Colophon · showcase
How the word becomes the room
Fathom is the one site in this set with no images, no video, no shader and no colour. The asceticism is the point: a register you navigate, not a page you fall down.
Navigation is the signature
Every entry is its own page, and moving between them uses the browser's native View Transitions. Each measure's name carries a shared view-transition-name, so when you click a line in the register the small name physically flies up and grows into the giant title of its page. Go back and the motion reverses; follow a cross-link and it happens again. The transition is the interface.
One typeface, two extremes
The whole register is set in a single variable grotesque (Big Shoulders), from a hairline hundred to a black nine hundred. A condensed industrial face for eighteenth-century content is a deliberate contradiction, and it keeps the page well clear of the antiquarian serif-and-hairline look that this kind of subject usually falls into.
Monochrome, on purpose
There is no accent colour. The only emphasis is inversion: hover or focus a line and it fills with ink and the text turns to paper, like a card being stamped. Structure comes from weight and whitespace, not from a grid of rules.
Robust and accessible
It is an ordinary multi-page site underneath, so without JavaScript or View-Transition support every link still works. With prefers-reduced-motion the morph is skipped and the page simply swaps. Everything is keyboard-navigable with visible focus, and contrast is far past AA.
Tools
- Astro (ClientRouter for native View Transitions) + Tailwind on Cloudflare Pages.
- Big Shoulders variable, self-hosted.
- No generated assets. Twenty-five real historical units, written up by hand.