RomanLogic sandstone palette

A proposal, for approval. Both themes are rendered in their own real ground rather than following your system setting, so they can be judged side by side. Every contrast ratio is computed from the hex values above it, so the numbers cannot drift.

What is settled

  • Scope. Sandstone governs social content, artifacts, the calendar UI and decks. The romanlogic.com site keeps its purple for now: that is a separate decision, not this one.
  • Ground. Light is the default. Sandstone is the paper we print on, not a highlight on black. Dark is a warm inversion of the same tokens.
  • Accents. Clay is the only decorative color: links, active states, the one ask. Pine, amber and steel survive as status only and are never decoration. If it is not reporting state, it is clay or ink.

What we would like from you

  • Does it read as us? Warm, built, a bit weathered, closer to a material than to a tech brand. That is the intent. Say if it lands wrong.
  • Light as the default. Most of what we make is read, not watched, so the default is paper rather than a dark screen. Dark still exists.
  • Anything you would push back on. Easier to change now than after it is on forty-eight pieces of content.

Light (the default)

Surfaces
paper#F4EEDEthe ground
card#FFFDF6raised surface
sunk#ECE3CFrecessed surface
line#DDD0B6rules, borders
line-soft#E7DCC6hairlines inside a card
Ink
ink#221D16body, headings
ink-soft#5F5648secondary prose
ink-faint#726859meta, labels
Brand
clay#AC3E1Dlinks, active, the one ask
clay-fill#BF4A26filled shapes only, never small text on it
Status only
pine#2F6355confirmed / done
amber#7E5A13open question / needs a call
steel#2E5F7Ainfo / neutral note
Contrast on each surface
papercardsunk
ink14.44AAA16.44AAA13.11AAA
ink-soft6.23AA7.09AAA5.65AA
ink-faint4.72AA5.37AA4.29AA lg
clay5.24AA5.96AA4.75AA
clay-fill4.29AA lg4.89AA3.90AA lg
pine5.97AA6.79AA5.42AA
amber5.40AA6.14AA4.90AA
steel5.98AA6.80AA5.42AA
Materials
Sandstone grainAny large ground: page backgrounds, deck slides, post backgrounds.
Bedding linesSection breaks, deck dividers, the top band of a card. Sparingly.
Drafting gridDiagrams, storyboards, anything schematic. Never behind running text.
Cut edgeThe top edge of a raised surface, section rules, the underline on an active item.
Sandstone grain The tooth of the paper itself. Invisible until you put it next to a flat surface, which is the point: it stops a large field of color reading as a screen.
Bedding lines The horizontal banding sandstone gets from how it was laid down. Uneven on purpose: even stripes read as a pattern, uneven ones read as a material.
Drafting grid A 8px setting-out grid at the weight a pencil line has on drafting paper. The one texture that is about the work rather than the stone.
Cut edge The quarried face: a hairline of ink with a single lighter pixel under it, so an edge reads as a cut rather than a border.
Specimen
ROMANLOGIC / BRAND

Showing builders how to win the work they already quote for

Charter carries the lede. It is the only place a serif appears.

Body copy sits in ink on paper. Secondary prose drops to ink-soft, and the meta line under it drops again to ink-faint. Color never carries meaning here: that is what the status tokens are for.

meta line, ink-faint, mono

A link is clay, and so is the one ask.

confirmed open question info
Filled uses clay-fill Ghost uses clay

Dark (warm inversion)

Surfaces
paper#14110Cthe ground
card#1D1811raised surface
sunk#0D0B07recessed surface
line#33291Crules, borders
line-soft#262015hairlines inside a card
Ink
ink#F2EDE1body, headings
ink-soft#B0A58Fsecondary prose
ink-faint#8A8070meta, labels
Brand
clay#E07B52links, active, the one ask
clay-fill#BF4A26filled shapes only, never small text on it
Status only
pine#6FA793confirmed / done
amber#C0952Fopen question / needs a call
steel#6FA2C4info / neutral note
Contrast on each surface
papercardsunk
ink16.12AAA15.09AAA16.83AAA
ink-soft7.73AAA7.24AAA8.08AAA
ink-faint4.84AA4.54AA5.06AA
clay6.39AA5.98AA6.67AA
clay-fill3.79AA lg3.55AA lg3.95AA lg
pine6.84AA6.40AA7.14AAA
amber6.80AA6.37AA7.10AAA
steel6.85AA6.42AA7.15AAA
Materials
Sandstone grainAny large ground: page backgrounds, deck slides, post backgrounds.
Bedding linesSection breaks, deck dividers, the top band of a card. Sparingly.
Drafting gridDiagrams, storyboards, anything schematic. Never behind running text.
Cut edgeThe top edge of a raised surface, section rules, the underline on an active item.
Sandstone grain The tooth of the paper itself. Invisible until you put it next to a flat surface, which is the point: it stops a large field of color reading as a screen.
Bedding lines The horizontal banding sandstone gets from how it was laid down. Uneven on purpose: even stripes read as a pattern, uneven ones read as a material.
Drafting grid A 8px setting-out grid at the weight a pencil line has on drafting paper. The one texture that is about the work rather than the stone.
Cut edge The quarried face: a hairline of ink with a single lighter pixel under it, so an edge reads as a cut rather than a border.
Specimen
ROMANLOGIC / BRAND

Showing builders how to win the work they already quote for

Charter carries the lede. It is the only place a serif appears.

Body copy sits in ink on paper. Secondary prose drops to ink-soft, and the meta line under it drops again to ink-faint. Color never carries meaning here: that is what the status tokens are for.

meta line, ink-faint, mono

A link is clay, and so is the one ask.

confirmed open question info
Filled uses clay-fill Ghost uses clay

The rules that come with it:

AA is 4.5:1, AAA is 7:1, and AA lg is 3:1, legal only at 19px and up or 14px bold. clay-fill is the saturated clay for filled shapes and underlines: it is deliberately not text-safe on paper at 4.29, which is why clay exists at 5.24.