Ch 02 · Route Design Principles 03 / 12

How Problems Take Shape

1
Color encodes difficulty instantly
Six route grades, six hold colors — a climber reads the wall before touching a single hold.
2
Spacing dictates movement, not decoration
Every hold placement forces a specific body position — distance between grips is the real design variable.
3
Raw materials stay honest
Plywood panels, bolt grids, polyurethane holds — nothing is cladded, nothing is pretending to be something else.
4
Iteration is the only method
A route gets set, tested, stripped, and reset — the wall is never finished, only versioned.
This is the Bouldering Chalk design system, applied by Curio Design — a design-style library for AI agents. Full Bouldering Chalk guide → designbycurio.com/learn/climbing-chalk-bouldering