Brand
Designed for the trip, not the boardroom.
BuddyCup borrows from Ryder Cup broadcasts, classic arcade UI, and the energy of a Saturday‑night clubhouse. Below is the visual system everything is built on.
Palette
High contrast, dark‑first, two saturated accents. Greens and golds map to the two competing teams; zinc neutrals handle everything else.
Background
#0a0a0a
Page surface. Near‑black, never pure #000 — keeps shadows readable.
Gold
#eab308
Primary accent. CTAs, the “CUP” wordmark, the Chunkers team color.
Green
#16a34a
Secondary accent. Live scoring positives, the Hacks team color.
Zinc 100
#f4f4f5
Body text on dark surfaces. High contrast, neutral.
Zinc 400
#a1a1aa
Supporting copy, captions, secondary labels.
Zinc 900
#18181b
Card surfaces, divider borders, icon backplates.
Typography
Two faces from the Geist family — Sans for everything readable, Mono for labels, scores, and broadcast‑style kickers.
Geist Sans · Body
Run your trip. Crown your champion.
Headlines, paragraphs, button text. Tight tracking on the big ones, normal everywhere else.
Geist Mono · Labels
Defend the cup · Round 03 · Live
Uppercase, wide tracking (0.30em–0.35em). The voice of kickers, badges, scoreboards, and footer chrome.
Design theory
Broadcast‑native. Scores, leaderboards, and kicker labels read like a sports broadcast graphic. Mono‑case labels, gold accents on key numbers, team color stripes on every player chip.
Mobile‑first. The canonical surface is a phone in a cart on a Wednesday afternoon — one column, big touch targets, no nested menus. Desktop layouts are a courtesy, not the priority.
Irreverent, not cute. Buddy trips don’t use corporate SaaS voice and they don’t use cartoon mascots either. The copy talks like the group does.
Dark, with edges. Sharp corners (Tailwind’s rounded-sm) over pill shapes. Visible borders. Black surfaces with one‑pixel hairline rules between sections — never floating cards in soft gradients.