K03 — TYPOGRAPHY & NOTATION

Type under force.

A variable grotesk that widens for display and narrows for UI, a mono for instruments, a serif for long-form. All SIL Open Font License, self-hostable for GDPR.

10⁰ — Families

Three voices

DISPLAY & UI · VARIABLE wdth 62–125 Archivo Expanded (112–125%) for display, normal (100%) for UI and text, condensed (75–87%) for dense tables.
TELEMETRY · INDICES · UNITS Martian
Mono Readouts, section indices, labels, code. Tabular by design; 11–13 px uppercase for labels.
EDITORIAL · OPTIONAL Newsreader Deployment stories and investor letters only. Never in UI.
wdth 125 · wght 700
Flux

10¹ — Scale

Fluid type scale

From monumental display (up to ~12 vw) to caption. Body never below 16 px; line length 60–75 characters.

Force.
display-xxlclamp(64px,12vw,200px)800 · wdth 125 · −5%
A star, contained.
display-xlclamp(52px,8vw,136px)750 · wdth 125 · −4.5%
Every ångström counts.
display-lclamp(40px,5.5vw,88px)700 · wdth 120
Proof, dated and verified.
h1clamp(36px,4.6vw,72px)650 · wdth 118
Three forces. One discipline.
h2clamp(30px,3.4vw,52px)650 · wdth 118
Pilot live in six weeks
h3clamp(22px,2.2vw,32px)600 · wdth 112
Fusion energy, 2 nm-class silicon and humanoid robots.
body-l19px400 · 19/28.5
Success criteria are agreed in writing before any robot ships.
body16px400 · 16/24.8 · min
Talk to an engineer
ui14px500 · UI labels only
On-coil field · Demonstrated
label11pxMono 11 · +4% · uppercase
20.1 T ± 0.2
readout22pxMono 22 · tabular

10² — Notation

Scientific notation, done right

Real superscripts
✓ DO
10⁻⁹ m
✕ DON’T
10^-9 m
Use Unicode superscripts or <sup>; never caret notation.
Non-breaking space before units
✓ DO
20 T · 13.5 nm
✕ DON’T
20T · 13.5nm
Value and unit never wrap apart: U+00A0.
Thin-space digit grouping
✓ DO
150 000 000 K
✕ DON’T
150,000,000 K
U+2009 in technical readouts; commas stay in financial copy.
Uncertainty
✓ DO
20.1 ± 0.2 T
✕ DON’T
~20 T
State ± with the same precision as the value.
SI symbols, correct case
✓ DO
150 MW · 40 kA
✕ DON’T
150 mw · 40 KA
k is lower-case; M, T, K are upper-case.
Ranges with en dash
✓ DO
1–9 TRL
✕ DON’T
1-9 TRL
U+2013, no spaces, units once.
Timestamps
✓ DO
16:04:12 UTC
✕ DON’T
4:04 pm
Telemetry uses 24 h UTC; marketing dates “Mar 2026”.
Sub/superscript units
✓ DO
0.08 /cm²
✕ DON’T
0.08 /cm2
Area and volume units use ² and ³.
PROPORTIONAL ✕
111 111.1
808 080.8
1 900 000.0
TABULAR ✓ · font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums
111 111.1
808 080.8
1 900 000.0

10³ — Long-form

Editorial measure

The first Forma units arrived at Nordwerk’s Zwickau plant on a Monday. By Friday, two of them were moving door modules between the trim line and the marriage station, at one-times speed, unedited, while the line kept running.

Sixteen weeks later there were 120. This is the story of what worked, what didn’t, and the three changes that made scaling possible.

Newsreader 21/34 · max-width 68ch · illustrative copy