Seeds of Renaissance Design System
Seeds of Renaissance Design System
How Seeds of Renaissance looks and why, with the code and examples to build from. Version 0.1, 5 October 2026. Live at https://sor-design-system-rufuspollock.flowershow.me. Every photograph shown is a mood board placeholder, not cleared for public use.
Every chapter rendered on one page: feel, colour, type, graphics, components, examples.
The brief for people and AI agents: the rules, the page shell, sections to compose, a checklist.
Website pages, YouTube thumbnails and channel art. Slides next.
Setting up an AI agent? Point it at llms.txt, or hand it BUILD.md. Every page here is also served as raw markdown: add .md to its URL.
Feel
Every colour, face and layout decision is judged against one phrase: grounded hope. The feel, registers and principles →
Voice
A poet-philosopher who thinks clearly: the lyrical leads, rigour grounds it. Key lines to reuse, principles, rewrites, calls to action and YouTube titles. Draft for review. Voice and tone →
Colour
Four grounds, three inks and one accent. Colour comes from photographs; buttons are black; the logo red is only for an occasional link. Roles, proportion, do and don't →
Type
Four faces. Length decides: Polyamine while it's short, Restora when it runs long. Bricolage Grotesque for reading, Apfel Grotezk for labels. Faces, scale and research →
Layout and rhythm
A page is a stack of full-width grounds, often joined by torn edges. One night section per page, plus the footer. Sections, grounds, grid and spacing →
Woodcut graphics
Printmade marks in ink or chalk, and a red set: the swallow, the seal, seeds and clusters. Animals in black, blue, green and mustard. Mountains in their drawn blues. Using them → · All twenty woodcuts → · Animals → · Mountains →
Photography
Real people outdoors, doing things together, beside engraving and printmaking. Photographs carry the colour. What to choose and avoid →
Logo
The swallow rising through red fingerprints, in five colourways and five lockups. Rules and placement → · Every logo file →
Components
Headers, heroes, statements, pathways, calendars, bands, footers and more: each a real component with the HTML to copy. All components → · Rendered in the guide →
Examples
Whole pages and assets built only from the system: the website is done, YouTube, podcast and slides are under way, social, print and email come next. To make something new, copy the closest one. All examples and their status →
Building a paper? How we build a paper →: design, paper anatomy, editorial craft and the Typst pipeline.
Open questions
Sub-brands is the big one: are Mythos, the papers, courses and Gardens of Change sub-brands with their own lockups and accents? Also: font licences, the logo's small version, photography (all placeholders), woodcut sourcing. Details → · Tracking: beads design-34t.
Maintaining this site (publishing, build scripts, where things came from): MAINTAINING.md.
