colors.

to make color decisions less noisy, i keep a small palette and reuse it across this site and other projects. the colors are loosely borrowed from the RAL color system, which gives everything a slight industrial bias without turning the whole thing into a branding exercise.

constraints help. a fixed set of colors keeps me thinking about mood and contrast instead of nudging random RGB values around forever. i also grew up around metal work, so these colors feel familiar in a very literal way. maybe that is part of it too.

my favorite is RAL 8022. dark brown, almost black, calm without feeling dead. i first used it on the steel parts of my studio desk, then on lamps and other bits around the room, and eventually on almost all text.