Pequod
A pigment-inspired colour palette for reading and code, rooted in
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Warm paper on one end, deep ink on
the other, and eight accent hues named after the crew of the whaler.
Designed for long reading and long-form code, not glance-ability.
Themes included
- Pequod — dark (deep-ink Log 950 surface, cream Log 100 text)
- Pequod Light — light (warm-paper Log 50 surface, deep-navy Log 800 text)
Activate with Preferences: Color Theme and pick Pequod or
Pequod Light.
The crew
Each accent is a character with a syntax role:
| Crew |
Role |
Light |
Dark |
| Ahab — the wound, the fire |
keywords, errors |
#A83732 |
#E3877C |
| Starbuck — moderate reason |
functions, links |
#0082B1 |
#A6DFFF |
| Queequeg — tattoos, loyalty |
types, classes |
#253E82 |
#838CCF |
| Pip — sun-addled |
numbers, literals |
#6A4A00 |
#DEC577 |
| Ishmael — the narrator |
comments, punctuation |
#76716B |
#BFBBB6 |
| Stubb — pipe smoke |
constants, warnings |
#CA6435 |
#FFD9BB |
| Tashtego — moss, low pine |
strings, success |
#177c55 |
#82C4A2 |
| Daggoo — mahogany |
variables, properties |
#552823 |
#a17069 |
Accessibility
- Body-text contrast on the light theme: 10.5 : 1 (Log 800 on
Log 50). On dark: 16.2 : 1 (Log 100 on Log 950).
- All eight dark-mode accents clear WCAG-AA (4.5 : 1) on Log 950.
- Five of eight light-mode accents clear AA-body on Log 100; the
other three (Pip, Stubb, Starbuck) are tuned for bold, large
text, or UI elements where AA-large (3 : 1) applies.
- Worst-case colour-vision-deficiency collapses are documented in
the main repository:
Pip↔Stubb collapse under tritanopia, Ahab↔Daggoo under
protanopia. Pair these with shape, weight, or position where
colour-blind-safe distinction matters.
Beyond VS Code
Pequod also ships as:
- Zed theme family (dark + light) — single JSON file,
drop into
~/.config/zed/themes/.
- iTerm2 preset (dark).
- R package (
pequod) with palette helpers and ggplot2
scales — install via install.packages("pequod") or from
GitHub.
- Printable A4 specimen PDF, generated from the canonical
tokens with Typst.
pequod.json — the canonical machine-readable token file
(CC-BY-4.0). Use it to generate themes for any other tool.
All of these live at github.com/tiagojct/pequod.
The narrative, the design rationale, and the full accessibility
analysis are at tiagojct.eu/projects/pequod.
Licence
MIT. The underlying palette tokens are also published under
CC-BY-4.0; see the upstream repository.
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