Art Brut

Raw art. No rules. No training. No apologies.

01

Color Palette

Straight from the crayon box, smeared across kraft paper. No color theory here — just the impulse to mark.

Crayon Box

Crayon Red #D42B2B
Crayon Blue #2B5ED4
Crayon Yellow #E8C830
Scribble Green #38A038
Crayon Orange #E87830
Crayon Purple #7B3FA0

Materials

Kraft Paper #C8B590
Cardboard #A08060
Newsprint #E8E0D0
White-Out #F0EDE6

Marker & Ink

Marker Black #1A1812
Marker Dark #2C2820
Pencil Gray #6A6458
Scribble Gray #908880

02

Typography

Every font looks like a hand held the pen. Nothing was typeset. Nothing was proofread. The mistakes are features.

Display / Scrawl — Caveat 700

The walls have their own language

Used for: page titles, section headings, emphatic labels
Heading / Handwrite — Patrick Hand

Every surface is a canvas if you are brave enough

Used for: body text, card content, form labels, navigation
Childlike — Gaegu 700

draw it wrong on purpose

Used for: taglines, annotations, playful accents, hints
Caption / System — Space Grotesk

The only structured voice in the system. Used for metadata, technical labels, hex codes, and the rare moment when precision is needed. Even outsider art has fine print.

Used for: metadata, hex values, technical labels, tiny print

Type Scale

4rem Page Title
2.4rem Section
1.5rem Card Heading
1.15rem Label
1rem Body text reads like this
0.85rem Caption & metadata
0.72rem Fine print

03

Spacing

Spacing that feels measured by hand, not by pixel. Close enough is good enough.

--space-xs
4px
--space-sm
8px
--space-md
16px
--space-lg
28px
--space-xl
48px
--space-2xl
72px

04

Buttons

Every button was drawn by someone who never saw a design system. They work anyway.

Primary Actions

Crayon Variants

Sizes

States


05

Forms

Fill it in however you want. The lines are suggestions. Coloring outside of them is encouraged.

spell it however feels right
no wrong answers, no right ones either

06

Cards & Panels

Pinned-up scraps. Taped-on notes. Collaged layers. Everything overlapping, nothing aligned.

Raw Cards

Dubuffet's Rule

Art does not come to lie down in beds that have been made for it. It runs away as soon as its name is called. What it likes is incognito.

Outsider Vision

The untrained eye sees what the trained eye has learned to ignore. Every child is an artist. The problem is remaining an artist once you grow up.

Raw Materials

Found paper, broken crayons, borrowed pens. The medium is whatever is at hand. Limitation becomes the mother of crude, honest invention.

Wrong on Purpose

Perspective is a prison. Proportion is a suggestion. The figure has five fingers or seven — it depends on the day and the feeling.

Collage Card

Layered Like a Scrapbook

This card sits on top of another piece of cardboard, like something torn out and glued down in a collage. The shadow layer behind it is intentional — a reminder that Art Brut works in layers, corrections, and accumulation. Nothing is clean. Everything is built up, scraped away, built again.


07

Alerts

Scrawled warnings and hasty notes. Written in crayon on torn paper and taped to the wall.

Drawing saved! (Or at least we think it was. The crayon might have smudged.)
You are about to color outside the lines. This is encouraged but we wanted you to know.
Something went wrong. The crayon broke. Start over on the back of the page.
Did you know? Jean Dubuffet coined "Art Brut" in 1945 to describe art made outside the establishment.

08

Navigation

Finding your way through the chaos. Like scribbled signs taped to a studio wall.


09

Design Principles

The anti-rules. The only system is: make it honest, make it raw, make it yours.

01

Embrace Imperfection

Nothing aligns. Borders wobble. Colors bleed. This is not a bug report — it is the entire aesthetic. Precision is the enemy of expression.

02

Material Honesty

Show the kraft paper. Show the tape. Show the crayon texture. Every surface should look like it was found, not purchased from a design tool.

03

Uninhibited Mark-Making

Every element should look like it was placed by hand — quickly, confidently, without second-guessing. The first stroke is the right stroke.

04

Accumulation Over Refinement

Layer, collage, overlap, correct. Build up rather than strip down. The history of changes is part of the design — white-out, cross-outs, and tape are all welcome.