Elevation & shadows

You copied a box-shadow from the last card you built. Then you tweaked the blur. Then you copied it again. Now the page has six different depths and no reason for any of them.

Elevation is a ladder. Flat, rest, raised, overlay. A card, a menu, and a dialog share the same levels. You raise a surface by changing the token, not inventing a new shadow.

Walk the card through the levels. Watch the same token land on the menu and the dialog.

A raw shadow is a one-off. A level is a decision you can reuse tomorrow.