# Cover ledger > A full-bleed cover on your own photograph with nothing on it but a ledger of three paper plates flush along its foot: a number at display size, a small tracked label and one line on each, with the photograph showing through the gaps. No headline on the image. Includes a replaceable example photograph. States no colour and no font of its own. Ships with a short hand-off row on your theme's paper below it, so the cover reads as a section and not the page. Canonical: https://patternpaste.com/pattern/cover-ledger.html Section: Cover Access: Included in Pattern Paste access. Needs: Requires a block theme on WordPress 7.0 to 7.1. Classic themes and page builders are outside our supported setup. Adaptive patterns use the block theme’s colour, spacing and typography presets; styled variations declare their own colours or type. Blocks: column, columns, cover, group, paragraph Keywords: cover, photo, video, banner, page header, ledger, numbers, stats ## Variations (4) ### Paper ledger (the default) Identical markup in every theme. Three plates in your base colour with your contrast as the type, sitting on the bottom edge of the cover at your theme's gutter, under a 40% veil of your contrast on the photograph. On a phone the plates stack, still flush with the foot, with the photograph above them. ### In motion Identical markup in every theme. The same ledger over a clip instead of a still. Choose a short, silent, looping video in the cover's media picker; the plates and the veil are unchanged, so the numbers are exactly as legible as they are on a photograph. ### Ink ledger Identical markup in every theme. The plates invert: your contrast as the ground, your base as the type. The same ledger, more weight, for a photograph that is mostly light. ### Mend This variation states its own colours and states its own type: identical in every theme. The Mend physio set: a full-bleed photograph of hill walkers under a light teal veil, three plates along its foot, the first deep teal with an apricot figure, the others clinical white with teal figures and sage labels, over a mint strip, all in Avenir Next. --- ## The signature moment: density contrast, top against foot The top three quarters of the section are empty photograph. The bottom quarter is packed: three numbers at 40px to 64px, three labels, three lines, all on paper, sitting on the edge like a row of labels pinned along the bottom of a print. There is no headline; the numbers are the headline. The plates have no margin below them and the cover has no padding, so the paper touches the foot of the section, and the gaps between plates (1.5rem in a row, 1rem stacked) are the only places the photograph is seen at the bottom. Below 782px core stacks the columns. The stack stays flush with the foot, because the bottom alignment is carried by the wrapper and not by a viewport-dependent offset, and the photograph becomes a band above it: at least `clamp(6rem, 12vw, 10rem)` of image, more when the 34rem floor has room left over. ## How the bottom alignment is built, and why The cover's own content positions (`bottom left`, `bottom center`) were not used. A custom content position sets the cover's inner container to `width: auto`, so it shrink-wraps to its content; a plate carrying a long paragraph fills its measure anyway, which is why `cover-plate` can use one, but a ledger of short numbers would shrink to the width of its words, and to a different width in every theme's typeface. So the cover keeps core's default centring, which keeps the inner container at `width: 100%`, and the first group inside it is a vertical flex stack with `min-height: 34rem` (the same value as the cover's floor), `justifyContent: stretch` and `verticalAlignment: bottom`. The stack fills the cover, its one child (a constrained wrapper at `contentSize: 1240px`, which picks up the theme's root padding and so sits at the theme's gutter) is pushed to the floor, and the columns inside it span the measure at every width. A buyer raising the cover's height changes `minHeight` on the cover AND `min-height` on that first group; they are the same number on purpose. ## The rule this pattern obeys **Type never sits on a photograph.** Every word is on a plate whose ground is a `base` chain and whose type is a `contrast` chain, and every paragraph states its own text colour rather than inheriting the plate's, so a theme's element styles cannot repaint it. Every word is therefore measured on a pair of colours your theme guarantees. The veil over the photograph is decoration; it may recede without loss. The cover states its own text colour (`base`) so that core's `:where()` rule, which would otherwise paint any text in it `#fff`, never fires; nothing sits outside the plates today, and the chain is there so that nothing a buyer adds does either without a colour of its own. ## What it inherits, what it decides Inherits: every colour (plates `base`, type `contrast`, veil `contrast` at 40%), the typeface, the root padding that sets the gutter. Decides: the proportion of the type (numbers from 40px to 64px at line-height 1 and -0.035em, a 13px to 14px tracked uppercase label, a 15px to 16px line at 1.5), the plate padding, the gaps, the 34rem floor, and the element order. The numbers are paragraphs, not headings, so a theme's heading styles do not reach them and the page's outline is not three numbers. ## What a buyer changes first The photograph. The cover includes an example photograph: choose Replace, select an image from the media library, and set the focal point high, since the foot is covered by the ledger. Then the three numbers and their labels; a label reads best under 22 characters so it holds one line on every plate, and the line under it under about 60 characters so the three plates stay the same height. The line is optional: delete the third paragraph from every plate, not from one. ## Variations - **Ink ledger**: the plates invert, `contrast` ground and `base` type. The same ledger, more weight, for a photograph that is mostly light. The veil is unchanged. - **In motion**: `backgroundType: "video"`. The same ledger over a clip. The cover remains empty for your own clip (an empty video cover is valid in the editor and saves as the veil over the inner container); choose a short, silent, looping clip in the cover's media picker. Core writes the `