Guide · explorable
Signed Spectral Profile (8-D)
The payoff of strength & valence, applied across all eight dimensions at once. Each dimension is a vector: its length is strength, its tilt is valence — two independent axes. A dimension can be long and straight up: strongly registered, no direction. Build on the bars; this adds the sign.
Three numbers, two of them independent. Strength is the vector's length; valence is its tilt — the projection of the direction on the horizontal axis, so a dimension can be long and dead straight (strongly registered, zero direction). The product, strength × valence, is the net signed contribution — a derived “bottom line,” shown on the ruler below — and it is not valence: a faint-but-positive dimension and a strong-but-neutral one can both sit near the ruler's centre for different reasons. The lanes never share an origin — that would invent adjacency between independent dimensions, the same reason the profile uses bars, not a radar. The five canonical brands set strength only; any sign you add here is illustrative, not part of the canon. The measured version of this signed profile is the Brand Spectrometer: it reads valence per dimension from real public artifacts and reports a sign only where it clears a noise floor — below it the lean greys out as “can’t tell” rather than fake a direction. For the theory, the CMO path.
Strength and direction, eight times over
A bar profile tells you how loudly each dimension registers. The signed profile adds which way each one points — and keeps the two independent, so “strong” never quietly means “liked.” The net contribution is a convenience, not a third axis; read it as the lean a dimension adds, never as its valence. Start from the CMO path on the Guide.