Teenage Engineering design specConsumer

A website built like one of the company products: a rigid Swiss grid, everything lowercase in a hairline-thin grotesque (te-20, weights 100/300), and a pictographic icon nav in place of words. The one moment of play is a FAT ROUNDED display face (te-40) set UPPERCASE for hyphen-joined headlines ("please-do-not-share…") on a scalloped colour receipt card. Colour is a fixed hardware code — blue #0071bb, green #006837, orange #f05a24, red #b81d13, yellow #fab413 — used as full-bleed blocks, never as chrome tint. Surfaces are dead flat with zero shadows and zero gradients; separation is a signature 4.5px #272727 rule and 1px #767676 input hairlines. Controls are borderless text at 0px radius and hover is opacity 0.7, not a colour shift. Sizing is fluid vw/clamp rather than breakpoint-stepped. Feels industrial, precise and playful-deadpan.

Browse Teenage Engineering 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: teenage.engineering (live DOM, computed styles), 2026-07-25. Coverage: home. Published --te-* token set read in full. 1 stylesheet cross-origin (sheetsBlocked:1) — its @media rules were unreachable, so §10 breakpoints are not captured from that sheet; the readable sheets carry none because type/space are fluid (vw/clamp), not breakpoint-stepped. Reality check: matches the hint — industrial-design minimal, Swiss grid, colour-coded palette. Adds two things the hint missed: a *fat rounded* display face used only for playful hyphen-joined headlines, and a pictographic icon nav (fan / battery / square / dial) instead of text labels.

Visual Theme & Atmosphere

The website behaves like one of the company's products: a precise Swiss grid, lowercase everywhere, hairline-thin grotesque text, and pictographic icons in place of words. Colour is rationed to a fixed hardware-style code (blue / green / orange / red / yellow) that appears in full-bleed blocks, never as chrome tint. The one moment of play is a fat, rounded display face used for hyphen-joined headlines ("please-do-not-share…") on a coloured receipt card. Surfaces are dead flat — no gradients, no shadows — and separation comes from thick 4.5px black rules, the way a panel is silk-screened onto anodised aluminium. Feels: industrial, precise, playful-deadpan, Swiss.

Color Palette & Roles

TokenHexRole / usage
--te-black#0f0e12primary text / ink
(pure black)#000000icons, display headlines, thick rules
--te-grey-900#4d4d4dstrong secondary text
--te-grey-600#767676input borders, muted text
--te-grey-500#a1a7aftertiary text
--te-grey-300#b2b2b2faint / placeholder
--te-grey-200#ccccccdisabled fills
--te-grey-100#e5e5e5light dividers, inverse body text
--te-grey-1000#272727thick 4.5px border colour
--white#ffffffpage canvas
--te-white#f5f5f5off-white raised surface
(section fill)#f6f8f7dominant panel background (cool off-white)

Colour-coded accents (equal-weight, used as full blocks — pick by category, never mix as tint):

TokenHexRole / usage
--te-blue#0071bbaccent / link
--te-green#006837accent · also --success
--te-orange#f05a24accent / campaign blocks
--te-red#b81d13accent
--te-yellow#fab413accent / campaign blocks
--error#c0262cerror state

Rule: accents live in full-bleed blocks and product art, not in borders, text or hovers. Chrome stays black-on-white; hover is an opacity change, not a colour.

Typography Rules

Families: te-20 — the workhorse neo-grotesque (nav, body, UI); te-40 — a fat rounded geometric display, used only for hyphen-joined playful headlines. Both are custom TE faces. Weights run *light*: 100 and 300 dominate the page. Case is lowercase throughout (proper nouns included); the fat display headlines are the only UPPERCASE. Sizing is fluid (vw/clamp) — the odd computed px values (20.06 / 24.69 / 41.66) are viewport-scaled, not a fixed ladder.

Specimen substitution: previews use Space Grotesk for te-20 and Fredoka
for te-40 (one bundled Google Fonts link); the site ships the licensed te-20 / te-40.
RoleFamilySize/LineWeightTracking
Display (hero)te-40~42px+ / 1.11, fluid300normal
Section linkte-4041.66/46.29300normal
Nav / UIte-2024.69/37.03100normal
Bodyte-2020.06/23.14100normal
Eyebrow / labelte-2024.69/37.03300normal, lowercase

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.