Export PPT modal · riff

Eight ways the tier illustration could go

The card carries one small image above the plan name. Today it is a paper plane for Basic, a fighter jet for Pro and a gold rocket for Gold — three Apple-style 3D emoji, and a speed ladder.

Speed is not what separates these plans. They separate on how many decks you get and how much of the product you get — 1,000 credits and standard AI, against 5,000 with agents, Brand Kit and analytics, against 15,000 with frontier models. A jet says none of that, and DESIGN.md §6 asks for real product over metaphor. Every concept below has to carry three tiers, because Gold is on the checkout panel.

paper plane
Basic
fighter jet
Pro
gold rocket
Gold
What is wrong with it. It is clipart in a screen that is otherwise flat Phosphor outline and navy. The middle rung is a weapon. The ladder measures velocity, which is the one axis the plans do not differ on. And at 44 px all three read as “a small blue-grey aeroplane thing” — the tier is legible from the word underneath, never from the picture.

Worth knowing: the same family is the house answer — design-system/assets/pricing-plans/ ships a propeller plane, a fighter jet and a shuttle, and its README says “Speed is the metaphor” while DESIGN.md says real product over metaphor. Those two sentences disagree, and that is a design-system question, not a proto one.