Back matter
Colophon
A book worth reading says how it was made. This is a short account of the choices behind this site and the constraints I have tried to keep visible for whoever works on it next.
- The mark
- The monogram is భ - the Telugu letter bha, the first sound of Bhanu - drawn from Noto Serif Telugu and embedded as a single vector path, so no Telugu webfont ever ships. It signs the masthead, the favicon, the end of every article, and the foot of this page.
- Type
- Display settings are Fraunces, a soft serif with real optical sizes; running text is Newsreader, drawn for long-form reading on screens. JetBrains Mono appears only where monospace earns its keep: dates, numbers, and code. Body figures are oldstyle; code keeps lining figures.
- Color
- Paper ivory ground, warm ink text, and one accent - terracotta. The rule is simple: if something seems to need a second accent color, the design is wrong, not the palette. Structure is drawn with hairlines of diluted ink rather than boxes and shadows.
- Build
- Built with Astro and Cloudflare Workers, then kept deliberately small: Tailwind CSS for the visual system, MDX for the writing, and very little client-side JavaScript. The writing lives in version-controlled files, so the site can stay simple as it grows.
- Posture
- I want the site to be easy to read, easy to browse, and easy to return to. It uses plain links, prints cleanly, and ends each article with an open invitation to reply. I add complexity only when it makes the site clearer, easier to find, or easier to use.
- Editorial work
- I sometimes use AI tools for research, feedback, or editing. The ideas and final words are mine.