Palette

The finite set of colours a work is allowed. Discipline here reads as confidence: three colours chosen well say more than twenty chosen easily.

A palette is a contract: these colours, in these roles, and no others. The roles matter more than the swatches. One colour holds the ground, one carries the voice, one is spent rarely enough to stay precious. Our own surfaces run on ink, ivory and a single gold, and the gold is rationed.

Choosing few colours is not austerity; it is how colour keeps meaning. When everything can be any colour, no colour signals anything. A disciplined palette lets a single warm accent read as an event, and it makes every future surface easier to design, because the argument is already settled.