CHROMA is a fictional colour-science institute. Its argument: colour is a place, not a property — every colour has an address in a solid, and the site lets you hold that solid and then cut it open.
The page inverts the usual rule that a colour-themed design must be colourful. The interface is achromatic — near-black, chalk, one hue-wheel dot in the wordmark — because all 4,200 colours in the point cloud are the content. The only decorated words are the ones that mean the spectrum itself.
Archivo Black — display. Swiss-laboratory conviction; big, tight, unsentimental.
Martian Mono — instrument voice for coordinates and specimen labels.
| Element | How it works |
|---|---|
| The solid | 4,200 points seeded through an HSL bicone (chroma radius shrinks toward black and white poles — like real colour solids). Positions and [h,s,l] data ride in buffer attributes; a custom point shader draws soft discs with per-point colour. |
| Dissection | A 380vh pinned track scrubs two uniforms: uMode picks the axis (hue wedge / lightness slab / chroma shell) and uParam sweeps it. Points outside the slice fall to 6% alpha, so each axis becomes visible as a moving cross-section. The card's live readout prints the coordinate being cut. |
| Orbit | Pointer drag adds angular velocity with friction; the solid keeps a slow idle spin so it never plays dead. |
| Spectrum type | The two gradient words use background-clip:text — the only chromatic ink in the interface. |
| Named colours | Six real pigment histories, each chip labelled in mix-blend-mode:difference so the hex stays legible on any chip. |
| Accessibility | Reduced motion stops idle spin and entrances; drag and dissection (scroll-position driven) still work. All narrative is real text. |
| You do | The page does |
|---|---|
| Drag the cloud | The solid orbits with momentum |
| Scroll the dissection | A hue wedge sweeps 360°, a lightness slab rises floor to ceiling, a chroma shell grows core to skin |
| Hover a named colour | The vault card lifts out of the dark |