How it's made — INQ.LAB

01

It starts with one shape.

No canvas of paint — a literal <canvas> in your browser, and a single instruction: put a dark square here. That one command is the only drawing tool the rest of this needs.

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ctx.fillStyle = '#1C1A16';
ctx.fillRect(150, 150, 200, 200);

02

Repeat it on a grid.

Run that one instruction across rows and columns and you get structure — a checkerboard. Tidy, but perfectly predictable: it looks the same every single time. This is rules with no chance.

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for (let r = 0; r < 5; r++)
  for (let c = 0; c < 5; c++)
    ctx.fillRect(c*100, r*100, 100, 100);

03

Now, a roll of the dice.

Let each cell flip a coin — dark or light, decided at random. Suddenly it’s alive, and different on every refresh. But there’s a catch: make one you love and it’s gone the moment you look away.

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// each cell flips a coin
ctx.fillStyle = rng() < 0.5 ? ink : cream;

04

Pin the dice to a seed.

Here’s the trick that makes it art you can own. The randomness is tied to a single starting number — a seed. Same seed, same piece, forever, on any device. That little code in the corner of every print is the seed: the entire recipe, written once.

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// same seed -> same art, forever
const rng = makeRng(0x9E3779B9);

05

Layer colour, many times over.

Now vary everything from that one seed — position, size, translucency — and lay dozens of soft shapes over each other. The overlaps mix into colours the palette never named. The hues themselves come from documented historical sources, chosen by hand.

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ctx.globalAlpha = 0.35 + rng()*0.4;
ctx.arc(x, y, 10 + rng()*80, 0, 2*Math.PI);

06

Add grain so it feels printed.

Flat colour reads as “computer.” A last pass nudges every pixel a hair brighter or darker — the difference between a screenshot and something that looks like ink on paper. Then it’s rendered at 300 DPI, ready to print at any size.

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// nudge each pixel a little
d[i] += (rng() - 0.5) * 16;

How it’s made

It starts with one shape.

Repeat it on a grid.

Now, a roll of the dice.

Pin the dice to a seed.

Layer colour, many times over.

Add grain so it feels printed.

Made by hand, in code.