Recurva minor
- seed
- A1F-3
- angle
- ±27°
- ratio
- 0.71
- iterations
- 7
A balanced recursive branch with conservative angle variance. Used as the studio baseline.
designs grow from initial conditions
seed: —
prototype.st is a studio for procedurally-grown design systems. We treat the brief as a set of initial conditions and let the work emerge — branch by branch, leaf by leaf — through algorithmic iteration.
Recursive subdivision, Voronoi tessellation, Fibonacci spirals. Not as ornament — as the working method.
No two visitors see the same hero illustration. No two prototypes branch the same way. Reproducibility comes from the seed, not the output.
Six specimens. Each one a different set of initial conditions, growing along its own branch.
A balanced recursive branch with conservative angle variance. Used as the studio baseline.
Tessellated reef structure — cells relaxed via Lloyd's algorithm to evoke organic packing.
Phyllotactic arrangement using the golden angle. The same algorithm a sunflower runs.
Classic Lindenmayer system. Five generations is enough; six is too dense to read.
Diffusion-limited aggregation — particles random-walk until they touch the cluster, then stick.
Gray-Scott reaction-diffusion. The same maths Turing used to explain how a leopard gets its spots.
tap or focus a card to read its parameters
A seed is the brief: domain, audience, constraints, three adjectives. We hash it into a 12-character signature.
seed = sha1("…").slice(0,12)
Angle range, branch ratio, depth, palette anchor. Six numbers, locked. Everything downstream is determined by these.
conditions = derive(seed)
The generative engine runs. Recursive subdivision, then leaf placement. We watch — we do not steer.
grow(root, conditions)
When the form settles, we freeze it: rasterize, label, archive. The seed plus the conditions reproduce it exactly.
press(form) → archive
Pairs of specimens become parents. New seed = mix of two — the next generation inherits, mutates, branches.
cross(a, b) → seed'
"Three recursive calls. After the third, you can no longer tell which is the parent."
— studio log, week 14
"The leaf isn't where the algorithm ends. It's where the algorithm decides to end."
— studio log, week 22
"A reproducible seed is a kindness to the people who will work on this after you."
— studio log, week 31