design language · 06

iconography.

icons are set, not placed. every glyph is drawn on a 24×24 grid at stroke 1.8 in currentColor, so it inherits the size and the colour of the text around it and never becomes a separate thing to theme.

the glyph rules

one grid, one stroke, no fills. a filled icon reads as a state, so fills are spent deliberately, never for weight. everything else is a line.

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one glyph, inheriting. it takes the size of the text it sits in and the colour of the role around it, because it is drawn in currentColor and sized to match.

muted, small ink, base accent, large

glyphs are punctuation

there are no emoji in usva. the affordance an emoji would carry is carried by a small set of typographic glyphs instead: arrows point, a dot separates. each has one fixed meaning, so a → always says forward and never decoration.

forward: a link, a next step, a result
away: it leaves the site or opens elsewhere
under: a nested route, a child, a reply
·
between: a separator for things that are equal

where the glyphs come from

the set is Lucide ↗, taken at the usva grid: 24×24, stroke 1.8, currentColor. every glyph on this page is a live component off that set, so it inherits the theme and there is no icon to redraw per brand.

the two brand marks sit outside all of this. the wordmark is set in type, four letters and an accent-alt period, never a path; railo is the one shape in the system that is drawn, and it is still not an icon. neither takes an icon slot, sits in a glyph row, or inherits the 24×24 stroke-1.8 grid. they answer to identity, not to this page.