| name | lanius-brand |
| description | The lanius visual identity — use when building, styling, or theming any UI or brand surface (ui/web, the README, a splash, an icon, an artifact/mockup). Sets the shrike/thorn identity, the palette and the one-red rule, the type system, and how the logo system is used. Marks live in brand/logos/; full direction in docs/handoffs/web-ui-redesign.md. Pair with the lanius-voice skill for copy. |
lanius brand — the butcher bird's flight recorder
lanius is a shrike — the "butcher bird" that impales prey on thorns and keeps
a larder. The product is a flight recorder you can talk to: it pins the work and
records everything. The identity says exactly that — quietly, like a precise
instrument, not a hacker terminal.
The one rule that organizes everything: one reserved red
Red is the loudest, rarest thing on screen — the thorn. Only its intensity varies.
--thorn #E5484D — resting brand accent: the active state, the one thing
that needs attention, the wordmark tittle. Use sparingly, like the impaled berry.--pain #FF4A3D — algedonic / alarm: a failed run, a blast-radius warning,
the signal lamp. The same red, escalated.
Everything else is neutral. If a second thing on a screen is red, one of them is
wrong.
Palette (token-based; light + dark)
- ink
#16181D · ground-dark #0F1115 · paper #F4F5F7 · panel (dark) #171A20
- shrike-grey
#C9CFD6 (secondary) · thorn #E5484D · pain #FF4A3D
- Neutrals are chosen, not default — a hair of blue-grey bias toward the ink.
- Speaker/voice colors stay muted cool-slate so the thorn always wins.
Type
- Systems voice — mono (Commit Mono / IBM Plex Mono): labels, data, timestamps,
badges, code, nav micro-labels. Set small, UPPERCASE, letter-spaced — it reads as
an instrument label / receipt, not a terminal.
tabular-nums for data.
- Human voice — grotesque (Hanken Grotesk): reading text, headings, buttons.
Deliberately NOT Inter/Space Grotesk.
- Editorial serif (Instrument Serif): rare display moments only.
- Self-host fonts (
@font-face, font-display:swap); no CDN.
The logo system (brand/logos/)
- 05 mask-tile = favicon / app icon (self-theming via currentColor; best at 16px).
- 08 wordmark = the masthead (replaces any serif "lanius" text).
- 09 lockup / 10 shrike-wordmark = hero / README / splash.
- 01 thorn = the active-state and "you are here" marker glyph.
- 06 shrike-sticker = personality / swag, not app chrome.
- Flat marks are
currentColor; reds carry a var(--accent, #E5484D) mono-hook.
Texture & motion
- Keep a whisper of the flight-recorder texture (subtle scanline/vignette) — a
hint, not a CRT costume. Retune it cool.
- Motion is precise and sparse; always honor
prefers-reduced-motion.
The line that keeps it honest
The bird lives in the brand — the logo, the icon, the splash. It never becomes a
word the user has to learn. (See the lanius-voice skill.) Butcher-bird flavor is
a thorn glyph and a mask icon, not "larder" in a tooltip.
