@polyxd/ds-brutalist

@polyxd/ds-brutalist

Brutalist — an original Polyxd template pack. Black 2px borders, flat yellow and black, hard 4px shadows, no radius, mono labels.

Two-pixel black borders on everything, hard shadows offset four pixels with no blur, no radius anywhere (avatars are square), and two colours that mean something: black is the primary action, yellow is what's selected, highlighted or secondary. Titles are Space Grotesk set tight; labels are JetBrains Mono in bold; body is Arial because Arial is the honest default. Motion is nearly zero. Dark mode flips it: yellow primary on black, white borders, white shadows. For posters, launches, and products that want to be seen from across the room.

This is a template: not a reproduction of any design system, and meant to be changed. Start from it, keep what you like, and it stays a valid pack as long as polyxd check passes.

npx polyxd check packages/ds-brutalist/manifest.json   # every contract token, every contrast pair, both modes

Make it yours

Two ways in.

Edit these tokens. Every colour role in tokens/system.light.json and tokens/system.dark.json points at a named entry in that file's palette; change a palette entry and every role using it follows, or point a role at another entry to change one thing. Type, spacing, radii and motion are in tokens/system.json. tokens/semantic.json only aliases those and rarely needs touching. Run polyxd check after each change: it names any pair that no longer meets its contrast floor.

Or start from your own tokens. npx polyxd pack ./your-tokens.css --name yours drafts a pack from a stylesheet or a DTCG file and writes a mapping you correct; this template is then a reference for what each role is for.

Either way, rename it: name in manifest.json is the theme a surface asks for, and [data-pxd-theme="<name>"] is the selector the compiled CSS uses.

Fonts

Role	Family	Full stack
display	Space Grotesk	'Space Grotesk', system-ui, -apple-system, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif
body	Arial	Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
label	JetBrains Mono	'JetBrains Mono', ui-monospace, SFMono-Regular, Menlo, Consolas, 'Liberation Mono', monospace
mono	JetBrains Mono	'JetBrains Mono', ui-monospace, SFMono-Regular, Menlo, Consolas, 'Liberation Mono', monospace

Web fonts: JetBrains Mono, Space Grotesk — from Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License, not shipped with the pack. Add them to your page's <link>; without them the pack falls back to the stack after each name and still passes every check.

Notes on the values

• Yellow can't be the primary button on white — it is 1.2:1 against the page and the contract wants 3:1 for a control — so black is primary with a yellow label, and yellow carries the secondary and selected states, where it sits behind black text at 17:1.
• radius.full is 0 too, so avatars and pills are squares; change it to 999px if you want round avatars back.

Files

File	What it holds
manifest.json	Name, modes, default mode and provenance
tokens/system.json	Primitives both modes share: fonts, sizes, spacing, radii, borders, motion
tokens/system.light.json, tokens/system.dark.json	The palette and the brutalist.sys.* roles for each mode, plus shadows
tokens/semantic.json	The Polyxd contract, aliasing brutalist.*

Licence Apache-2.0, like the rest of Polyxd. Provenance in the manifest: original template by Polyxd.