Design system · five directions
Five ways the site could feel
Each direction below is a distinct visual treatment of the landing page, not a colorway of one design but a different premise about what kind of object this site is. Click in to inhabit one. The chrome at the top of each mock lets you flip between them.
Same content in every mock so you compare presentation, not words. Imagery, where used, is currently placeholder color blocks since no photo bank exists yet. All but the last carry live motion, so they are worth opening rather than judging from here.
Lichen / Patina
the close-up surface of slow time
Heavy grain everywhere: rust patina, lichen on stone, fired clay. Tiny radial pulses bloom and fade across the page like microscopic spores opening. Muted greens, rust, oxidized cream. The most textural and most intimate-scale of the set.
Descent
scroll is depth, not distance
The page is a water column read from the surface down. Light drains out of the background along a curve, fine particles drift upward past you because you are the one descending, and a gauge in the margin counts metres. The wave clip appears once, at the top, seen from underneath and out of focus, so water is felt at the boundary rather than shown as scenery.
Confluence
four streams gathering into one channel
The navigation is the picture. Each entrance is a rivulet from the top edge, thin at the source and heavier downhill, meandering across wet sand until all four converge and leave as a single channel. Hovering swells one stream and thins the others; clicking sends a pulse down it. Four ways in, one question they drain toward.
Immersive Cinematic
scene by scene, you walk through it
Each section is a full-bleed photographic scene that fills the viewport. You scroll, the next scene cinematically dissolves in over the previous one. Type appears centered and oversized. Custom small cursor. The whole page becomes a sequence you walk through.
Editorial Magazine
the magazine cover for a science of nature
Photography-led, large display serif overlaid on imagery, the four sections shown as magazine covers in a grid. Closest to the Atmos and The Overview references: editorial confidence, willing to be intimate and strange.