Feel

Every colour, face and layout decision is judged against one phrase, not against taste. Part of the SoR design system; start building from BUILD.md. Who we are and how we sound: brand.md.

Grounded hope

Hope stays the destination, and it is earned by going through the dark rather than around it. A glowing sunrise painting is hope without ground; Dark Mountain is ground without much hope. We sit between: a skilled, caring presence at an ending and at a birth.

Light: dawn-leaning. We are more about renaissance than hospicing an ending, though we do both.

Three supporting notes

1. Deep sourcing. Going to the source, and the creativity that comes from there. Depth with the aim of really understanding.
2. Crafted rigour. Real thought, love and care in how things are made; truthfulness rather than being right. The elegance of a potter's bowl, not of Vogue.
3. Liminal integration. Not opposites side by side but the moment they become one: dawn, birth, death. Crisis and renaissance as one transition.

Character

A little off-centre. Earthy, a bit muddy, a bit quirky, a bit marginal. Not mainstream, and not a wild artist's site either. The muddiness lives in texture and imperfection (paper grain, torn edges, woodcuts, fingerprints), never in muddy colour or raw imagery.

Nothing may look backwards. We are seeding a new renaissance, not restaging the old one. Antique-looking type and sepia nostalgia are out.

What we are not

• Wellness, spiritual woo-woo, new age ("the age of Aquarius")
• Luxury-clean, glossy, fashion-elegant
• Corporate, mainstream, hard selling
• Sleek and contemporary
• Chaotic or self-indulgent like many artist sites

Who we design for

People who sense the old world is ending before they can name it, and want to help seed the new: intellectually curious and practically hungry, allergic to hype, looking for grounded hope. The four personas are in brand.md.

What they should feel: "These people are honest. They're living it. I'm not alone in seeing what I see." What this means for design: plain, honest entry points; real people in real places, not stock or glossy; depth one step away for those who want it.

Rigour and warmth

Rigour is the form, warmth is the surface (the potter's bowl). Rigour is constant on every page: grid, type, accuracy, sourcing, care. Warmth is a layer that varies: people, texture, hand marks, colour, voice. Rigour first, but both always present.

Eight principles

The rules that carry the feel, in short. When a new page is in doubt, check it against these; the working rules are in BUILD.md.

1. Ink and paper first. Mostly white, paper and ink; colour arrives in photographs, not the interface.
2. Buttons are ink. Black, solid or outlined; chalk on night.
3. Red is rare. An occasional link in running text, and footnote marks; never a button or a background.
4. Pale yellow is light, not paint. A ground for a whole section; never text, a highlighter or bright yellow.
5. One night per page, plus the footer, meeting the light at a torn edge, never a straight line or a gradient.
6. Length decides the face. Polyamine under about ten words, Restora beyond, Bricolage for reading (type.md).
7. Figures are plates. Numbered and captioned like plates in a book: Fig. 2 then an italic caption.
8. The hand is our texture. Paper grain, torn edges, woodcut seeds and swallows, the fingerprints in the logo. Imperfection is made, not filtered on.

References

Dark Mountain (seriousness, literary depth, torn ink edges); Emergence Magazine (visible structure, but too sleek and nature-mystical); Christopher Alexander and Iain McGilchrist (rigorous yet warm writing); wabi-sabi; Ally Capellino and Muji (good materials, no logos); a handmade potter's bowl; dawn and dusk. Full list and reasoning: the archived plan.