The ember ramp
These five colours were read out of logo_mark.png and logo_text.png pixel by pixel — not picked by eye. The brand spans about 90° of hue and contains no cool tones at all.
Brand ramp
Contrast is measured against white. Two of these can never carry white text, which is what pushed the primary to the wine end of the ramp.
Highlight only — dark ink on gold reads 12.72:1
Accent, artist identity, gradient stop
Gradient stop. Never a status — too close to danger
Hover / pressed state of the primary
Deep ground, gradient terminus
Why the primary is wine, not orange
The two most recognisable Aurora colours are mathematically unusable as buttons. This is the single decision the rest of the system hangs off.
AA needs 4.5:1. Gold is off by a factor of three.
Dark mode is pinned to L=0.55 — the only lightness that clears both gates at once: 5.22:1 with white text and 3.53:1 against the ground.
Controls
Destructive actions carry an icon and an explicit verb. Brand red sits 20° from semantic danger, so colour alone is never allowed to be the signal — separation is carried by chroma (0.215 vs 0.143). The gold chip shows the highlight pattern: dark ink, never white.
Status vocabulary
Domain states mapped to conventional semantics. Never brand-tinted — a status pill's only job is instant recognition.
Two densities, one system
The admin portal is a desktop workhorse; the artist portal is a phone glance at 2am. Same tokens, different scale — set once on the shell and inherited by everything inside.