Bandcamp design specConsumer

A music-marketplace homepage that inverts the platform’s own heritage: instead of the classic aqua-on-white album page, the logged-out surface is a flat DARK charcoal #222222 stage (footer #333333) whose primary ink is a pale cyan-white #ecf3f4, with plain white reserved for nav and category links. The Bandcamp aqua #0cacd7 survives only in the tape-reel logo mark and links, and a transactional green #008000 is held strictly for prices — every other scrap of colour is supplied by album art, so the chrome is a cyan-cast greyscale and the covers do the shouting. Type is a single family, Helvetica Neue, weights 400 and 500 only, with NO display or mono face and tracking left normal even at the 32px hero, so hierarchy is built from size and the cyan/white ink split rather than weight or letter-spacing. The signature moment is a live “Selling right now” feed of album thumbnails ticking past with a price, a country flag and a relative timestamp (“Sold for €2 · 31 seconds ago”), each new item scaling in with a salesfeed-scale 0.33s ease-out animation, sat beneath giant hero stat-counters whose numbers are boxed in a pale-cyan #ecf3f4 highlight over dark text, flanked by hand-drawn outlined burst-stars as the only ornament. The search field is a borderless rgba(255,255,255,.08) fill at 3px radius and 36px tall; thumbnails frame at a 16px radius and controls at 3–4px; depth is refused in favour of light hairlines on the dark ground, with just a rgba(0,0,0,.1) 0 1px 1px hairline and a deep modal shadow doing all the elevation. Hover and focus rules and the responsive breakpoints live in two cross-origin stylesheets and were not captured; links underline on hover. Feels: utilitarian, artist-first, live, unpretentious.

⚠ needs-dashboard

Browse Bandcamp in the interactive gallery

Captured from the live site's computed styles into a prompt-ready DESIGN.md you can paste into Cursor, v0, Lovable, Bolt or Claude Code. Below is a summary of each captured surface.

Marketing site

Source: bandcamp.com (live DOM, computed styles), 2026-07-30 (desktop 1512px). Coverage: logged-out homepage. Hover/focus states and breakpoints: not captured — 2 of the site's stylesheets are cross-origin (sheetsBlocked: 2) and hold the pseudo-class + @media rules; readable sheets carried none matching the real nav links. Dashboard (fan/artist account): behind login, needs-dashboard. Reality check: the queue hint ("utilitarian indie-editorial, artist-first") is half right — utilitarian, dense and artist-first, yes, but the homepage is NOT the classic aqua-on-white album-page look. It is a DARK charcoal #222222 surface; the Bandcamp aqua #0cacd7 survives only in the logo mark and links, the ink is a pale cyan-white #ecf3f4, and the signature moment is the animated live "Selling right now" sales feed plus hero stat-counters and outlined burst-star motifs.

Visual Theme & Atmosphere

A dark, utilitarian music marketplace that puts the music (and the money going to artists) first. The homepage is a flat charcoal #222222 stage with a single humanist grotesque (Helvetica Neue) doing every job — no display face, no decorative type. What makes it recognisable is content, not chrome: a live real-time "Selling right now" feed of album thumbnails ticking past ("Sold for €2 · 31 seconds ago"), giant hero stat-counters with the numbers boxed in a pale-cyan highlight, and hand-drawn outlined burst-stars scattered as the one piece of ornament. Colour is rationed hard — the aqua #0cacd7 logo mark and links, and a transactional green #008000 for prices — everything else is a cyan-cast greyscale. Deliberately avoids gradients, glass, shadows-as-structure and any hero mockup. Feels: utilitarian, artist-first, live, unpretentious.

Color Palette & Roles

Surfaces

TokenHexRole / usage
canvas#222222Page background (dark charcoal)
surface-footer#333333Footer band
surface-alt#272727 / #2c2c2cOccasional inset panels
white#ffffffLight card surfaces (album pages), logo wordmark, star strokes
wash-08rgba(255,255,255,.08)Search field fill, subtle panel fills
wash-16rgba(255,255,255,.16)Hover fills, stronger insets

Text

TokenHexRole / usage
ink#ecf3f4Primary text — a pale cyan-white (most-used colour, 1275×)
white#ffffffNav + category links, high-contrast labels
ink-soft#f8f8f8Footer text, tertiary
muted#8f8f8fCategory icons, captions, muted labels
ink-72rgba(255,255,255,.72)Secondary text on dark
on-highlight#222222Dark text inside the pale hero-stat highlight

Accent & semantic

TokenHexRole / usage
aqua#0cacd7The Bandcamp brand mark + links (the one brand hue)
highlight#ecf3f4Background of the boxed hero stat numbers (with #222222 text)
buy-green#008000Prices / buy affordance — transactional only

Rule: chrome is a cyan-cast greyscale on charcoal; aqua #0cacd7 is reserved for the logo mark and links, green #008000 for prices only. Never introduce a second decorative colour — album art supplies all the colour on the page.

Typography Rules

RoleSize/LineWeightTracking
Display (h1 hero)32 / 44.8500normal
Section head ("Bandcamp Daily")24–32500normal
Sub / card title (h3)12 / 20400normal
Body14 / 22400normal
Nav + category14 / 22400normal
Caption ("Sold for … · 31 seconds ago")12–16400normal

Patterns: no display face, no bold-700 headlines — weight tops out at 500. Tracking is left NORMAL at every size, even the 32px hero. Hierarchy comes from size and the pale-cyan/white ink split, not from weight or letter-spacing.

Also documented in the full DESIGN.md: Component Stylings, Layout Principles, Depth & Elevation, Motion, Backgrounds, Effects & WebGL, Do's and Don'ts, Responsive Behavior, Agent Prompt Guide.