Behind the pages
Colophon
No Mad Gardens is a small, independent home for writing. Its presentation is deliberately text-first: legible pages, a modest amount of ornament, and a little personality borrowed from old printed books and personal computing.
Design & philosophy
Quiet Ink draws inspiration from traditional literary publishing, the independent web, and the minimal, classless approach of magick.css. The theme favors reading over distraction and RSS over newsletter signups.
Readers can choose their own color palette and reading font independently. Four palettes are available:
- Paper
- Warm cream, subtle grain, and botanical green accents.
- Kanagawa
- Ink-dark surfaces with soft pink accents.
- Everforest
- Earthy greens and warm terracotta details.
- Tokyo Night
- Midnight blues with electric magenta accents.
These color schemes are inspired by their namesake palettes but have been customized for No Mad Gardens rather than reproduced as official distributions.
Typography
Typography is central to Quiet Ink. All four font families are self-hosted, and visitors can select their preferred reading font independently of the color palette.
- IM Fell English
- Literary serif and default reading face. A digitization of historical Fell types by Igino Marini. Font information.
- Departure Mono
- Pixel-inspired monospaced interface type used for navigation, labels, and metadata. Project and license.
- Atkinson Hyperlegible Next
- Optional proportional sans-serif reading face developed for the Braille Institute. Font information.
- Cascadia Mono
- Optional monospaced reading face from Microsoft's Cascadia family. Source and license.
The bundled font files and their respective license notices are included in the theme package.
Small details
Quiet Ink takes pleasure in the small things: the irregular edges of torn-paper quotations, an unobtrusive Table of Contents for longer articles, fine rules and borders, and the occasional skull serving as a printer's ornament.
These details are intended to give the site a little personality without getting in the way of the writing.
Credits & licenses
Design & publishing
Quiet Ink is customized for No Mad Gardens by n0madz. It takes inspiration from magick.css and is powered by Ghost.
Quotes & torn paper
The torn-paper styling on the Quotes page was inspired by a CSS snippet generously shared by Robert Birming. The original snippet is available here.
Skull ornaments — FrankMoji
The skull ornaments appearing throughout No Mad Gardens originate from FrankMoji, an independent emoji project.
Artwork: FrankMojiBeta, version 0.012 (September 30, 2026).
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
The skull is displayed in colors corresponding to Quiet Ink's palettes. The original artwork remains the property of its respective rights holder, and no ownership is claimed.
FrankMoji's license restricts commercial use and the sharing of adaptations. Attribution does not grant permission to distribute modified artwork; separate authorization may be necessary for the palette-colored version used here.
Rights & reuse
The theme, bundled fonts, third-party artwork, writing, and photographs may be governed by different licenses or rights. Please consult the relevant license or creator before reusing them.
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