This week Sherpsy got a new face — every screen, both apps, the wall display. We call the design the board, because the model in our heads is an airport departure board: a surface built to be read in one glance, that changes state and then holds still.
Identity without a mascot color
Most apps are recognizable by a brand hue. Sherpsy has none — no navy, no accent, nothing decorative. Identity is carried by type and geometry instead: a condensed display face for headlines, a monospaced face for every number, hairline rules doing the grouping that boxes and shadows do elsewhere. There are no drop shadows anywhere; panels separate from the background by value, the way print does.
That restraint buys back the thing we care about most: the only saturated colors in the product are statuses. Amber means something needs a human. Red means a recall or an emergency. A screen with nothing wrong on it is entirely colorless, and that's the point.
Dark mode is a design, not a filter
Light and dark are separately designed palettes, not one inverted from the other. Every text-on-background pair in both themes is verified against accessibility contrast thresholds by an automated test — contrast is a property of the palette, so we check it where the palette is defined, not by eyeballing screenshots. Three combinations that looked fine by eye failed the math and were fixed before shipping.
Motion got the same treatment: state changes take a beat, surfaces take a slightly longer beat, and nothing else moves. If you've asked your devices to reduce motion, Sherpsy doesn't move at all.
A board changes state, and then it holds still.