Store — Variant Thumbnail Guidelines
Spec 057. A thumbnail is the colourful card image shown for your variant in
Store. A good thumbnail makes your variant look professional and inviting.
Add one by committing the image to your variant's repo at
user-docs/store-thumbnail.png — it is detected automatically (there is no
field to fill in, and nothing is stored in the database).
These are enterprise business applications — aim for clean, credible, and modern. No cartoon, anime, meme, clip-art, or cheap-looking graphics (FR-014).
Variety matters. The store will hold hundreds of these cards side by side. If every thumbnail is a dim app screenshot on the same dark slate background, the store looks monotonous and nothing stands out. Aim for a distinctive card: vary the style (screenshot or an industry icon/motif) and vary the background tint to suit the subject — while staying inside the Don't rules below so the set still feels like one coherent, premium store.
Format
| Property | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Aspect ratio | 16:9, landscape (matches the card and demo-video frames) |
| Recommended size | 1280 × 720 px (min 640 × 360; larger is fine, same ratio) |
| File type | PNG (the file must be store-thumbnail.png) |
| Repo path | user-docs/store-thumbnail.png in the variant's repo |
| File weight | Keep it lean (ideally < 300 KB) so the store loads fast |
The Store card shows your demo video first if you have one; otherwise it uses this thumbnail; otherwise a neutral branded placeholder. So a thumbnail is what makes a variant without a demo video look polished in the store.
Choose a style
Pick whichever style makes this variant stand out — mixing the two across the store is exactly the point. Neither is more "correct"; the goal is variety.
- A — Screenshot / UI. A real product screenshot or clean dashboard shot. Best when the interface itself is visually strong and recognisable. This is the classic choice, but don't make it the default for every card — a wall of small, dark UI shots all blurs together.
- B — Icon / motif. A single clean symbol or piece of key art that evokes the
industry, subject, or people the variant serves — set on a tinted panel.
Best when the UI is generic (forms, tables, settings), the product is early and
screenshot-thin, or you simply want the card to read instantly at a glance.
- Examples of subject-driven motifs: a stethoscope for a clinic tool, a hard hat / crane for construction, a shopping cart for retail, a graduation cap for edtech, a truck / route pin for logistics, a wheat sheaf for agriculture, a scales of justice for legal, a friendly people/handshake glyph for HR or CRM.
- Keep it one confident icon (line or flat style), not a cluttered montage. It should still look like enterprise key art, not clip-art or an emoji.
Backgrounds & colour
The background is where most of the variety comes from — use it deliberately.
- Vary the tint per card. Tie the hue to the subject or the product's brand: greens for health/agriculture/finance, blues/teals for tech/data, warm ambers for logistics/retail, deep purples for creative/analytics, and so on. A store full of different-coloured cards reads as a rich catalogue, not a spreadsheet.
- Dark is an option, not the option. A dark slate→indigo panel is fine for some cards, but light and mid-tone backgrounds (soft grey, warm off-white, a pale tinted wash) read just as premium and add contrast across the grid.
- One dominant hue + one accent. Whatever colour you choose, keep it a single coherent tint with a single restrained accent — that is what keeps a varied set from looking chaotic. Subtle gradients are welcome; the Don't rules below (no neon, no harsh gradients, no busy collages) still apply to every card.
Minimum font sizes
Design at the master 1280 × 720, but assume the card renders at about 1/4 size — ~320 × 180 px (and demo-video frames can crop it smaller still). Text that looks fine full-size turns to mush at that scale, so set a floor. The rule of thumb: ~9 px rendered is the legibility floor, so multiply by 4 for the minimum you must draw at the master size.
| Text role | Min at 1280 × 720 | ≈ share of height | Rendered at 1/4 (~320 × 180) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary — product name / one key word | 48 px | ~6.5% | ~12 px |
| Secondary — short tagline (a few words) | 40 px | ~5.5% | ~10 px |
| Absolute floor — any text at all | 36 px | ~5% | ~9 px |
- If you author larger than 1280 × 720 (same 16:9), scale by the percentage of height, not the pixel numbers — e.g. at 1920 × 1080 the primary floor is ~72 px.
- Use bold / medium weight for anything near the floor; hairline weights and low-contrast colour vanish when downscaled. The same goes for icon / line-art stroke width — keep strokes chunky enough to survive a 4× reduction.
- If a word won't fit above the floor, cut text rather than shrink it. A card is not a slide; one or two words beats a legible-only-at-full-size sentence.
Do
- Pick a style per card (screenshot or icon/motif) and a background tint that suits the subject — deliberately differ from the cards around you.
- Use a real product screenshot, a clean dashboard/UI shot, or a single subject icon / key-art panel on a solid or subtly-gradient background.
- Choose a background hue that fits the industry or brand; both dark and light/mid tones are welcome as long as they stay subtle and coherent.
- Keep a clear focal point; assume the image is seen small (~240 px wide).
- Use legible, high-contrast colour. A restrained accent colour reads as premium.
- Leave a little breathing room — don't crowd the edges (the top corners may be covered by the Beta ribbon / Editor's Choice badge).
- Make sure it still reads at thumbnail size and on mobile.
Don't
- ❌ Cartoon, anime, mascots, emoji-style art, or stock clip-art (a clean, flat or line industry icon is welcome — the ban is on cheap or childish art).
- ❌ Default every card to the same dark screenshot-on-slate look — that sameness is the problem these guidelines exist to avoid.
- ❌ Long sentences or paragraphs of text — at most a short product name/tagline.
- ❌ Tiny UI text that turns to mush when scaled down.
- ❌ Loud neon, harsh gradients, busy collages, or more than one accent colour.
- ❌ Portrait or square crops (they will be letterboxed or cropped to 16:9).
- ❌ Logos/screenshots you don't have the right to use.
Examples
| ✅ Acceptable | ❌ Unacceptable |
|---|---|
| A crisp 1280×720 dashboard screenshot with one accent colour | A square cartoon mascot on a rainbow background |
| A single clean stethoscope icon on a soft teal panel (a clinic tool) | A cluttered collage of ten industry icons |
| Clean key art: product name + small logo on a slate→indigo gradient | A meme image with three lines of caption text |
| A hard-hat motif on a warm amber wash for a construction app | The same dark UI screenshot re-used for every variant |
| A focused screenshot of the app's main screen | A blurry phone photo of a monitor |
Safe zones (corners)
The top-right corner may carry a diagonal Beta ribbon and the top-left an Editor's Choice badge. Keep critical content (logos, key text) away from the top corners so it isn't obscured.