Opacity

How much of what lies beneath shows through. Transparency is a way of layering meaning, not only of softening it.

Opacity is how much a surface admits of what lies beneath, and every value below full is a statement of relationship: this layer belongs to that one. Veils, scrims and glass panels are opacity used as architecture, letting depth exist without drawing it.

It is also a hierarchy tool subtler than size: text at reduced opacity steps back a rank without shrinking, which is how the quiet labels on these pages defer to their headlines. The trap is legibility, dimmed text on a busy ground fails silently. We dim the surface first, the words last.