KB
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[ 01 ] DISPLAY // NEWSREADER
[ 02 ] PROSE // NOTO SANS
[ 03 ] MONO // JETBRAINS
#1A365D · #C53030 · #FCFCFC
System & Rationale

Design Note

A short note on the visual language, typography, layout architecture, and technical principles shaping this website.

EXPLORE
Foundations

Core Principles

Clarity

Clean & Clear

Structured, clear and to-the-point design, without junk.

Focus

Meant to be Read

Aided for reading and comprehension. No to limited use of animations and flashy colours.

Heritage

Natively Bilingual

Native support for Hindi and English with balanced font pairings, with potential to reuse design for Hindi website.

Durability

Timeless

Built on lightweight standard web technologies designed to remain functional and fast over decades.

Hierarchy

The 3-Font System

Exhibition Headings

Newsreader / Serif

High-contrast serif conferring literary poise and gravitas to titles and thematic quotes.

Body Prose

Noto Sans Devanagari

Clean humanist sans-serif engineered for effortless bilingual legibility across both English and Hindi.

Metadata & Wayfinding

JetBrains Mono

Monospaced structure for category pills, dates, labels, and structured data wayfinding.

Color Palette

Tones & Accents

#FCFCFC
Canvas

Warm paper

#F4F4F0
Room

Structure

#1A365D
Navy

Institutional

#C53030
Seal Red

Focal accent

Engineering

Technical Foundations

Zero Frameworks

Handcrafted with semantic HTML5 and vanilla CSS custom properties. 100% functional without JavaScript.

Lean Performance

Sub-50KB first-party code payload, native image optimisation, and zero commercial ad-network trackers.

Accessibility (A11y)

Built to WCAG AA standards with fluid typography, high-contrast text ratios, and keyboard navigation.

Machine Discoverability

Structured Schema.org JSON-LD data for search engines, knowledge graphs, and semantic parsers.

Philosophy & Lineage

The Functionalist Tradition & Dieter Rams

The visual discipline and technical restraint of this website draw directly from the functionalist tradition of German industrial designer Dieter Rams. His celebrated thesis—“Weniger, aber besser” (Less, but better)—formulated originally for Braun appliances and Vitsœ shelving systems, serves as our enduring architectural benchmark.

Read How 10 Principles of Rams Are Applied to This Website
10 Principles in Practice
2026 Redesign
Design System Specification
PUBLISHED 22 August 2026
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