Colophon
Type
Headings are set in Fraunces, used as a variable
font with its optical-size and SOFT axes doing deliberate work —
softer and warmer at display sizes, sharper as it approaches text.
Body text is Source Serif 4, chosen because it is
quiet, generous at small sizes, and does not compete. Both are
self-hosted, subset to Latin, and loaded with
font-display: swap. Numerals in prose are old-style;
prices and tables use lining figures, as they should.
Colour
Three inks. A warm cream ground chosen to not read as yellow; a warm near-black; and oxblood as the only accent — links, the line, and almost nothing else. The dark scheme is called ink in the code: it inverts to an ink ground with cream text, and the oxblood is let up one stop for link legibility; the bandwidth line keeps its true colour. Both modes derive from the same tokens, and the site honours your system preference until you touch the small toggle in the header.
The line
The brand mark is a one-pixel horizontal rule — the bandwidth line.
It renders instantly as a straight line and modulates gently as you
scroll, like a calm signal. Under
prefers-reduced-motion it stays entirely still, and it
is the only moving thing on the site.
Tooling
Built with Astro to fully static HTML and hosted on Cloudflare Pages. The interactive pieces — the glossary popovers, the ink toggle, the early-warning checklist — are small islands of plain TypeScript on the native Popover API; with JavaScript off, everything degrades to ordinary links and text. There are no external requests, no analytics, no cookies, and therefore no banner. Cross-page navigation uses the browser’s own view transitions where supported: a short crossfade, disabled under reduced motion.
The name
James Allerton is a pseudonym; the author is a serving managing director at a UK company. The trade-off is explained on the about page, but the short version belongs here, among the other production notes: anonymity is the typeface honesty is set in.