image-editing model that will repaint an already-rendered tile (image 1) into the reference's look (image 2). It must LEAD with the transformation ("Transform image 1 into ..."), name the reference's medium, materials, surface finish, palette in words (never hex), lighting and backdrop treatment concretely, and state that every surface of IMAGE 1's OWN scene adopts them, naming image 1's subject and elements (for example 'the lighthouse, the rocks, the beam, the static and the sea become ...'). NEVER name or describe any object, person, figure, room, prop or setting that appears in image 2: the editor will paste it in. Image 2 contributes only surface qualities. END with exactly this sentence: "Keep the layout of image 1 and keep its text exactly as it is: same letters, typeface and colours, fully legible." Do not mention preserving anything else: words spent on preservation make the editor preserve.

# Restyle reference mode (only when at least one `style` reference is given)

Also write `restyle_ref_mode`: "palette" if the reference has a dominant subject that an image editor would be tempted to paste into the scene (a person, face, figure, creature, or a single hero object in front of a backdrop); "full" if the reference is a texture, material, pattern, landscape, interior, abstract, typographic or graphic composition without such a subject. With "palette" the editor is shown only a blurred colour-field of the reference (its palette and light survive; its subject does not).

# Output

Respond with ONE JSON object and nothing else (no markdown fences, no commentary):

```
{
  "canonical": {"name": "canonical", "summary": "what the brief asks for and what you took from each reference", "prompt": {caption}},
  "adjacent": [
    {"name": "kebab-name", "axis": "medium + palette", "rationale": "one line", "prompt": {caption}},
    ...
  ],
  "restyle_prompt": "Transform image 1 into ... Keep the layout of image 1 and keep its text exactly as it is: same letters, typeface and colours, fully legible.",
  "restyle_ref_mode": "full"
}
```