Colophon

How this is made.

Typography

Bembo

Body text. Set from ETbb, a digital revival of Bembo — the typeface cut by Francesco Griffo in 1496 for Aldus Manutius. Ligatures and oldstyle figures enabled.

Isenheim

Headings and display. Named for the Isenheim Altarpiece. Used in the app for date headers and surface titles.

Da Vinci

Footer signature. PF Da Vinci Script Pro. Rendered mirrored, as Leonardo wrote.

NewYorker

Decorative initials. Used sparingly in the app for collection headers and section dividers.

Werner colours

Six colours from Werner's 1814 Nomenclature of Colours — a taxonomy that mapped every colour in the natural world to a mineral, plant, or animal. Each swatch below is the actual pigment hue, as implemented in Aion.

Cochineal From the dried body of a scale insect
Gamboge Resin of the Garcinia tree
Verdigris Copper patina in vinegar vapour
Ultramarine Ground lapis lazuli from beyond the sea
Orpiment Arsenic trisulphide mineral
Lavender The flower of Lavandula angustifolia

Time-colour

Every minute of the day maps to a unique hue. The formula is hue = totalMinutes / 1440, with saturation 0.85 and brightness 0.85. The same mapping appears in timestamps, drying ink, rosettes, and the live bar.

Moon phase

The website uses a synodic-period moon model anchored to 6 January 2000, 18:14 UTC. In Cartography and the footer, that lunar age drives a rendered disk rather than a simple glyph swap.

Technology

Built with Astro. A small amount of JavaScript handles motion, navigation, and the interactive specimens. The aim is simple: movement that explains the page, not movement laid on top of it.

Aesthetic

Pure black background. White at varying opacities. The design language is called obsidian — the same visual system as the app. Every element earns its brightness. The default state is silence.