The assets

Each element that carries recognition on its own.

The part

What it is

Colour, shape, logo, typeface, a character, a sound, a layout convention. Any of them can become distinctive with enough consistent use.

Distinctiveness is built rather than designed, which is why the age of an asset is one of the more useful things recorded about it.

The smallest level

The attributes it carries

Each attribute is one of the framework’s shared types. What a date is, and how it is written, is defined once for the whole model — the note here says what it means in this particular place.

Asset
The element in question.
Text shared type
Asset type
Colour, shape, logo, typeface, character, sound or layout.
Choice shared type
In use for
How long it has been used consistently, which is what builds distinctiveness.
Duration shared type