I keep five colors in my design system — the Bauhaus primaries, plus a lower-case teal I stole from early 90s browser chrome. For a long time I used them everywhere. They sat on buttons, cards, section backgrounds, occasional headings. The site felt busy. Every component wanted to say something, and nothing was listening.
The reframe: color as punctuation. Not a theme, not a brand treatment — a mark that ends a sentence or pulls your eye to the one word that matters.
Where color earns its spot
- **At the end of a heading,** the way a period closes a phrase. A single shape-glyph after the title — triangle, square, circle — tells you what category you're in without a label.
- **On one word in a paragraph,** to say *this is the word that matters.* On this site the first time you see "curiosity" on the home page, it's in green. That's the whole reveal.
- **As a link state,** because links are a promise — *there's more behind this* — and a primary-colored hover is the shortest way to keep that promise.
Where I stopped using color
Buttons. Widget tiles. Backgrounds. Borders. Big headings. Section titles. I kept them all in ink. When everything's ink, the one item that isn't actually registers.
Practical: picking the single accent
Every site gets one. Teal on this one because it reminds me of old Figma chrome and 90s computer UIs. Copper on the previous iteration because it went with the paper background. If you can't explain why this color, here, pick a different one.