Design System · v1.2
The single source of truth for every surface of markus-mildner.com — warm stone neutrals, three colours drawn from Cartagena, a Cormorant / Geist / Geist Mono type system, and motion with unhurried confidence. This page is itself built in the system it documents.
Colour
Terracotta leads. Pacific teal balances it. Canary appears once per page. Every neutral is 8–12° warmer than a standard grey — surfaces read as warm stone and linen in sunlight, never blue-tinted office white.
Warm Stone — neutral scale
The 60 / 30 / 7 / 3 ratio
Typography
Cormorant Garamond is the carved lintel above the door — high-contrast, classical, used only for display and headings. Geist is the whitewashed wall: clean, warm, never competing. Geist Mono is the ironwork — precise, structural, reserved for anything measured.
Show more by wasting less. Compact typography and tight spacing on secondary elements; generous space only where decisions are made.
"Warm without being orange. Confident without being loud."
Ornament
Inscribed labels above doorways, carved cornices, tile borders, ironwork. Each appears at a key moment to add identity — never as filler.
About
The 36×2px terracotta bar bridges heading and body.
The canary moment — at most once per page.
A 3px terracotta left border signals primacy.
Components
6px radius on everything interactive — never pill-shaped. Cards shift only their border on hover; no lift, no scale. Tags map to content categories by colour.
White surface, hairline border, 10px radius — the default container.