Design Themes

The visual systems actually running across the estate, read from the live surfaces rather than from a source repo. 6 families, 20 variants, 4 token contracts.

v2.0.0 • verified 2026-09-09 • tokens.json

How to read this

A family is a token contract: a set of names plus structural rules. A variant is one set of values poured into that contract. This is not a taxonomy invented after the fact. /clocks/ and datapoems.io already ship byte-identical values, and /clocks/numerals/ already ships the same token names with a different palette. Pick a contract, then pick a variant.

surface

Used by instrument. 6 required tokens.

document

Used by paper. 5 required tokens.

grid

Used by swiss. 3 required tokens.

product

Used by product. 13 required tokens.

Families

Instrument
Dark ground, hairline rules, one bright accent and one warm secondary. Reads as a lit panel in a dark room.
ChalkNumeralsDeep SeaAurora+6
10 variants · surface contract · 2 live
Paper
Warm sheet, dark ink, one accent. Everything on it is an inscription, a manuscript or a printed page.
Paper (world-languages)ParchmentHeritage
3 variants · document contract · 2 live
Swiss
The grid is the design. Achromatic ground, one accent, hairline or no separator, sharp corners, left-aligned.
Swiss InternationalCatalogTrophy Wall
3 variants · grid contract · 2 live
Gothic
Fog and distance. Near-black ground, lavender and ice mist, serif display, text that drifts.
Spectral
1 variant · surface contract
Canvas
No chrome at all. A black page, a full-bleed canvas, and a palette that only exists inside the drawing.
Mandaza
1 variant · no contract · 1 live
Product
Application shell. Component-library tokens in oklch, one brand hue, neutral everything else.
GeepersIdea Tiles
2 variants · product contract · 2 live

Generated from themes/tokens.json by build-themes.py. Edit the tokens and re-run; do not hand-edit the pages.