Interactive route
paletteUse the interactive route to explore this foundation live.
foundations / color
Color
DK starts with one seed and turns it into a full tonal and semantic system instead of a grab bag of swatches.
Principles
Core principles
These are the design-system rules this foundation should reinforce.
- Use a single optimized seed to derive palettes, accents, surfaces, and semantic roles.
- Separate visual energy from accessibility so bright accents do not force unreadable surfaces.
- Treat color as a system input that can be compared, audited, and recompiled.
Model
How DK models it
This section connects the concept to the actual DK math and token pipeline.
- Palette generation runs through perceptual color math instead of naive HSL shifts.
- Harmony, surface ramps, and semantic aliases are generated as a typed token contract.
- Presets stay comparable because the same token families exist in every DK system.
Practice
How to use it in product work
These are the decisions designers and engineers should make with this foundation in mind.
- Pick one primary seed and let DK derive the rest of the surface and emphasis roles.
- Reach for semantic aliases like field, overlay, status, and action colors instead of hardcoded palette stops.
- Compare presets in the design-systems view when tuning brand character or operational density.
Proofs
What the proof layer guarantees
These are the reliability claims DK makes about this foundation today.
- Generated roles are checked for contrast and perceptual separation before they show up in components.
- Component proofs fail if critical foreground/background pairs fall below the expected thresholds.
- Systems can be re-seeded without rewriting component recipes by hand.
Token notes
- Color feeds semantic families such as action, field, choice, overlay, and status tokens.
- Preset pages expose the seed, mode, and resulting system personality side by side.