Section 6, option N: six step markers

Variants of option N on their own sheet. Only the marker in the left rail changes between boards; the layout, the copy, the buttons and the rail logic are identical, so what you are comparing is the marker and nothing else.

Two constraints shape the set, and they rule out some obvious ideas. The marker sits on NIGHT, where a white or cream fill competes with the step heading beside it, which is also white, and a NIGHT fill disappears; that leaves gold, an outline, or white at low opacity. And gold is the page’s only accent, already carrying both buttons in this very section, so three filled gold markers plus a filled gold button is four gold objects in one screen. Variants 3, 4 and 6 exist specifically to answer that.

One mechanical note: the rows are set to align-items:stretch so a full-height marker can exist at all. On a baseline-aligned row, variant 5’s bar would collapse to the height of its first line.

1Small gold textThe setting on the board you picked, kept here as the floor. It is the least assertive of the six and the only one where the marker reads as a label rather than as an object, which suits a list that is meant to be read rather than counted. Its weakness is that at 13px it does very little work: remove it and the list barely changes.

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2Filled gold squareThe strongest and the most conventional. It matches the numeral treatment the page used before this section was reworked, so it is the one that carries the most continuity. The cost is the one to weigh: three filled gold squares plus a filled gold button is four gold objects in a single screen, and gold is the page’s only accent.

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3Outlined circleThe same object with the accent reduced to a 1.5px line. It reads as a step marker at a glance while spending perhaps a fifth of the colour, which leaves the gold button as the loudest thing in the section, where it belongs. Of the six this is the best balance between being visible and being cheap.

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4Ghost numeralNo accent at all: 38px in white at 22 percent, large enough to be structure and quiet enough not to compete with the heading it introduces. It gives the rail real presence without adding a fourth gold object, and it is the only option here that would still look right if the section ever moved off NIGHT to a light ground.

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5The marker as a tabThe marker stops being a badge and becomes the row’s left edge: a full-height gold bar with the numeral at its top. It ties each step to the whole height of its text rather than to its first line, so the three rows read as three blocks. This is the reason the rows are set to stretch; on a baseline-aligned row the bar would collapse to one line tall.

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6Numeral over a short ruleA white numeral with 24px of gold ruled under it. The smallest spend of the six and the most typographic: nothing is filled, nothing is bounded, and the accent appears as a line rather than as a shape. It also echoes the short gold rules used elsewhere on the page, so it adds no new device.

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If you want one: 3. It reads as a step marker instantly, spends about a fifth of the gold a filled square does, and leaves the button as the loudest thing in the section, which is where the accent should go. 4 is the pick if the rail should have presence without any accent at all; 2 if continuity with the page’s earlier numeral treatment matters more than the colour budget.