Cut the stylesheet bundle from 87 KB to 31 KB by taking a base64 font out of it, and dropped 756 KB across 22 files that were published on every deploy and referenced by nothing.

Situation. The site’s stylesheet bundle was 87 KB, which for a document site with no framework is most of a page weight spent before any content arrives. The site also published a directory of icons on every deploy, generated once and referenced by nothing since.

Task. The weight had to come down without the design changing, and it had to come down for a reason that could be pointed at rather than by general tidying.

Action. Measurement first. Two thirds of the largest stylesheet was one base64‑encoded font — about 56 KB of text encoding about 42 KB of font — inlined for a first‑paint benefit that a preloaded external file gets anyway, and paid for on every page whether the weight was needed or not. Taking it out took that file from 84 KB to 28 and the whole bundle from 87 to 31. The three font weights are preloaded instead, and the third joined the list only when field data showed it closing the longest critical chain rather than because three sounded complete. Separately, an audit of what the deploy actually published found twenty‑one generated icons and a duplicate configuration file, 756 KB, shipped every time and referenced from nowhere; and the site’s icon file itself came down from 145 KB to 15. A modern image format was evaluated for the brand mark, measured, and declined — it came out larger, and the selection mechanism picks by order rather than by size, so a modern browser would have taken the heavier file everywhere. Two checks now hold the line: no photograph may be displayed wider than half its source pixels, and every illustration must be published at a size its own pixels support at both standard and high density.

Result. The bundle is 31 KB instead of 87, 756 KB of dead assets stopped being deployed, and each decision has a measurement attached — including the one that went the other way, which is the more useful record of the two.