oculus: marks from first principles

a mark that can be redrawn with a compass and straightedge survives format changes. oculus uses that constraint.

the constraint

the generator accepts exactly three primitives: circle, line, regular polygon. no bezier freehand, no gradients in the core. if the mark cannot be constructed, it cannot be emitted.

the core of my own mark is a vesica piscis. two arcs, radius equal to the width, centers on each other’s circumference. an old construction. euclid opens with it.

scale is a property, not an export

a good mark degrades in steps, not smears. at 16px the hexagon goes; at 32px the dashed ring goes; the vesica and center point survive to the end. oculus encodes this as detail levels, so the favicon and the hero image are the same construction, truncated.

the favicon and hero image use the same construction at different detail levels.