gamecult-site/docs/brand-design-language.md

GameCult brand design language

This document is not the source of truth. The brand is defined in code:

What	Canonical source
Typefaces, weights, palette tokens	site/quartz.config.ts → configuration.theme
Ground wash, layout, scoped variants	site/quartz/styles/custom.scss
Quartz token plumbing	site/quartz/styles/variables.scss

If this note and those files disagree, the files win and this note is stale. What follows is the part the config cannot express: which decisions were deliberate, what the Quartz token names actually mean, and where the exceptions live.

Written 2026-09-04, from gamecult-site@main, revised 2026-10-02.

Typography

header   Montserrat   100 200 300 400 600
title    Montserrat   100 200 300
body     Ubuntu       300 400 500 700   + italic
code     IBM Plex Mono

Montserrat is carried thin. Titles are restricted to weights 100–300 — there is no bold title weight in the brand. Thin only reads at scale, so headings need real size and generous line-height; setting Montserrat 100 at 18px produces grey mush. When a heading must be small, drop to a heavier Montserrat weight rather than shrinking the thin one.

Ubuntu carries running text at 300. Not 400. The body voice is light, and font-weight: 500 is the emphasis step rather than 700 in prose.

IBM Plex Mono is a display face here, not only a code face. Across custom.scss it is used for eyebrows, section labels, table headers and metadata — uppercase, letter-spaced between 0.06em and 0.18em. That mono-uppercase-tracked label is a signature of the identity; reach for it wherever a small structural label is needed.

Palette

Quartz's token names are counter-intuitive: light is the background and dark is the text. Read them as positions in a scale, not as themes.

Quartz token	Value	Role
light	#07111a	page ground
lightgray	#16212c	panels, borders, code fill
gray	#63758a	muted text, captions
darkgray	#b7c7d9	body text
dark	#eef5ff	headings, emphasis
secondary	#ff8a2a	accent — orange
tertiary	#59b7ff	links, info — sky blue
highlight	rgba(89,183,255,.14)	selection / hover wash
textHighlight	#ff8a2a55	inline mark

The identity is single-theme by decision

lightMode and darkMode in quartz.config.ts are byte-identical, and custom.scss forces color-scheme: dark at :root across all three saved-theme states. There is no light mode. This is a commitment, not an oversight.

Anything built in this identity should therefore paint every colour explicitly and skip prefers-color-scheme entirely — but must still set an explicit background, so it does not borrow a host page's ground.

The ground is a wash, not a flat fill

#07111a is the midpoint, not the whole story. body in custom.scss layers three coloured radials over a vertical gradient:

radial-gradient(circle at 78% 14%, rgb(255 138 42 / calc(.18 * var(--gamecult-wash))), transparent 18%)  // orange
radial-gradient(circle at 18% 10%, rgb(109 96 255 / calc(.16 * var(--gamecult-wash))), transparent 24%)  // violet
radial-gradient(circle at 52%  0%, rgb( 89 183 255 / calc(.14 * var(--gamecult-wash))), transparent 28%) // blue
linear-gradient(180deg, #03070d 0%, #07111a 44%, #09141f 100%)

The radials' intensity is --gamecult-wash on body: 1 on / and 0.5 elsewhere. A page never sets its own radial alpha; the CSS wash is the fallback ground if a shader ever paints it.

Note the violet #6d60ff appears only here — it is not a config token, and it is the reason the top of the page reads warmer and more atmospheric than a flat navy would. Reproducing the brand with a flat #07111a background loses the thing that makes it recognisable.

Masthead

The masthead sits directly on the page ground on every page: the header rule (.page-header > header) sets only display: block and its margin, with no card, border, radius or shadow, so the body wash, a scoped variant's ground or the /Thing hero shows behind it. The title stays Montserrat 200, uppercase and tracked. The nav (.gamecult-nav-link) is plain Ubuntu text, weight 500 at 0.92rem, in --darkgray. Hover, focus and the active route turn it the orange --secondary, with no rule, fill or underline. This follows the Delvehold site's nav. The active route also carries aria-current="page", and there are no nav pills.

Surfaces

The site has no cards. A content box carries no fill, border, radius or shadow of its own; the article (.center > article) sits on the page ground on every page. The exception is a box holding something that floats in the flow: a captioned image or figure (.gamecult-media-card), an embed's own edge, a popover. Grouping is whitespace, type hierarchy and one hairline, --gamecult-rule (declared on body), drawn as border-top: 1px solid var(--gamecult-rule) on the top edge of a section or row (.gamecult-feature-card, .swarm-domain-card) and named by the mono uppercase tracked label (.gamecult-kicker). An aside such as .gamecult-evidence-note is a left rule with no fill. List rows separate by the same top rule: each post on the blog index (.gamecult-blog-card) and each folder-listing row (.page-listing .section-li > .section) carries it, and a post's hover turns its title --secondary instead of filling the row.

Layout

The site is one centred column. Its width is --gamecult-column (72rem), declared on body and applied once, as .page's max-width. The masthead, the article and the site footer fill that column and share its left and right edges on every page; nothing is centred inside it, and no page places anything beside it. A full-bleed surface (the /Thing deck, the visual novel on /tour and /Pitch) may escape the column while its masthead and footer keep the column's frame. The remaining caps (760px on the Ritual Paper h1 and title block, 68ch on the masthead tagline) are type measures, not chrome. The pull quote (.gamecult-outtake) hangs into the space right of the column, less the gutter, never more than 14rem.

Ritual Paper — a scoped variant

Three long-form essays carry a distinct treatment, scoped by slug in custom.scss:

body[data-slug="Blog/small-ritual-of-reach"]
body[data-slug="Blog/week-of-nonconsensual-access"]
body[data-slug="Blog/witness-authoritative-networking"]

Inside that scope the identity changes deliberately: Georgia serif for article body at 1.04rem / 1.72, and its own cobalt-and-amber accent set. The essays sit on their own near-black-violet ground with no sheet; sections are separated by cobalt and amber rules; PREPRINT, WORKING PAPER and the page number are mono labels. Its ground radials' alphas are base values multiplied by --gamecult-wash, like the site ground's.

Token	Value
--ritual-paper-bg	#050614
--ritual-paper-ink	#f1f4ff
--ritual-paper-muted	#bac4ff
--ritual-paper-faint	#7a84c5
--ritual-paper-rule	rgba(96,119,255,.26)
--ritual-paper-cobalt	#3158ff
--ritual-paper-violet	#5b36b8
--ritual-paper-orange	#dc5524
--ritual-paper-yellow	#ffb21e
--ritual-paper-glow	#e9f5ff

IBM Plex Mono still carries the labels here — the mono-uppercase-tracked device survives the variant, which is what keeps it recognisably GameCult rather than a different site.

This is a page-type variant, not a second brand. It applies to typeset essays. Do not reach for Georgia or the cobalt palette for ordinary pages, dashboards, or documents.

Applying this outside the site

For artifacts, dashboards, decks, and documents that should read as GameCult:

• Montserrat 100–200 for titles, carried large. Ubuntu 300 for prose.
• IBM Plex Mono, uppercase, tracked, for every small structural label.
• Ground #07111a; add the radial wash when the surface is large enough to show it. Rules rgba(148,163,184,.22), no panels. Body #b7c7d9. Headings #eef5ff.
• One accent: #ff8a2a. #59b7ff for links and informational state.
• Single dark theme. Paint every colour; set the background explicitly.

The brand has no semantic colour set. There is no defined success, warning, or error colour — secondary and tertiary are brand accents, not status channels. Anything needing status colour is inventing it; say so, and keep it distinct from #ff8a2a so accent and warning do not collide.