Colour AKRIBIS One in the teal ink, and draw the ring as one continuous spectrum

Context and Problem Statement

After ADR-0013 to ADR-0015, AKRIBIS One was the only member of the family without a colour: its roles resolved to neutrals, its lockups were published in ink and white only, and the ring in colour was nine separate arcs in the category order (ADR-0010). Three things were wrong with that, raised by Demian on 2026-10-04:

• One has no colour of its own, while every unit and the parent have one.
• The ring’s and the dot’s dimensions were not set once: the ring’s centre dot measured one stem (ADR-0012) but the dot lockup kept the delivered dot of radius 16 master units, and brand/marks/ring.yaml held drawn numbers (43.86, 65.80, 641.60) rather than the proportions they came from, so nothing published them for the sites to share.
• The ring in colour must be a continuous, closed gradient, not coloured segments. That is also what the delivered artwork did (akribis-one-ring-spectrum.svg: 160 arcs in hue order) and what every sibling site shows today.

Decision Drivers

Criteria 2 (one coherent, expandable family), 3 (register), 4 (accessibility), 6 (recognition where it exists) and 9 (generated and tested) of ADR-0009.

Considered Options

For the colour:

• The AKRIBIS hue at a third tone of the same ramp: step 950, the teal ink
• A free hue slot (114°, 144° or 324°): One as a tenth member on the wheel
• Ink, with the spectrum as its only colour (the earlier record, design repo 05, and ADR-0013)
• A visible neutral (graphite, neutral-800), the colour of “one” in the delivered lockup

For the ring in colour:

• One continuous gradient through the nine signatures in hue order, equal shares, interpolated in OKLCH
• The same, with each signature at its own angle on the hue wheel
• The same, evaluating the band rule (step 500) at every hue instead of interpolating
• Nine arcs in the category order (what was built)

Decision Outcome

Proposed on 2026-10-04 for Demian’s ratification. Everything below is generated from brand/marks/ring.yaml, brand/colour.yaml and brand/units.yaml by brand/src/one.ts, palette.ts, tokens.ts and data.ts, and asserted by brand/test/build.test.ts.

The colour: the AKRIBIS hue at step 950, the teal ink

#002f34, L 0.28 in OKLCH, chroma by the ramp’s rule. Three marks are called AKRIBIS and now share one hue at three steps of one ramp: the unit at 500 (the band teal, ADR-0013), the company at 800 (the deep teal, ADR-0014), One at 950 (the teal ink). Why this and not the alternatives:

• The akribis.one site had already reached for this colour: its stylesheet names #0e2a2e its “deep teal-ink signature”, which is the ramp’s step 950 within ΔE 1.9. As with the parent (ADR-0014), the system’s grid lands on a tone people already recognise.
• A free slot would make One a tenth unit and spend a slot meant for expansion, the reasoning Demian accepted for the parent in ADR-0014; and the word “akribis” in the lockup would then be set in a colour that contradicts the AKRIBIS teal. In the teal ink it reads as AKRIBIS family. Green at 144° was drawn and rejected on this ground.
• Ink was the status quo Demian declined. A neutral is a non-colour too: the delivered “one” in graphite #4D5358 is neutral-800 within ΔE 0.8, so the system already holds it as a neutral, not as One’s colour.
• The teal ink reads 14.4:1 on white and is told apart from ink (ΔE 12.8), from the parent (ΔE 16.3) and from the unit (ΔE 36.1).

Roles for akribis.one (role_overrides.akribis-one in brand/colour.yaml): signature 950; accent 800, the structural teal that site already styles with, hover 900, active 950; in dark mode signature 200, one step above the parent’s 300 so the order between the two holds, accent 300, hover 200, active 100. All fifteen pairings pass in both modes; the contrast report grows to 342 pairings over eleven brands.

The ring in colour: one continuous, closed spectrum

• Anchors. The nine signatures (step 500), one per unit, each with an equal share of the circle: 40°. Every unit gets the same share, which is the point of the symbol.

• Order. Hue order, AKRIBIS at the top centre (ADR-0010), clockwise with rising hue:

  Angle	Unit	Hue	Signature
  0°	AKRIBIS	204°	#009da9
  40°	AKUTEMP	234°	#0096ce
  80°	SOLFARMA	264°	#4c82ff
  120°	AKIoT	294°	#946af5
  160°	SINGULAR4	354°	#e04893
  200°	AKZOTEC	24°	#eb484b
  240°	AKRIMET	54°	#d26a01
  280°	AKLEIA	84°	#b08201
  320°	AKURALAB	174°	#01a285

  A continuous gradient can only follow the hue order: in the category order the hue would travel 780° and pass through other units’ colours between neighbours (violet and magenta between AKUTEMP and AKZOTEC, for instance). The category order (ADR-0010) stays the order of the nine when they are composed as units; the spectrum is not a composition of units but One’s own colour. The order is derived from the hue slots, not declared, and is published as orders.spectrum in units.json.

• Interpolation in OKLCH along the shorter hue arc, chroma held inside sRGB. Lightness stays at the band (0.635) all the way round. Evaluating the band rule at every hue was seen and rejected: it fills the AKLEIA to AKURALAB stretch with a lime green that belongs to nobody. Placing each unit at its own wheel angle was seen and rejected: a quarter of the ring would show the free slots’ hues.

• Closed: the last share runs from AKURALAB back into AKRIBIS, 30° of hue, with no seam.

• Drawn as 360 arcs of one degree in SVG, each a little longer than its share so no seam shows; adjacent degrees differ by less than ΔE 1.5. In CSS the same gradient is one token, --one-spectrum: conic-gradient(in oklch from 0deg, …), in /tokens/base.css.

• The dot inside the spectrum ring is the teal ink. Letters and dot of the colour lockups are the teal ink; the ring is the spectrum.

• Where: the spectrum appears only in the ring, and in at most one signature element per page; never as a background, a wash or decoration (kept from the earlier record). Below 24 px the solid ring is used; the gradient muddies when the stroke is thin.

One dot, and the geometry set once

• The dot is one stem wide (radius = stem / 2, 65.8 grid units), like the i’s dot, and it is the same dot everywhere: the ring’s centre, the separator of the dot lockup and the icon’s. The dot lockup no longer keeps the delivered dot of radius 16 master units (ADR-0012, amended).
• brand/marks/ring.yaml now holds proportions, not measurements: outer radius = x-height / 2, stroke = stem / 3, dot = stem / 2, slot = 100 master units, stacked leading = 3/2 and gap = 1/2 of the x-height. The build derives every number.
• The geometry is published once and read everywhere: in units.json and manifest.json (grid units, and stroke 8.77 % and dot 26.32 % of the ring’s outer diameter, for a ring drawn in CSS), and in /tokens/base.css as --one-ring-stroke, --one-ring-dot and --one-ring-min; the anchors are in units.json and tokens.json.
• One is published like every other brand: colour, ink and white for the ring and the four lockups (tight, with clearspace, inline, PNG at three widths), favicons and app icons on a teal-ink tile with the solid ring in white, and /tokens/akribis-one.css with the AKRIBIS ramp and One’s roles. The special cases for One in tokens.ts and ramps.ts are gone.

Consequences

• Good, because the three AKRIBIS marks are one family by rule: one ramp, three steps, told apart by tone and by the ring, and no slot is spent.
• Good, because the ring is one definition for every site: the SVG, the CSS gradient and the proportions all come from one file and agree, and the build proves it.
• Good, because a new unit joins the spectrum by its hue slot alone: its share appears where its hue sits in the order.
• The spectrum’s order differs from the units’ circular order; a composition that puts the nine around the ring cannot align each unit with its share. The sites’ orbits turn the ring anyway.
• The spectrum files are larger than the solid ones (about 36 KB against 0.3 KB for the ring, 41 KB for a lockup): 360 arcs. Acceptable for masters; the inline variant stays solid and small.
• Open: a colour version on dark grounds (white or teal 200 letters with the spectrum); the ring in motion.
• Amends ADR-0012 (one dot; proportions), ADR-0013 (One now has a colour), ADR-0014 (the third tone) and ADR-0015 (One has a ramp: the AKRIBIS ramp with its own roles); notes are added to each.