Every plate is printed six times.
The scene plates are generated, and each subject exists in six printed states — the land reseeded, the sky re-inked, the subject nudged. Which one a page gets is decided by the page’s own path, so a card and the hero it links to always match and twelve pages in a grid never do.
The same field, four times.
One subject, four seasonal states. Scroll it to run the year. Under reduced motion the sequence does not attach and the first frame stays, with this caption under it.
Scroll to run it. 1 / 4
How a plate is chosen.
The rule
- Variants per subject
- Up to six
- Chosen by
- A hash of the page path and the subject name
- So
- The same page always gets the same plateA thumbnail and its hero match
- And
- Neighbouring pages get different platesA grid of twelve looks like twelve pictures
- Never
- Random per requestWhich would flicker on every reload
The override chain
- A real photograph
- Wins outright, everywhere, with no content change
- Dropped into
- assets/img/official, named after the plate it replaces
- Effect
- Every card, hero and grid pointing at that subject switches at once
- Variants
- Ignored once a photograph exists
The seasonal set
- Spring
- Bare drills, budded hedge, lambing pens
- Summer
- Standing crop, full hedge, the combine waiting
- Autumn
- Stubble, ploughed land, the combine working
- Winter
- Bare fields, laid hedge, walling, the night plates
What the crop stage does to a plate.
| Stage | What the plate shows | Which subject |
|---|---|---|
| Bare drill | Dark earth and tramlines, no green | ploughed |
| Emerging | First green in the rows | field-spring |
| Standing | Green sheet, full height | field-summer |
| In ear | Gold, heads heavy | harvest |
| Stubble | Cut, straw rows, low sun | field-autumn |
| Fallow | Bare, frost, laid hedge | field-winter |
| Night | Any of the above, after dark | night-field |
Why generated plates rather than photographs.
This is an unofficial demonstration build. It has no photographic rights to anything it describes, and using photographs it does not own would be both dishonest and actionable.
So the plates are drawn: flat colour, printed texture, a limited palette, and a deliberate ink misregistration of two pixels so they read as a printed poster rather than as a vector illustration that has never met a press.
The whole system is also built so that it can be replaced. Drop a real photograph into the official folder under the plate name and every card, hero and grid pointing at that subject switches to it, with no content change and no markup change anywhere.
Drawn, because we do not own the photographs and are not going to pretend otherwise.
Six states
Per subject, reseeded and re-inked.
Deterministic
Chosen by page path, not at random.
Seasonal
The set swaps with data-season.
Replaceable
One photograph overrides everything, everywhere.
The questions the plates get.
Because a thumbnail that does not match the hero it links to is disorienting, and because a plate that changes on every reload makes a site feel broken rather than alive.
Around fifty subjects, most of them printed several times. The full list is whatever is in the scenes folder, and the build reads it rather than being told.
No. They are the same files. Only the veil over them is re-mixed.
Yes, one at a time, with no code change. That was a requirement rather than a nicety.
Where the plates come forward.
Four seasonal states, each with its own set, stamped server-side.
