American Gothic is the most tightly-wound portrait American Regionalism ever made: a farmer and his daughter standing rigid before a white Carpenter Gothic farmhouse, everything vertical and repeated. This system is built from that restraint — a drab, honest, sun-faded palette painted matte and hard-edged, a central vertical axis held without exception, and plain slab lettering cut like a small-town sign painter's hand. Stand up straight, hold the pitchfork, and let the plain thing be plain.