PROTEUS Visual Language v1.3

TEUS

framework

Visual Language

V1.3 · THERMOCLINE · JULY 2026

FOUNDATION

One story: magma ocean → water world.

PROTEUS simulates how rocky planets cool from fully molten beginnings into potentially habitable, water-bearing worlds. The identity encodes that single transition everywhere:

Magma red is the hot state — rare, high-energy, used for signals and hot data.
Void black is deep time and space — the default surface.
Ocean blue is the cool state — interactive, living, the destination.

Every artifact — a slide, a figure, the docs, a sticker — reads hot → cold, inside → out, past → future.

MAGMA · 4.5 GYR AGOVOIDOCEAN · TODAY

The glyph is the story in miniature: a molten core cooling outward through concentric rings into ice-blue. Hot inside, cool outside — never reversed.

LOGO

Construction

TEUS

framework

PRIMARY LOCKUP · DARK SURFACE

GLYPH

Invariant geometry. Never redrawn, rotated, mirrored, or reproportioned. Reproduce only from master assets. Color is the only variable.

WORDMARK

Sora ExtraBold (800), all caps, letter-spacing +1%. The glyph replaces the O at 1.06× type size — outer arcs overshoot the cap height.

LETTERS

Paper #F2F5F7 on dark · Ink #10151B on light. Letters never carry color; the glyph does.

TAG

"framework" — Spline Sans Mono Medium, lowercase, tracked +52%, right-aligned, tucked into the wordmark’s lower-right corner (raised 0.03×, inset 0.32× of the wordmark size; box measures, the last letter’s ink lands ≈0.41× in). Drop below 200px lockup width.

CLEARSPACE

1× cap height on all sides, minimum.

MINIMUM

Lockup ≥ 90px wide on screen · ≥ 30mm in print. Below: glyph + side-set name, or glyph alone.

LOGO

Colorways

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PHASE · PRIMARY ON DARK

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PHASE · PRIMARY ON LIGHT

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MONO LIGHT · SINGLE COLOR

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MONO INK · SINGLE COLOR

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MAGMA · HOT CONTEXTS

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ICE · COOL CONTEXTS

LOGO

Rules

Reproduce the glyph only from master assets (logo/glyph/).
Match the colorway to the surface: phase on Void/Paper, mono elsewhere.
Use glyph-only below 90px, and for avatars, favicons, stickers.
Keep 1× cap-height clearspace on all sides.

DON'T

Don't set the wordmark in any face but Sora, or in mixed case.
Don't reverse the gradient — cool core / hot rim is wrong physics.
Don't add glows, shadows, or outlines to the mark.
Don't place the phase glyph on mid-tone or busy surfaces.
Don't rebuild the glyph from circles, arcs, or AI generations.

COLOR

Core palette

Void

#05070B · SURFACE (DARK)

Default background. Basalt #0E131B for cards.

Magma

#E23D28 · HOT SIGNAL

One hot moment per surface. Mantle #8E1F12 for fills; Crimson #C2362B on light.

Ocean

#1B6FA8 · INTERACTIVE

Links, actions. Azure #4FA3D9 on dark; Abyss #14406B deep accents; Ice #A8D4E8 highlights.

Paper

#F2F5F7 · SURFACE (LIGHT)

Cool white for documents and light mode. Ink #10151B for text. Never pure white or pure black.

ACCENTS · SPORADIC HIGHLIGHT + EXTRA DATA-SERIES RANGE

Solar #E0A32E — the star / MORS; deepens to #C8860F on light

Verdant #57A05C — the habitable endpoint

DARK-FIRST · LIGHT MODE IS THE MIRROR, NOT THE DEFAULT · NO WARM CREAMS · GOLD IS AN ACCENT, NEVER A SURFACE

COLOR

Data & module colors

PHASE RAMP · DIVERGING · HOT ↔ COLD THROUGH VOID

#E23D28#05070B#A8D4E8

Use for anomalies, residuals, temperature fields. A sequential ramp (Void → Ice) and both reversals ship in proteus-mpl. Every figure quietly repeats the logo.

MODULE DOMAINS · STABLE ACROSS ALL PAPERS & TALKS · CVD-CHECKED (MACHADO 2009, MIN ΔE 16.4)

Interior — SPIDER · Aragog · Zalmoxis

Outgassing — CALLIOPE · Atmodeller

Tidal — LovePy · Obliqua

Chemistry & escape — VULCAN · ZEPHYRUS

Atmosphere — AGNI · JANUS

Stellar — MORS

Accretion — Morrigan

TYPOGRAPHY

Three faces, strict roles

Sora

DISPLAY · 600–800

Titles, headings, the wordmark. Tracking −2.5% at display sizes. Never italic; never below 20px.

Instrument Sans

BODY · UI · 400–600

Prose, documentation, interface text. Comfortable at density; 1.55 line-height for long-form.

Spline Sans Mono

CODE · LABELS · DATA

Code, axis labels, eyebrows, captions, versions, timestamps. A PROTEUS signature — use it generously for metadata.

SCALE · 12 / 13 / 14 / 16 / 18 / 20 / 24 / 32 / 44 / 60 / 84 / 120 PX · NOT SPACE GROTESK, NOT JETBRAINS MONO

TYPOGRAPHY

In use

RESULTS · GENERATION 3 · L 98-59 D

Volatile-rich evolution of a molten super-Earth

Observations are explained by a chemically-reducing mantle and early substantial sulfur and hydrogen content — inconsistent with both the gas-dwarf and water-world origin scenarios.

NICHOLLS ET AL. 2026 · NATURE ASTRONOMY 10, 809

# configure the atmosphere module

[atmos]

module = "agni"

surface_pressure = 260e5 # Pa

spectral_bands = 48

# eyebrow / label conventions

EYEBROWS · TRACKED +18% · UPPERCASE

tags · +52%

MOTIFS

Rings, ramp, hairlines

Concentric rings

The glyph, oversized and cropped at edges, is the only decorative element. Use one per surface, at low prominence, never rotated.

Phase band

A thin (4–16px) horizontal ramp marks openings and closings: slide footers, page ends, section breaks. Always hot-left, cold-right.

Hairlines

Structure comes from 1px rules, not shadows or containers. A short Magma tick marks the active or highlighted item.

APPLICATIONS

One system, every surface

TALKS

HTML deck templates (dark + light) · beamer theme for LaTeX talks · A0 poster template.

WEB

proteus-framework.org redesign · zensical/mkdocs docs theme for PROTEUS + all module docs.

SCIENCE

proteus-mpl matplotlib theme: brand cycles, phase colormaps, light + dark, publication settings.

COMMUNITY

GitHub banners + social previews · module mini-identities · architecture diagram language · stickers.

EACH APPLICATION SHIPS AS ITS OWN TEMPLATE · THIS DOCUMENT IS THE AUTHORITY WHEN THEY DISAGREE

GOVERNANCE

Files & versioning

TOKENS

tokens/tokens.css — single source of truth for color, type, spacing. Nothing hard-codes a hex.

LOGO KIT

logo/glyph/ — glyph colorways in SVG (vector), PNG (transparent) + JPG (on background). Vector masters: glyph_phase.svg (multi-colour), glyph_mono.svg (currentColor).

THIS DOCUMENT

Versioned v1.x; bump on any palette, type, or logo change. The version on the cover is authoritative.

TEMPLATES

Deck, docs theme, mpl theme, beamer, poster, banners — each self-contained, each carries the version it implements.

TEUS

framework