Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Material Design: Place elements on a grid of multiples of 8 and standardize the spacing
- Type
- Set in Material Design's manner (Build the hierarchy from one type family and separate levels by weight and size), and let Solarized's lettering (One monospaced face, carrying emphasis in colour rather than in weight or slant) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Material Design's material (Give surfaces elevation and show front and back by the density of the shadow); bring in exactly one thing from Solarized (Hold to the eight monotones and eight accents, anchoring the ends at #002b36 and #fdf6e3 and taking body text from the middle greys).
- Colour
- Build on #dfd5ec, #6a5996, #020202 and admit one accent from #002b36, #fdf6e3, #268bd2.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- Material Design Do not add shadow as decoration. The moment the elevation rules break, the hierarchy is telling a lie.
- Solarized Borrowing only the backgrounds and inventing your own accents breaks the matched CIELAB lightness, and the scheme loses the very mechanism that lets hue do the separating.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Material Design (style, 2014–) and their accent from Solarized (style, 2011–). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Material Design exists for: distributing consistent behavior across several platforms, or communicating the depth of a hierarchy visually. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Material Design - Hierarchy and shadow expressed by elevation - Surfaces overlapping like sheets of paper - Motion that shows cause and effect - A standardized unit of spacing Composition: Place elements on a grid of multiples of 8 and standardize the spacing. Type and lettering: Build the hierarchy from one type family and separate levels by weight and size. ## Accent comes from Solarized, used sparingly - Backgrounds that are neither pure black nor pure white, one leaning teal and one leaning cream - A small lightness gap between body text and ground, softer than black on white - Eight accents at close to equal lightness, told apart by hue alone - The same accent holding the same role after the background is flipped from dark to light Let one material quality come from it: Hold to the eight monotones and eight accents, anchoring the ends at #002b36 and #fdf6e3 and taking body text from the middle greys. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #dfd5ec, carry the structure in #6a5996 and #020202, and let a single accent come from #268bd2. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: trust, technique, play, calm. ## What goes wrong - Material Design: Do not add shadow as decoration. The moment the elevation rules break, the hierarchy is telling a lie. - Solarized: Borrowing only the backgrounds and inventing your own accents breaks the matched CIELAB lightness, and the scheme loses the very mechanism that lets hue do the separating. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Material Design 2014– / Style / Google UI
A design system that reduces the physical metaphor of paper and ink to rules of shadow and overlap. Elements are given elevation, shadow states the hierarchy, and motion carries physical cause and effect. It became the model for UI design being distributed as a system. The 2021 revision added colour derived from the device wallpaper, so the palette differs from one user to the next.
- Solarized 2011– / Style / UI Expression
Solarized is a sixteen colour scheme for terminal and GUI applications published by Ethan Schoonover with every value in the open, eight monotones and eight accents. The monotones hold symmetric CIELAB lightness differences, so moving between the light and the dark background keeps the same perceived contrast. It lowers brightness contrast on purpose and lets hue relations, not brightness, separate one token from the next.
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