Convivo · design directions · 24 October 2026
Three ways to set the table
Same palette, same fonts, same two screens: the circle home and the outing detail for Tuesday’s lunch at Mezze House. Each direction makes different choices about type, structure and how the ledger is drawn. Pick the one that feels most like your circle, and we’ll refine it.
Editorial
A menu card in a magazine. Big Fraunces display type, generous white space and hairline rules. Dates and scores are set as large numerals. The ledger is a balance beam on a fulcrum, with names hung either side of zero.
Open concept A → Concept BTavern ledger
The circle’s book, kept by hand. Paper grain, rubber-stamp section marks and ruled pages. The ledger is kept as tally strokes either side of a line, with a seesaw tipped towards whoever is owed. The round is written up as minutes.
Open concept B → Concept CModern civic
A departures board for lunch. Built for 12:25 with your phone in hand: when, where, how long the walk is and when to leave. A strong grid and big tap targets, with terracotta as the only accent on ink. The ledger is drawn as bars on one zero line, and the round as a timeline.
Open concept C →Iterating on B
You chose B and asked for more of the Roman dinner behind the name. Same paper book, same tally, same minutes, two settings of the dial.
Convivium, modest
Roman through material and language, not ornament: carved small-caps headings, numerals for the outing count and the tally (V is five), a libra for the weights, and the round kept on a wax tablet in a wooden frame. The ledger talks of who is owed a seat and who hosts this time.
Open concept B2 → Concept B3Convivium, fuller
Everything in B2, plus bolder motifs: fresco panels in Pompeian red with an ochre frame, tessera dividers, a triclinium seating plan where the most-owed member reclines in the place of honour, and amphorae for price bands.
Open concept B3 →B2 and B3 knowingly relax two rules from the brief, at the client’s request: Roman numerals (outing count and tally only; dates and scores stay Arabic) and small-caps inscriptional headings. No laurels, columns, marble, togas or Trajan.
All five are static HTML with no JavaScript. They use the existing palette tokens and Fraunces, Source Sans 3 and JetBrains Mono. Each has a 390 px mobile layout and a desktop layout from 1024 px, plus dark mode when your system asks for it.
Every concept uses the same circle and decision. Ledger:Priya −0.60, Mei −0.10, Anthony +0.25, John +0.45.