Visual brief: Ad-hoc Brief, 5 reasons every planner has failed the ADHD brain

Source verdict: approved/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault.md Source draft: drafts/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault.md Format: carousel-8 (4:5 vertical, 1080x1350) Generated: 2026-05-25T12:50:00Z

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Visual register summary

Illustrated pastel carousel in the brand's mascot-and-objects family, sitting directly in the visual lineage of the rank-2 reference DW3_wgWCtZ7 (the "How To Build an ADHD System" carousel: woman with one planner amid chaos of failed planners and calendars). Cream and warm off-white backgrounds dominate, deep brown sets type, sage carries the gentle-reframe accents, rust carries the warning and CTA accents, dusty blue carries the science-explanation slides (3, 4, 7). One recurring brand mascot threads across slides 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 as the same illustrated woman, drawn in clean rounded line work with soft pastel fills, no facial detail required beyond posture. Slides 4 and 7 give her a rest so the object/diagram slides hold focal weight. Typography is Recoleta semi-bold display set against Inter body. The carousel must read as the same family as the top-15 carousel save-rate winners, not as a new aesthetic.

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Production-ready units

All slides: canvas 1080x1350px (4:5), sRGB, 8pt safe margin all around, 80px reserved at bottom for Instagram caption preview and right-edge 120px column kept light of dense type to avoid interaction-icon overlap. Paper-grain texture overlay at 4% opacity across every slide for cross-slide consistency.

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Slide 1 of 8: Cover hook

• Text overlay (verbatim from approved draft):
  • Top line: 5 reasons every planner has failed the ADHD brain
  • Bottom line: (and not one of them is discipline)
  • Subtitle: what "just stick with it" has been missing
• Layout: Title in the top 38% of the canvas, left-aligned, hanging from the top safe margin, wraps to two lines. Bottom-line parenthetical directly below title with ~16px gap, same left edge, slightly smaller. Subtitle directly below parenthetical with ~24px gap, same left edge, smallest of the three. Illustration occupies the bottom 55% of the canvas, centred horizontally: mascot seated cross-legged on the floor with one open planner on her lap, surrounded by a horseshoe arc of 6 to 7 abandoned planners. Slide indicator dot row (8 dots, first one filled) at the bottom centre, 60px above the bottom safe-zone line.
• Background: Cream #F4ECDC flat fill, paper-grain texture overlay at 4%.
• Typography:
  • Top line: Recoleta semi-bold, ~70pt, deep brown #3D2818. Sentence case.
  • Bottom line (parenthetical): Recoleta semi-bold italic, ~52pt, rust #B86C50.
  • Subtitle: Inter regular, ~22pt, charcoal #2A1F18, tracked +10. Typographic curly quotes around "just stick with it".
• Image / illustration: Illustrated woman seated on the floor low-centre, drawn in clean rounded line work with soft pastel fills (matching the rank-2 DW3_wgWCtZ7 aesthetic). She is in a casual oversized sweater, hair loosely tied back, looking down at one specific planner on her lap. Around her in a loose horseshoe arc on the floor: a thick spiral-bound weekly planner with its cover bent back at 90 degrees and sticky tabs visible, a small bullet journal open to a page with only three lines of handwriting and the rest blank, a hardcover weekly planner closed under a faint coffee-ring stain, an open monthly planner with the January week filled in and the February week starkly empty, a stapled paper planner with a broken-looking spine, a small dot-grid notebook lying face-down. Each object has breathing room, no overlap. Palette across the objects stays inside cream #F4ECDC, sand #E8D9B8, sage #7A9468, rust #B86C50, dusty blue #7C95A6. Line weight is consistent (~2px at canvas resolution).
• Color accents: Rust #B86C50 on the parenthetical bottom line is the single hottest moment. Sage #7A9468 shows up on one object (the sticky tabs on the spiral-bound planner) to balance temperature. No more than three accent colors visible at once.
• Motion (if applicable): Still.

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Slide 2 of 8: The actual problem

• Text overlay (verbatim from approved draft):
  • Title: The planners were not built for this brain
  • Body: Most planning systems assume a steady relationship with time, memory, and energy. The ADHD brain has a different relationship to all three. When ten different planners fail in roughly the same way, that pattern is not a character flaw. It is a design mismatch the audience has been carrying alone.
• Layout: Title spans top third, centred, two lines max. Body block sits middle third, centred, max ~480px line width. Illustrated stack of three labelled planners sits bottom third, centred. Slide-indicator dot row at bottom centre with dot 2 filled.
• Background: Warm off-white #FAF3E2 flat fill, paper-grain overlay at 4%.
• Typography:
  • Title: Recoleta semi-bold, ~44pt, deep brown #3D2818. Sentence case.
  • Body: Inter regular, ~22pt, line-height 1.45, charcoal #2A1F18. The two final sentences ("When ten different planners fail in roughly the same way, that pattern is not a character flaw. It is a design mismatch the audience has been carrying alone.") rendered in Inter medium for soft emphasis without size change.
• Image / illustration: Three illustrated planners stacked in a soft staircase arrangement, each open to a different signal of mismatch. Top planner: a small line-art clock face with two question marks where the hour numbers would be (the time-mismatch). Middle planner: a small line-art head silhouette in profile with a faint thought bubble leaking out the top edge (the memory-mismatch). Bottom planner: a small line-art battery icon at 20 percent fill, drawn in muted rust (the energy-mismatch). The mascot stands beside the stack on the right, one hand resting gently on the top planner, body angled toward the stack, no facial detail needed beyond posture. Pastel cream and sand fills, sage line work on the icons.
• Color accents: Sage #7A9468 on the icon line work, faint rust #B86C50 on the 20-percent battery fill. Dusty blue absent.
• Motion (if applicable): Still.

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Slide 3 of 8: Reason 1

• Text overlay (verbatim from approved draft):
  • Slide tag: Reason 1
  • Title: The brain lives in "now" and "not now"
  • Body: A weekly grid treats Tuesday at 2pm as a real future event the brain can plan toward. The ADHD brain often cannot feel Tuesday at 2pm until Tuesday at 1:50pm. The planner is asking for a kind of time sense the brain does not produce on its own.
• Layout: Slide tag "Reason 1" small, top-left, 56px from top safe margin and 80px from left edge. Title directly below tag with ~16px gap, left-aligned, may wrap to two lines, typographic curly quotes around "now" and "not now". Body block left-aligned, sits middle third, max width ~520px. Illustration sits bottom-right quadrant, ~420x380px. Slide-indicator dot row at bottom centre with dot 3 filled.
• Background: Cream #F4ECDC flat fill, paper-grain overlay at 4%.
• Typography:
  • Slide tag: Inter medium, ~16pt, tracked +60, dusty blue #7C95A6, all caps.
  • Title: Recoleta semi-bold, ~46pt, deep brown #3D2818. Sentence case. Curly quotes around the two short phrases.
  • Body: Inter regular, ~21pt, line-height 1.45, charcoal #2A1F18. The two Tuesday clock-time phrases ("Tuesday at 2pm" and "Tuesday at 1:50pm") rendered in Inter medium for sub-emphasis on the specificity.
• Image / illustration: Illustrated wall calendar showing one week, seven date squares in a horizontal row. One square (representing the current day, "now") is brightly lit in warm cream with a clean visible date number, and the other six squares are faded to a soft grey-cream at about 35 percent opacity with their date numbers barely visible. A small mascot figure (head-and-shoulders, same character) stands inside the brightly lit square, looking toward the faded squares to her right with a small puzzled posture. The faded squares trail off toward the right edge of the calendar like fog. Dusty blue line work on the calendar grid.
• Color accents: Dusty blue #7C95A6 calendar grid lines. No rust on this slide.
• Motion (if applicable): Still.

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Slide 4 of 8: Reason 2

• Text overlay (verbatim from approved draft):
  • Slide tag: Reason 2
  • Title: The system depends on the exact thing the brain has less of
  • Body: Most planners do not collapse because the plan was wrong. They collapse because the brain forgot to open the book on day four. Working memory is the resource ADHD brains carry less of. A system that asks for steady remembering is asking for the resource that was already low.
• Layout: Slide tag top-left, same convention as slide 3 but in sage colour for rhythm alternation. Title below tag, left-aligned, may wrap to two lines. Body block left-aligned, middle third, ~520px max width. Illustrated closed-and-buried planner scene sits bottom-right quadrant, ~420x380px. Slide-indicator dot row at bottom centre with dot 4 filled.
• Background: Soft sand #E8D9B8 flat fill, paper-grain overlay at 4%. Slightly warmer/deeper background to mark this as a quieter "absence" slide.
• Typography:
  • Slide tag: Inter medium, ~16pt, tracked +60, sage #7A9468, all caps.
  • Title: Recoleta semi-bold, ~42pt, deep brown #3D2818. Sentence case.
  • Body: Inter regular, ~21pt, line-height 1.45, charcoal #2A1F18.
• Image / illustration: Illustrated still life of a closed weekly planner resting on a side table, partly covered by a softly draped cream sweater, a smartphone face-down on top of the planner's corner, and a half-empty mug at the upper-right corner of the planner. A soft thought-bubble outline drifts upward from the scene with a faint translucent planner shape inside it, suggesting the idea of "planner" floating away from the table. No mascot figure in this scene. Soft natural light from the upper-left, slightly desaturated, paper-grain texture present.
• Color accents: Sage #7A9468 on the sweater fold, rust #B86C50 on a small detail of the mug. Dusty blue absent.
• Motion (if applicable): Still.

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Slide 5 of 8: Reason 3

• Text overlay (verbatim from approved draft):
  • Slide tag: Reason 3
  • Title: One blank day reads as "the streak is broken"
  • Body: A printed page with one empty square sends a loud signal. The brain hears "the whole system is ruined" and quietly closes the book. A planner that any miss can kill is structurally fragile. The brain needs a planner that survives a bad week, not one that ends on the first one.
• Layout: Slide tag top-left in rust for rhythm alternation. Title below tag, left-aligned, two lines acceptable, curly quotes around "the streak is broken". Body block left-aligned, middle third, ~520px max width. Illustrated weekly-spread image sits bottom-third spanning ~80% of the canvas width, centred horizontally. Slide-indicator dot row at bottom centre with dot 5 filled.
• Background: Cream #F4ECDC flat fill, paper-grain overlay at 4%.
• Typography:
  • Slide tag: Inter medium, ~16pt, tracked +60, rust #B86C50, all caps.
  • Title: Recoleta semi-bold, ~44pt, deep brown #3D2818. Sentence case. Curly quotes around the embedded phrase.
  • Body: Inter regular, ~21pt, line-height 1.45, charcoal #2A1F18. The interior quoted line ("the whole system is ruined") rendered in Inter italic for distinction.
• Image / illustration: Illustrated weekly-spread page showing seven date squares (Mon through Sun) in a horizontal row, drawn as soft rounded rectangles. Five of the squares have light handwritten-style scribbles inside (three short horizontal pencil lines suggesting completed entries). One square (positioned roughly fourth, mid-week) is starkly blank and rendered slightly larger than its siblings by about 8 percent, with a faint glow around its edge in warm rust at low opacity. The last square (Sunday) is also blank but unglowed, less emphasised. The mascot is tucked into the bottom-right of the planner image, seated low with one hand reaching softly toward the planner's right edge as if about to close it, body language tired but gentle, not dramatic.
• Color accents: Rust #B86C50 glow around the blank square. Sage line work on the planner grid. No dusty blue.
• Motion (if applicable): Still.

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Slide 6 of 8: Reason 4

• Text overlay (verbatim from approved draft):
  • Slide tag: Reason 4
  • Title: Energy is not produced on a clock
  • Body: The ADHD brain does not deliver the same energy at 9am every day. Energy moves with sleep, hormones, novelty, recent food, the season, and whether the morning held one hard decision already. A 9-to-11am work block that ignores all of this is a wish, not a plan.
• Layout: Slide tag top-left in sage for rhythm. Title below tag, left-aligned, single line preferred. Body block left-aligned, middle third, ~520px max width. Illustrated energy-curve diagram sits bottom third, centred, spanning ~80% of canvas width. Slide-indicator dot row at bottom centre with dot 6 filled.
• Background: Warm off-white #FAF3E2 flat fill, paper-grain overlay at 4%.
• Typography:
  • Slide tag: Inter medium, ~16pt, tracked +60, sage #7A9468, all caps.
  • Title: Recoleta semi-bold, ~46pt, deep brown #3D2818. Sentence case.
  • Body: Inter regular, ~21pt, line-height 1.45, charcoal #2A1F18.
• Image / illustration: Illustrated horizontal diagram of one day's energy across morning to night. The actual ADHD-energy curve drawn as a single soft rust line that rises and falls unpredictably: a small peak near mid-morning, a sharp dip mid-afternoon, a small recovery early evening, a long descent into night. Underneath, drawn in muted dusty-blue dashes as a quiet contrast, a flat horizontal line labelled in tiny Inter regular 12pt "the planner thinks the day looks like this". Time markers on the horizontal axis tucked in Inter regular 12pt: a small "9am", "1pm", "5pm", "9pm" running left to right in dusty blue. A small mascot figure (head-and-shoulders) perches on one of the curve's small peaks, holding a tiny cup, looking out across the curve. No grid lines.
• Color accents: Rust #B86C50 curve, dusty blue #7C95A6 flat-line contrast and time markers.
• Motion (if applicable): Still.

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Slide 7 of 8: Reason 5

• Text overlay (verbatim from approved draft):
  • Slide tag: Reason 5
  • Title: A different operating system needs a different tool
  • Body: Most planning systems were designed by and tested on brains that do not have ADHD. The brain in this audience is not a broken version of that brain. It is a different operating system. A tool built for the wrong system does not run no matter how much willpower is poured into it.
• Layout: Slide tag top-left in dusty blue for rhythm. Title below tag, left-aligned, two lines acceptable. Body block left-aligned, middle third, ~520px max width. Illustrated split-planner-page scene sits bottom third spanning the full canvas width: two stylised planner pages side by side, the left in a tidy cream-and-blue grid, the right in flowing warm sage and rust shapes. Slide-indicator dot row at bottom centre with dot 7 filled.
• Background: Cream #F4ECDC flat fill, paper-grain overlay at 4%.
• Typography:
  • Slide tag: Inter medium, ~16pt, tracked +60, dusty blue #7C95A6, all caps.
  • Title: Recoleta semi-bold, ~42pt, deep brown #3D2818. Sentence case.
  • Body: Inter regular, ~21pt, line-height 1.45, charcoal #2A1F18.
• Image / illustration: Two illustrated planner pages side by side, ~440px wide each, with a soft ~120px gap between them, both depicted as if propped on a table. Left page: a clean, gridded weekly planner page in soft cream and dusty blue #7C95A6, drawn neatly, with small placeholder bars for handwritten entries lined up evenly. Right page: a planner page that flows in irregular organic shapes and warm sage #7A9468 and rust #B86C50 lines, the same kinds of placeholder bars but arranged in clusters and curves rather than rows. A faint sage curving line drifts between the two pages near the bottom suggesting they are siblings, not opposites. No mascot in this scene; the two pages are the focal pair.
• Color accents: Dusty blue #7C95A6 left page, sage #7A9468 and rust #B86C50 right page. All three brand accents present, balanced.
• Motion (if applicable): Still.

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Slide 8 of 8: Synthesis (no CTA on slide)

• Text overlay (verbatim from approved draft):
  • Title: 10 wrong-fit tools is not a character problem
  • Body: A planner built for the brain you have is the missing piece. The Complete System That Works With Your ADHD Brain was built for exactly this. Phase 4 of The ADHD Playbook (Automate) is the part that survives the bad days the old planners never did.
• Layout: Title spans top quarter, centred, two lines acceptable. Numbered reason recap sits middle-left in a small column, 5 items stacked vertically with ~10px gap between them, each in shortened form (so the slide does not become text-heavy). Synthesis body block sits middle-right, ~440px wide, with the product reference set apart in its own short paragraph. Tiny mascot tucked into the bottom-right corner above the safe-zone line, ~140px tall, standing beside a single open planner laid flat on an implied table. Slide-indicator dot row at bottom centre with dot 8 filled. No CTA pill, no "link in bio" text on the slide itself (the caption carries the live CTA per writing-protocol section 1.1).
• Background: Cream #F4ECDC flat fill, paper-grain overlay at 4%. The cleanest and lightest slide of the set.
• Typography:
  • Title: Recoleta semi-bold, ~46pt, deep brown #3D2818. Sentence case.
  • Recap-list numerals: Recoleta semi-bold, ~24pt, rust #B86C50. Tabular figures enabled.
  • Recap-list phrases: Inter medium, ~18pt, deep brown #3D2818. Five items, each a short phrase: linear time, remembering to use it, missed-day fragility, stable-energy assumption, wrong operating system. No bullet glyphs, no separator lines.
  • Synthesis body block: Inter regular, ~20pt, line-height 1.45, charcoal #2A1F18. The two named product/module phrases ("Complete System That Works With Your ADHD Brain", "Phase 4 of The ADHD Playbook (Automate)") rendered in Inter medium for soft emphasis on the proper nouns.
• Image / illustration: Small illustrated mascot figure in the bottom-right corner of the slide, standing upright beside a single new planner that lies flat and open on an implied table surface. Mascot posture is calm, hands at her sides, body angled slightly toward the planner. The planner itself is drawn in clean sage #7A9468 line work with cream pages and a small terracotta bookmark, distinct from the abandoned planners of slide 1. No glow, no shadow, no decorative extras. The rest of the canvas (upper two-thirds and left two-thirds) holds the typography.
• Color accents: Rust #B86C50 numerals in the recap list, sage #7A9468 line work on the new planner, terracotta bookmark. Three accents balanced, no single dominant warm pull.
• Motion (if applicable): Still.

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Cross-unit consistency

• Brand mark: No brand wordmark on any slide. The recurring mascot is the brand signature. She appears on slides 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 in different postures; slides 4 and 7 give her a rest so the still-life slides hold focal weight.
• Slide indicator: Eight small filled circles, 8px diameter, 14px apart, bottom-centre of every slide, sitting 60px above the bottom safe zone. The current slide's dot is filled deep brown #3D2818; the others are deep brown at 25% opacity. Same exact position and size on every slide.
• Background paper-grain: Same 4% opacity paper-grain texture asset overlaid on every slide so the carousel reads as one printed object across swipes.
• Type system: Recoleta semi-bold for every title and display number; Inter regular and medium for everything body and meta. Two typefaces total across the entire carousel, no exceptions.
• Slide-tag convention: Slides 3 through 7 carry a "Reason N" tag in the same position, same size, same tracking. The tag color rotates across the three accents in this order: dusty blue (reason 1) → sage (reason 2) → rust (reason 3) → sage (reason 4) → dusty blue (reason 5). The rotation creates a quiet rhythm and prevents any single accent from over-dominating the spread.
• Color discipline: Maximum three accent colors visible per slide. Cream and warm off-white alternate as base; sand reserved for slide 4 to mark it as a quieter absence slide.
• Aspect ratio: 4:5 (1080x1350) on every slide, no exceptions. Do not crop to square at export.

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AI generation prompt

Per-slide image prompts (illustration-driven carousel, text baked in by Higgsfield nano_banana_2)

Each prompt below is the scene description only. The image-generation-protocol skill will append the verbatim text overlay (from each slide's Production-ready unit above) and the brand-style suffix at generation time. Do not paste these prompts directly into a non-protocol-driven model run.

Slide 1:

A soft illustrated scene of a seated young woman in a casual oversized sweater, hair loosely tied back, drawn in a clean rounded line-art style with pastel fills, sitting cross-legged on a soft cream floor in the centre of a loose halo of six to seven abandoned planners. On her lap rests one open planner that she is looking down at. Around her on the floor in a horseshoe arc: a thick spiral-bound weekly planner with its cover bent back at 90 degrees and small sticky tabs visible along its edge, a small bullet journal open to a page with only three lines of light handwritten marks and the rest blank, a hardcover weekly planner closed under a faint coffee-ring stain, an open monthly planner with one week filled in and the next week starkly empty, a stapled paper planner with a broken-looking spine, a small dot-grid notebook lying face down. Each object has breathing room and does not overlap. Palette restricted to cream, sand, sage green, rust orange, and dusty blue. Soft natural light from the upper left, slightly desaturated, faint paper-grain texture. Composition leaves the top 38 percent of the canvas empty for type overlay. 4:5 vertical aspect ratio.

Slide 2:

A small illustrated stack of three planners arranged as a soft staircase on a calm cream surface, each planner open to a different page that shows a single line-art icon as a symbol of mismatch. The top planner shows a small line-art clock face with two question marks where the hour numbers would normally be. The middle planner shows a small line-art profile head silhouette with a faint thought bubble leaking out of its top. The bottom planner shows a small line-art battery icon at about 20 percent fill drawn in muted rust. Beside the stack on the right, a small illustrated young woman in the same casual sweater stands in calm posture with one hand resting gently on the top planner, drawn in clean rounded line-art with soft pastel fills, no facial detail beyond posture. Pastel cream and warm off-white background, sage line work on the icons, faint rust on the battery fill. Slightly desaturated, faint paper-grain texture. Generous negative space in the top third for type overlay. 4:5 vertical aspect ratio.

Slide 3:

An illustrated wall calendar showing one horizontal week of seven date squares drawn in soft dusty-blue line work on a cream background. One date square near the centre of the row is brightly lit in warm cream with a clean visible date number, while the other six date squares fade to a soft grey-cream at about 35 percent opacity with their date numbers barely visible, trailing off toward the right edge of the calendar like fog. Inside the brightly lit square stands a small illustrated mascot figure of a young woman in a casual sweater, drawn just head-and-shoulders, looking to the right toward the faded squares with a small puzzled posture. Pastel palette: cream, dusty blue, deep brown. Slightly desaturated, faint paper-grain texture. Generous negative space in the upper left half of the canvas for type overlay. 4:5 vertical aspect ratio.

Slide 4:

An illustrated still life of a closed weekly planner resting on a small side table, drawn in clean rounded line-art with soft pastel fills. A softly draped cream sweater partly covers the planner's left half. A smartphone lies face-down on top of the planner's near corner. A half-empty rust-coloured mug sits at the upper-right corner of the planner. A soft thought-bubble outline drifts gently upward from the scene with a faint translucent planner shape inside it, as if the idea of the planner has floated away from the table. No human figure in this image. Pastel palette: warm sand background, cream sweater, sage detail line, rust on the mug. Soft natural light from the upper left, slightly desaturated, faint paper-grain texture. Generous negative space in the top third for type overlay. 4:5 vertical aspect ratio.

Slide 5:

An illustrated weekly-spread planner page showing seven date squares in a horizontal row, drawn as soft rounded rectangles with sage-green line work on a cream background. Five of the squares have light handwritten-style pencil scribbles inside, suggesting completed entries (three short horizontal lines per square). One square positioned roughly fourth in the row, the middle of the week, is starkly blank and rendered about 8 percent larger than its neighbours, with a faint warm rust-orange glow around its edge at low opacity. The last square (Sunday) is also blank but unglowed and less emphasised. In the bottom-right of the planner image, a small illustrated young woman in a casual sweater is tucked low, seated, with one hand reaching softly toward the right edge of the planner as if about to close it, body language tired but gentle, not dramatic. Pastel palette: cream, sage green, rust glow, soft deep brown line. Slightly desaturated, faint paper-grain texture. Generous negative space in the top third for type overlay. 4:5 vertical aspect ratio.

Slide 6:

An illustrated horizontal diagram of one day's energy curve drawn as a single soft rust-orange line on a warm off-white background. The line rises and falls unpredictably across the canvas: a small peak near mid-morning, a sharp dip in the mid-afternoon, a small recovery in the early evening, a long descent toward night. Underneath this curve runs a quiet flat horizontal line drawn in muted dusty-blue dashes, set as a contrast representing a generic flat assumption. Small dusty-blue time markers along the horizontal axis suggest "9am", "1pm", "5pm", "9pm" running left to right but rendered as small abstract markers rather than legible text. A small illustrated mascot figure of a young woman in a casual sweater, head-and-shoulders, perches on one of the small peaks of the rust curve holding a tiny cup, looking out across the curve. No grid lines. Pastel palette: warm off-white, rust orange, dusty blue, deep brown. Slightly desaturated, faint paper-grain texture. Generous negative space in the upper half of the canvas for type overlay. 4:5 vertical aspect ratio.

Slide 7:

Two illustrated planner pages drawn side by side as if propped on a calm cream table surface, each about the same size with a soft gap between them. Left page: a clean, gridded weekly planner page in soft cream and dusty blue, drawn neatly, with small placeholder bars for handwritten entries lined up evenly in rows. Right page: a planner page in the same general format but flowing in irregular organic shapes and warm sage green and rust orange lines, with similar placeholder bars but arranged in clusters and gentle curves rather than rigid rows. A faint sage-green curving line drifts between the two pages near the bottom, suggesting they are siblings rather than opposites. No human figure in this image. Pastel palette: cream base, dusty blue, sage green, rust orange, deep brown line. Slightly desaturated, faint paper-grain texture. Generous negative space in the top third for type overlay. 4:5 vertical aspect ratio.

Slide 8:

A small illustrated mascot figure of a young woman in a casual oversized sweater standing upright in the bottom-right corner of an otherwise mostly empty cream canvas, drawn in the same clean rounded line-art with soft pastel fills as the rest of the carousel. Beside her, a single new open planner lies flat on an implied table surface, drawn in clean sage-green line work with cream pages and a small terracotta bookmark sticking up from one page edge. The planner is calm, undamaged, deliberately distinct from the abandoned planners shown in the cover slide. No glow, no shadow, no decorative extras around the planner. Pastel palette: cream base, sage green planner, terracotta bookmark, deep brown line for the mascot. Slightly desaturated, faint paper-grain texture. Generous negative space across the upper two thirds and the left two thirds of the canvas so layout can fit a title, a small numbered recap list, and a synthesis body block. 4:5 vertical aspect ratio.

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Designer notes

• Mascot character lock: The illustrated woman on slides 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 must read as the same character across all slides. Same casual oversized sweater, same loosely tied-back hair, same body proportions. If generating with Higgsfield nano_banana_2, run slide 1 first and use the resulting figure as the character reference for slides 2, 3, 5, 6, 8. If commissioning custom, lock a single character sheet first and reference it across the six appearances.
• Visual lineage: The reference post to study before producing is DW3_wgWCtZ7 (rank 2 carousel by save rate, 9.82%, "How To Build an ADHD System"). The cover composition (woman amid the chaos of broken planners) is a deliberate visual rhyme with that post. Secondary references in the same family: DXxL_yXjbVa (rank 4 burnout architecture, pastel mascot), DXUw8tGjbwo (rank 3 icon-and-objects pastel), DVqKrxcjLqM (rank 7 illustrated cycle wheel pastel).
• Creative latitude: Mascot pose within the described posture, exact arrangement of the planner objects in slide 1's horseshoe arc, exact gradient or shading of the energy curve in slide 6, the precise number of placeholder bars on the planner pages in slide 7. All open.
• Locked, not open: Hex codes, typography pairing (Recoleta semi-bold + Inter regular/medium, no substitutes without flagging), 4:5 ratio, slide-indicator dot system, paper-grain texture, the verbatim copy from the approved draft, the layout zones described per slide, the slide-tag colour rotation (dusty blue → sage → rust → sage → dusty blue across reasons 1 to 5).
• Asset-export specs: 1080x1350px per slide, sRGB color profile, PNG output (lossless to preserve type sharpness), 8 separate files named slide-1.png through slide-8.png inside assets/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault/.
• Slide 8 CTA treatment: No CTA pill, no "Link in bio." text on the slide itself, no save-prompt, no share-prompt, no comment-prompt. Per writing-protocol section 1.1 the link-in-bio CTA lives only in the caption. Slide 8 is purely emotional resolution plus a quiet reference to the product. If a designer reflex is to add a button or arrow to slide 8, flag back to the editor before producing.
• No open questions, asset is fully specified above.

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Generated assets

Rendered via Higgsfield nano_banana_2 (with baked-in typography) on 2026-05-25T19:10:00Z.

• Slide 1: assets/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault/slide-1.png
• Slide 2: assets/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault/slide-2.png
• Slide 3: assets/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault/slide-3.png
• Slide 4: assets/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault/slide-4.png
• Slide 5: assets/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault/slide-5.png
• Slide 6: assets/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault/slide-6.png
• Slide 7: assets/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault/slide-7.png
• Slide 8: assets/2026-05-25/failed-planners-not-your-fault/slide-8.png
• Failed: (none)