BUILD the man.
BUILD is the single-session execution pillar: five steps in one locked order. Base establishes the lateral midface frame; Uplift establishes forward projection; Install sets the lower-face anchors; Link draws the connecting jawline silhouette; Detail harmonises and closes. Two steps run by default, three only on indication. The sequence is the intellectual property, and it is public: a clinician who delivers the steps out of order has not delivered BUILD, they have delivered injections in the BUILD vocabulary.
- Base establishes the lateral envelope.
- Uplift projects through that envelope and sets the forward reference plane.
- Install installs the chin and angle anchors.
- Link connects the anchored lower frame with a defined line.
- Detail closes only where the whole face still needs harmonising.
A step is done when its signature reads, not when a volume is delivered. Base: lateral edge, malar peak and submalar shadow read as one continuous arc on three-quarter view. Uplift: lateral cheek, anterior cheek and pyriform read as one forward-sweeping curve. Install: chin, mandibular body and ramus read as one squared lower-face skeleton. Link: a clean, balanced mandibular edge reads from ear to chin without texture compromise. Detail: the five signatures read as one architectural statement rather than five stacked treatments.
Three steps on bone. The line is the first to leave it.
Base, Uplift and Install all work deep, on the periosteum: they rebuild architecture, and the bone is both the target and the safeguard. Link is the Codex's first superficial step, because a jawline reads as light and shadow, not as width. Detail is the only step that spans every plane, region by region. Width is a deep move on the ramus; edge is a superficial move along the border. The two are never substituted for one another.
Product follows plane. The Codex assigns a rheology class to every region, from very low to high, and names no brand: the structural steps run on the firmest class, the closing regions on whatever the tissue asks for, and the class steps down wherever a thin, petite or lax envelope would show a firm product through the skin.
Base · the OGEE Curve
Build width and edge, never height. A ledge, not a peak. The midface is the most defining region for the masculine versus feminine read, and Base is the foundation every later step depends on: get it wrong and every later step fights gravity. Bone-deep placement tensions the compartment column from beneath the retaining ligament, so the lateral face reads as architecture rather than volume.
Base runs by default and is never withheld. The apple of the cheek must not increase in projection: if it does, the step has feminised the face.
Done when the lateral edge, the malar peak and the submalar shadow read as one continuous arc on three-quarter view, with no zone boundary visible and no anterior fullness introduced. Stop at contour distortion.
See the territory on the atlas
Uplift · the Forward Arc
Forward, not up. Most over-treated men have been pushed skyward by lift-mimicking product placed too high and too superficial. Uplift works on bone, building forward from bone-deep support so the face reads projected rather than lifted. It runs in the same session as Base, immediately after it: Base sets the lateral envelope, Uplift projects through it.
The apple of the cheek must never project further forward than the pyriform, and must not enlarge on animation. Static and dynamic: two axes, both checked, at the same sitting.
Done when the Forward Arc reads continuously on three-quarter view, the apple sits at or behind the pyriform plane at rest, nothing enlarges on a smile, and there are no dips, steps or palpable deposits. The treated face must not look treated.
See the territory on the atlas
Install · the Lower Frame
Filler behaves as implant: projecting, lengthening and widening bone that has resorbed or was never adequately structured for a male face. Install shapes the skeleton; Detail shapes the skin over the skeleton. Nothing here is superficial, because superficial product distorts tissue texture and violates the doctrine. No anchor fires merely because another has.
In Install we do not fill skin, we rebuild bone. Lateral before central: the corners carry the male squaring, the midline is small and the first to be dropped, so the chin squares rather than points. The mental foramen is marked before anything near it.
Done when the lateral-chin-to-ramus frame reads squared and proportionate from the front; from the side the profile has appropriate convexity and the chin reaches toward the true vertical without over-projection; and the skin still glides over bone without lumping or ridging.
See the anchors and the foramen on the atlas
Link · the Jawline Silhouette
Drawn fourth, never first. A jawline is a line between anchors that already hold; injected first, into a face with no base and no lower-face structure, it is why so many treated jawlines look wrong. Link produces definition, not width. The plane flips superficial because a jawline reads as light and shadow, and the pass is blunt and slow along a border the facial artery crosses.
If space in the superficial fat compartment is limited, we limit volume to protect texture. Definition is never worth distorted skin. The syringe stops when the compartment is full even if the thread reads incomplete.
Done when a clean edge reads from ear to chin on front view, a gonial shadow reads laterally with an uninterrupted line connecting ramus, pre-jowl and chin, the jawline balances what the midface can carry, and the skin glides with no visible ridging or palpable thread. Sometimes the right jawline is no jawline: where laxity or jowling makes the case surgical, filler is the wrong tool.
See the line and the artery crossing on the atlas
Detail · the Blended Harmony
Detail is the polish that turns the structural work of the first four steps into one coherent face. These regions are almost optional; the initial BUILD does the main structural work, and a region fires at its baseline or not at all. Every region preaches under-correction: the forehead supported rather than domed, the temple blended until the transition disappears, the true trough softened with some natural hollow kept, the nose straightened without widening, the lips within the vermilion and never dominant, the crease softened rather than erased because it is itself a masculine landmark.
We stop injecting the individual region as the overall facial harmony goals are achieved. When it fires on the region that carried the face into harmony, the whole session ends.
Done when the whole face reads as one face: no zone dominates, no zone reads as treated, movement and expression are preserved. Detail can legitimately be nothing at all when the architecture already delivers harmony.
See the seven regions on the atlas
The algorithm proposes. The face decides.
The predicted volume is a starting plan, not a target. Three stops sit above every remaining indication, and any one of them ends delivery whatever the plan said.
Contour distortion
The single Codex sign of overfilling: loss of the natural curve. A sharp transition, pillowing, an apple of the cheek that dominates the three-quarter view. Stop injecting immediately, even if the predicted volume has not been delivered.
The full compartment
The superficial fat compartment feels tight or full during delivery. Stop, and limit volume to protect texture, even if the line or the region reads incomplete. Texture wins over the target.
The Believability Stop
Overall harmony reads clear across front and three-quarter views, still and on animation. End the region. If that region carried the face into harmony, end the session, regardless of remaining indications. A harmony cap, not a volume cap.
- The algorithm proposes; the face decides.
- Stop at contour distortion.
- Harmony is a session decision, not a step decision: where two valid routes exist, decide after READ is complete, not while optimising one zone.
Every structural step has a baseline, a default upward permission and a reserved one. READ sets which is available (visibility, the ranked priorities, the frame); tissue and harmony then constrain it further. A permission never creates an indication and never overrules a lock, an exception, an existing-product reduction or a stop. Detail carries none of it. The numbers are the Masterclass.
Never create cheek height or an anteriorly dominant apple. Favour lateral chin construction; the central points are dropped first. Lips stay within the vermilion and never dominate a male face. The labiomental crease is softened, never removed. A feature named as loved or must-not-change is a hard lock, not a soft preference.
The what, the why and the when are on this page. The how lives at the chair.
Every entry point, landmark construction, volume, tier, instrument and the routing of each read to each region is taught in person at the Band Codex Masterclass, in a working male-aesthetics clinic, on live model-day cases.
The Masterclass →