Plate
Deterministic project marks
Plateprint, in grain
A generator for the project marks used on this site, producing reproducible SVG and PNG files from project-specific rules and a name-based seed.
Plate's plate, shown with its construction. The rule is the cut: one thread of null routed round one pole through a slab. The ink is whatever the route leaves standing, and the route is the same whatever the weight of the slab. In the print, the plate is the clear area. Drawn by Plate.
The project marks on this site are generated with Plate. Each mark is intended to represent how its project works, rather than illustrate its name, while following a shared set of visual constraints: one colour, a structure built from strokes, and no assumed background.
To produce a mark, Plate uses a project-specific generator and a seed derived from the project's name. The generator defines the structure, while the seed controls quantities and weights within it. This distinction is important: the seed can change how many elements appear and how heavy they are, but it does not decide what the mark represents. Given the same inputs, the generator produces exactly the same files.
Plate's own mark illustrates this process through an engraved block and its identical impressions. The name refers both to a printing plate and to a figure in a paper, reflecting the intention that these marks explain something about their projects rather than serve only as decoration.
The output includes SVG files for the site and PNG files for use on GitHub and Hugging Face. The SVGs inherit their colour from the surrounding page, while the PNGs can be generated using the site's colour tokens. Each generator also provides a simplified version for small sizes, where details from the full mark would no longer be legible.
Plate only generates the marks; text, cards, and page layout are handled separately. The README on GitHub describes how to generate the files and add new marks.