COLOPHON

How This Site Is Built

For a site about making systems visible, showing your own system is on-brand.

Typography

Display

Newsreader

Page titles, section headers, pull-quotes. The editorial authority.

Body

Source Serif 4

All long-form prose. Warm, readable, designed for sustained reading.

UI

DM Sans

Navigation, buttons, tags, metadata. The approachable counterpoint.

Mono

IBM Plex Mono

Code, timestamps, system text. The voice of the machine.

Color

Paper #E8E4DB
Cream #F0EDE5
Amber #C4652A
Deep #2A2520
Undercroft #0047FF

Stack

FrameworkAstro
HostingCloudflare Pages
ContentMDX via Content Collections
InteractivityReact islands (Astro Islands architecture)
StylingVanilla CSS + custom properties
SearchPagefind (client-side, post-build indexed)
FontsSelf-hosted, subsetted woff2

Design Philosophy

Editorial Drafting Table. The site feels like an engineer's working surface — graph paper, precise annotations, warm under-lighting. The key tension: precision and warmth coexist.

No CSS framework. No utility classes. The design system is too specific and editorial for generic tooling. Every property is a deliberate choice rooted in the visual language of engineering notebooks, printed broadsheets, and information-dense interfaces.

The Grid

The graph-paper background is rendered in pure CSS as a repeating pattern of fine lines — 20px cells with major lines every 5th cell. It's not decorative; it's the foundational visual element that ties every section together.

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