Dingbats first.
Phosphor Duotone, sparingly.
Iconography is connective tissue, not a primary medium. The brand reads as editorial-typographic. Unicode dingbats do the heavy lifting. Phosphor Duotone, currentColor on stroke and 28% on fill, for product UI only. No emoji, anywhere, ever.
Five dingbats. The brand's real icon system.
U+25C6 · Section markers, end-of-line ornament, fleurons between blocks.
U+2726 · Origin marker, kicker prefix on the Journal index.
U+00B7 · Separator inside chrome. No. I · STEALTH
U+2192 · CTAs; translates +4px on hover. Always typographic, never SVG.
U+00B7 × 2 · Roman-numeral lead. ·· I
Used as room tone, not as decoration.
No. I · Stealth · MMXXVI
The Refusal ◆
The arrow translates +4px on hover. Inline, typographic, never an SVG arrow.
By hand · No tracking · No newsletter
Three short statements, separated by middle dot. The pacing of patience.
A short paragraph ends.
◆
A new short paragraph begins. The fleuron sets the cadence.
Regular weight. 1.5px stroke. Rounded terminals.
Source: @phosphor-icons/web@2.1.1, regular weight only. Lucide is an acceptable second choice with the same stroke discipline. Never mix two icon sets in one screen.
A single stroke discipline.
Rules
- 1.5px stroke at 24px / 1.0px at 16px / 2.0px at 32px+
- Rounded line caps and joins
- No fills, ever
- Currentcolor (inherits text colour)
- Aligned to a 24×24 grid
- Optical, not geometric, centring
- No drop shadows, no glow
Sizes in the wild
Never.
No emoji on any surface. Not on the landing page. Not in the admin app. Not in transactional email. Not in the widget. Not in social posts. Not even in internal-team chat templates that ship out the door.
The Unicode dingbats above are not emoji. They are typographic ornaments rendered in the active font. They participate in the type system. An emoji is a colour glyph that renders identically on every platform: it ports the platform's voice, not ours.
Things the brand never draws.
Emoji as decoration. Banned.
Mixing weights. Stay in duotone across a screen.
Solid-fill icons. The system is duotone, not fill.
3D app-icon tiles. Wrong category.