The Physics of Light

If “Surfaces” are the atoms of the system, Physics is the law that governs them.

Axiomatic Color doesn’t store a list of colors for every surface. Instead, it calculates them dynamically based on the environment.

1. Solar Time

Instead of a binary “Light Mode” vs “Dark Mode” switch, the system models time as a continuous cycle.

• Noon: Bright Day (Light Mode).
• Midnight: Deep Night (Dark Mode).
• Twilight: The transition zone.

Every surface in the system knows what “Time” it is. When you switch modes, you aren’t swapping a stylesheet; you are moving the sun.

2. The Taper (Spatial Safety)

In the real world, you can’t have a “Neon Black” or a “Neon White”. As colors get very dark or very light, they lose their ability to hold saturation.

The system enforces this with The Taper.

Imagine a cone (or a “Bicone”) in the color space.

• At 50% Gray, you can have maximum vibrancy.
• As you approach Black (0%) or White (100%), the available vibrancy tapers off to zero.

This ensures that no matter how you configure your theme, you never accidentally create a color that is “out of gamut” (impossible to display) or that vibrates uncomfortably against the text.

3. The Tunnel (Temporal Safety)

The most dangerous time for color design is Twilight. This is the moment when the background is 50% gray.

If we just linearly interpolated colors from Day to Night, the middle point would often be a muddy, low-contrast mess.

To prevent this, the system uses a Tunneling effect. As the system transitions through Twilight, it automatically dampens the vibrancy of all surfaces. It creates a “Diving Bell” of safety, ensuring that text remains legible even during the animation between modes.

Why is this better?

In a traditional system (Hex codes), changing the background color breaks everything.

• “I made the background darker, now the cards are invisible.”
• “I made the background lighter, now the text contrast is failing.”

In the Axiomatic System, the solver re-runs the physics simulation every time the environment changes. It guarantees that:

1. Legibility: Text is always readable, because the Taper prevents the background from eating the contrast.
2. Gamut Safety: You can’t pick an “illegal” color. The math won’t let you.
3. Smooth Transitions: Switching modes is a fluid, mathematical operation, not a jarring jump cut.