block
flat square.
use for: color mass, sky, middle mountain.
kadmo / acid-shellscape
VISUAL IDENTITY / DESIGN SYSTEM
Acid Shellscape
Abstract landscapes made of terminal cells.
block · halftone · dots · character
[ 01 — THE NAME ]
One identity, three words.
Acid
the colors: acid yellow, coral, lilac and lime.
Shell
the language of the terminal: mono font, characters, code-style labels.
Scape
the landscape: sky, mountains and water, or a whole photo, become a grid of squares.
[ 02 — THEMES ]
Three times of day, one palette each.
const hour = 18;
Besides these three, which follow the time of day, there are five hand-picked themes: neon, aurora, candy, desert and tropical. See them in the gallery below.
[ 03 — RECIPES ]
Each square is drawn in one of four ways.
halftone
crossed diagonal hatching; density follows the light.
use for: distance, haze, dense clouds.
dots
grid of small squares; size follows the light.
use for: halos, light clouds, aurora.
character
a glyph from .:-=+*#%@$ in a mono font.
use for: foreground, water, rock texture.
plus the blob: overlapping circles that merge, the signature of the sun and the moon.
[ 04 — PRINCIPLES ]
Rules that hold the aesthetic together.
- The farther away, the lighter the recipe: far is halftone, middle is block, near is character.
- Choppy motion, 10–12 frames per second, always in layers. No smooth easing.
- Every “random” value comes from
hash(column, row, seed), never fromMath.random()on each frame. - No smooth gradients, blur, shadows or rounded corners (only on blobs).
- Interface text sounds like code: lowercase, mono,
const hour = 18;. - At most five accent colors per scene, and one of them dominates.
[ 05 — HOW TO USE ]
Import the tokens, draw the cells.
1 · colors and measures
<link rel="stylesheet" href="tokens/acid-shellscape.css">
<html data-theme="poente"> /* + dia, noite, neon, aurora,
doce, deserto, tropical */2 · cells, on any 2D canvas
import { block, halftone, dots, glyph, blob } from './src/cells.js';
block(ctx, 0, 0, 16, '#1f74c4');
halftone(ctx, 16, 0, 16, '#0e2f52', '#fff', .6);
dots(ctx, 32, 0, 16, null, '#f4f6f8', .8);
glyph(ctx, 48, 0, 16, '#', '#9cc3e4', '#0e2f52');
blob(ctx, 64, 0, 16, '#e6e61e');the repository also ships the full landscape, an image-to-cells converter and an interactive wallpaper package.
[ 06 — WINDOWS ]
The system becomes an interface too.
[ 07 — GALLERY ]
More than a landscape.
The system grew: five windows that react to touch (vida.cell, radar.sh, fogo.cell, cobra.sh and sistema.sh), six title-bar styles, seven palettes, new backgrounds and window sets. All with the same four recipes.
Open source, MIT license.