The idea
Interlink maps connections, not actors. Everything in this system is built from that one sentence.
The edge is the evidence
Interlink's own claim is that “the connections between the silos are where the leads live”, and that the adversary operates as “international nationalists” — nationally framed, internationally wired. So the identity is built from two systems held out of phase, and the one line that crosses between them.
This also settles the ethics. A brand of nodes is a brand about watching people. A brand of edges is a brand about structure — which is what the work is, and a far stronger claim.
Forensic, not agitated
The subject matter is inflammatory; the brand is calm. Authority here comes from restraint — the thing that looks composed while describing something alarming is the thing that gets believed.
The visual language is the published record: open sources, citation, daylight. Never the adversary's own register — no heat, no gothic, no crisis glow — and never surveillance cosplay.
“The zone is flooded.”
Identity
There is deliberately no logo. The identity is typographic.
Why there is no mark. A young project that arrives with an emblem is making a claim it has not yet earned. Interlink arrives instead with an unmistakable house style. Recognisability is carried, in order, by the wordmark, the type system, the palette and hairline structure, and the phase motif and field.
Wordmark — Archivo wght 600 / wdth 125, tracking −0.016em, outlined from the real font with HarfBuzz shaping. At normal width Archivo is anonymous; at 125 the counters open and it reads broadsheet. Minimum 96px.
The device — wordmark over a short signal rule. This is what replaces a mark. Standalone identity contexts only: covers, OG cards, citation cards, slide titles, byline chips. Never a page header — see §06.
Descriptor lockup. The signal rule is the first segment of the hairline, which then continues in rule-strong — one object, not two. Minimum 320px, set by the mono rather than the word.
Autonomy endorsement. Type only — we do not hold their mark as vector and must not fake it.
Favicon
A technical necessity, not a mark: our letter, in our face, in our colour. Hinted to stem 2px / cap 9px at a 16px reference — a ratio matching the wordmark's own stem÷cap to within 0.3%.
Rejected: an “I” in ink with the signal rule beneath. At 16px it reads unmistakably as an exclamation mark — the agitated register this brand exists to avoid.
Clear space & minimums
Clear space is half a cap height on all sides — one number for everything. Minimum rendered widths: wordmark and device 96px, both lockups 320px, favicon 16px. All measured by rendering ladders, not estimated.
Colour
Ink and paper carry everything. One signal colour, and it means something.
Surfaces and ink
The signal rule. The accent marks a connection Interlink has established — the live edge in the field, a traced path in a graph, a citation marker, an active state, one rule under one eyebrow. It is never a decorative fill, never a background wash, and never more than about 2% of a surface. Every red mark on an Interlink page is a claim.
Data ramps — data only, never UI chrome
Known limit, measured: the series tones are not separable
in greyscale — series-1 and series-4 sit 1.04:1 apart in luminance. So
every series mark is directly labelled and the tone is never the only carrier.
The sequential ramp is monotonic desaturated and is safe in print.
Both themes are first-class
Light is canonical; dark is a full theme, not a filter. Every text-on-surface pair was measured, not assumed: body text clears WCAG AA 4.5:1 and large text and UI boundaries clear 3:1, on both. Hairlines are structure rather than UI, and are held to a 1.4:1 perceptibility floor of our own.
Typography
Archivo does the speaking. IBM Plex Mono does the labelling, and the labelling is the promise.
Two families, and only two
Archivo (variable, wght 400–700, wdth 62–125)
for display, UI and body. A grotesque with real editorial authority; the width axis is live,
and condensed 88% exists for long German compounds.
IBM Plex Mono (400/500/600) for every label, date, category, dataset
name, numeral and source credit. Uppercase, 0.1em tracking.
Both OFL, self-hosted, latin + latin-ext — the programme covers FR, DE,
IT and ES, and a missing-glyph box is exactly the defect that ships unnoticed. A small
symbols subset was added because Google's latin sets omit →.
Why mono carries the labels
Interlink's promise is source-cited. Monospace is what makes a citation look like a citation — it signals a record rather than a claim. It is the one thing the previous site got unambiguously right and it is kept.
No serif ships. The Expert Convention's long-form essays may eventually want one; that is deliberately left open rather than guessed at.
The phase motif
Two systems half a step out of phase — the idea that would have been the mark, working as texture instead.
Tiles
Each tile is proven seamless with a 3×3 montage and a pixel-for-pixel comparison
against the same geometry laid down by an SVG <pattern>. Tuning was decided
under real headline type, not in isolation: the phase tile was wallpaper at first pass (~140
dashes per viewport) and now runs at ~65 at 1.048:1.
The field — “The Zone”
A lattice that drifts on its own and gives up one connection to the cursor. The brand motif at environment scale.
An edge's weight is the min of its two endpoints' influence, not the
average. With the average the cursor throws a star of long spokes, which reads as a
reticle — the one register this brand must never borrow. With min, an
edge draws only when both ends are found, so what appears is a single found connection. The
brand thesis, expressed as an interaction rule.
Restraint is the specification
Points only at rest — no standing edges, no moiré, no panel, no visible edge to the canvas. Density was measured against the approved studies rather than eyeballed: pitch 96, dot alpha ~0.053 light and ~0.16 dark. Dark genuinely needs more than light.
Drift periods are prime and mixed in sign so no two components ever line up — that is what stops the drift acquiring a visible beat.
Reduced motion is a designed output
prefers-reduced-motion: reduce renders one static frame with a fixed
off-centre warp, so the page still looks composed. No loop, no pointer response, and the
media query is honoured live rather than only at load.
One source of truth
params.json holds every tunable. field.js (web) and
field.py (the static SVG twin for print and OG images) both read it and neither
holds a default, so web and print cannot drift.
Icons
The nouns of Interlink's work — not a generic UI set.
currentColor. A 48px optical build exists where the small hinting made a redraw necessary.entity is an abstract token, never a face or a silhouette.
This project profiles structures, not individuals, and the iconography has to say so. It
is a brand-ethics rule, not a style preference.
In drafting, donation was drawn four times: a coin above a
container read as a head above a torso — the one silhouette this set must never
make.
Two constraints that shaped the set
No icon may echo the Autonomy Institute mark. Autonomy is the parent and
appears alongside Interlink in nearly every header, cover and byline chip. The first
network was a right triangle — their exact silhouette — and was redrawn as a
three-armed hub with no right angle.
No icon may spell a letter. The 48px network redraw was
dropped rather than shipped, because two verticals either side of a diagonal inescapably
read as an N, and a monogram is the last thing a brand with no mark wants.
Data visualisation
Maps are the product. This is the part of the system that does the actual work.
rule, and one traced path in signal — the connection Interlink established. Node radius encodes degree. Quadrants after the Authoritarian Stack.
Every chart is captioned and sourced. A chart without a mono
SOURCE: line is not in the house style — it is the brand's core promise made
visible. And synthetic data says so on its face: illustrative graphs use typed
identifiers (C-04, ORIGIN 02) and are labelled
ILLUSTRATIVE, because a fabricated network of real organisations would be a
fabricated allegation.
Components
Sharp, dense, editorial. Rules do the work borders usually do.
design/system/ui/atoms.html.Published work is an index list, not a card grid. One row per item, one hairline between rows, mono category and year left, title right. No thumbnails, no boxes, no buttons. It removes most of what reads as machine-made, and it scales to an index that will grow across four national desks.
The header brand is the plain wordmark. One eyebrow-and-signal-rule per screenful — a rule in the header plus one on the hero eyebrow is two in the first viewport. The device belongs on standalone surfaces only.
Accessibility is part of “done”: 41 text pairs ≥4.5:1, 19 boundary pairs ≥3:1, 12
hairlines ≥1.4, on both themes; every interactive element keyboard-reachable with a visible
focus ring, asserted after a real Tab; 44px touch targets. Interactive boundaries
use ink-muted rather than rule, because the hairline tokens are
deliberately below 3:1 — they are structure, not controls.
Applied surfaces
Most of Interlink's output leaves the website. These are the surfaces it lands on.
These are the standalone identity contexts, so they carry the wordmark + signal rule device — the opposite of the website header, which is deliberately plain.
The website
interlink.zone, rebuilt from this system — the system's largest single proof.
The hero is four things and nothing else — eyebrow, short signal rule, headline, one short paragraph — set low and left with a large empty region above, and the field drifting behind it. No button, no scroll cue, no statistics row. Published work below is an index list, one hairline between rows.
Open it at design/site/index.html. Light and dark, a persisted theme
toggle, five responsive widths, reduced-motion honoured, and the live field behind the hero.
Rules
The short version. If you remember nothing else.
Do
- Leave things out. Empty space is a feature of this brand, not an absence.
- Let rules do the work borders usually do.
- Label in mono, uppercase, tracked — and cite the source.
- Use the signal only where a connection is asserted.
- Keep one ambient device per viewport, and one eyebrow-and-signal-rule per screenful.
- Check it on ink as well as paper, and at 390px as well as 1440.
- Say when data is illustrative, on the artwork itself.
Don't
- Don't make a logo. There is no mark and none is wanted.
- Don't fill a region because it looks bare. Bare is the brand.
- Don't use the signal as a fill, a wash, or a highlight.
- Don't borrow the adversary's register — no heat, no gothic, no crisis glow.
- Don't draw a crosshair, a reticle, or a face. This project profiles structures, not people.
- Don't round a corner. Radius is 0, everywhere.
- Don't present synthetic data as real. A fabricated network of real organisations is a fabricated allegation.
Open questions
Decisions deliberately left to you rather than guessed at.
- A text serif. Two families ship. The Expert Convention's long-form essays, and Autonomy's own serif wordmark, both argue for a third. Deferred rather than invented.
- Light or dark as the site default. Both ship, correctly. The recommendation is light — the brand's claim is publication, and the dark site already existed and did not read as a brand.
- The descriptor. “Actionable intelligence on the Reactionary International” is the deck's own line and is used throughout here. The live site says “Radical Right”. Confirm which is public-facing.
- Autonomy co-branding. The endorsement is set as type because we do not hold their mark as vector. If a brand sheet exists, the lockup should be rebuilt from it.
- The favicon. Typographic by necessity. If even a lettered favicon feels like too much of a claim, the alternative is the signal square alone.