We've been building jajags.tech for a few years now. Along the way we've landed on a set of choices—identity, voice, visual system—that we use across everything we ship. This post explains the philosophy behind those choices and how they fit together.
who we are
jajags.tech is a student-run Hack Club chapter at Jefferson Academy Secondary. We make projects, study the systems underneath them, and learn by shipping. Our stance is humanist AI: building technology that stays human.
The reference point we keep coming back to is the Impressionists. Revolutionary in their time, they rejected rigid academic tradition to capture light, movement, and human experience. We sit at the same kind of inflection point with AI. The question isn't how to optimize for metrics. It's how to build tools that feel like they were made by people who care about people.
how we talk
Our voice is direct, minimal, lowercase-friendly. Short sentences. Active voice. No corporate buzzwords. We're confident but not grandiose—curious, precise, and practical. When we talk about the club, we say "we."
The tagline cycles through who we're for: builders, designers, makers, coders, roboticists, writers. The core line is always the same: we make projects, study the systems underneath them, and learn by shipping.
how we work
Three principles show up in everything we do:
Ship small, ship often. We build tools, experiments, and small products that make school life better. Real users, real feedback, real learning.
Study the systems underneath. We ask how software shapes culture, governance, and daily life. The most interesting question is usually one layer below the obvious one.
Learn in public. We share demos, write-ups, and notes so others can build on what we find.
the visual system
We wanted a design that feels like an art gallery, not a dashboard. Lots of white space. Everything breathes. No card boxes—we use spacing, dividers, and border rules instead. Asymmetric layouts, left-aligned content, massive empty zones. No centered hero text.
Color: White background, charcoal text (#2B2B2B), warm off-white (#F9F8F6) for alternating sections. No accent color. The Impressionist paintings we use throughout the site carry all the color. The UI stays near-monochrome.
Typography: Instrument Serif for display and headings. Inter for body, nav, labels, and buttons. IBM Plex Mono for code only. We favor lowercase headings when the layout allows.
Buttons: Charcoal fill, white text, no border radius. Links get opacity on hover, not color shifts. External links get a small arrow suffix.
the paintings
Each Impressionist painting we use is a semantic anchor for a discipline, not decoration. Cliffs at Pourville for the hero. Jeanne Samary for AI and language. Notre-Dame de Paris for systems and architecture. Oarsmen at Chatou for agents. And so on—each painting maps to a domain we work in.
We treat them in grayscale at rest, color on hover. A slow transition (700ms) so it feels deliberate. When used as a hero, we fade left-to-white so the image doesn't compete with the text.
why it matters
Branding isn't about looking pretty. It's about consistency. When someone lands on our main site, our blog, a tool we built, or a project page, they should feel like they're in the same place. Same voice. Same visual language. Same philosophy.
We keep a single reference doc (BRAND.md) that we copy into new projects. That way every project under the club brand stays aligned without us having to remember the details. If you're building something for jajags.tech, start there.