---
name: "Mariusz Ciesla"
description: "A dark editorial portfolio. Bold. Data-driven. Edged."
colors:
  violet-ground: "#160d1e"
  paper: "#f7f3fd"
  purple: "#ac5fd1"
  muted-ink: "#bdb2c9"
  sunrise: "#fa9851"
typography:
  display:
    fontFamily: "PPMonument, sans-serif"
  body:
    fontFamily: "Instrument Sans, sans-serif, system-ui"
---

# DESIGN.md

A short public note on how this site is designed.

## Vibe

**Bold. Data-driven. Edged.**

Typographically aggressive editorial - poster type on a quiet, technical surface. A point of view, not a template.

## Color

A single dark theme. Neutrals are tinted violet, never pure black or pure white. Purple is the brand. Sunrise is reserved for rare heat.

- **Violet ground** - Page
- **Paper** - Primary text
- **Purple** - Brand, focus, signal
- **Muted ink** - Secondary text
- **Sunrise** - Rare heat

## Type

**PPMonument** for display. **Instrument Sans** for reading.

Display type is very large or very small, never medium. If a section feels empty, add scale - not another card.

## Decisions

- Type is the design.
- Data is visual identity - metrics sit like headlines, not captions.
- Asymmetry over safe balance.
- Effects must earn their place. Glass, glow, and gradient only where they mean something.
- One dark theme. Neutrals are tinted violet, never pure black or pure white.

## Reject generated-design reflexes

Do not ship any of these recognizable defaults:

- All-caps or tracked eyebrows, kickers, overlines, and decorative numbered section labels.
- Em dashes.
- Decorative gradients, glows, blobs, stripes, textures, glass, or ornamental shadows.
- Generic centered hero copy followed by a card grid.
- Repeated metric boxes when one composed relationship would be clearer.
- A badge, pill, or rounded capsule for ordinary metadata, chart annotations, or editorial labels.
- Cards nested inside cards, or borders used to repair weak hierarchy.
- A dark rounded rectangle around every chart or calculator.
- Arbitrary icon tiles, oversized icons, or mixed icon styles.
- Tiny muted prose, arbitrary font sizes, inconsistent peer values, or misaligned baselines.
- A narrow table floating inside a wide section, or a wide table compressed into broken words.
- Decorative charts, redundant visualizations, legends that replace direct labels, or color without meaning.
- Repeated full-width bars that do not share a scale or encode a visible difference.
- Identical section silhouettes across unrelated reader questions.
- Repeated recommendation, summary, rationale, and conclusion sections that say the same thing.
- Authoring-process narration such as how the page was organized, why a representation was chosen, or how source fields were renamed. Keep concise interpretive captions that state an evidence-led takeaway or limitation.
- Visible theme controls, print-only UI, stock imagery, fake screenshots, or decorative brand marks.
- Gradient text used as impact.
- Colored side stripes on rounded rectangles.

Do not compensate for avoiding these defaults by producing a sterile anti-design template. Restraint here is precise hierarchy, excellent typography, clear evidence, strong alignment, and deliberate tension. It is not merely dark type, thin rules, and large empty margins.