Systems & DESIGN
Digital Equilibrist
Fool on a Tightrope
Structure where it matters. Play just for fun...
I’m Cseperke Papp, mad scientist of typography, visualization, and motion. I take delight in building visualizations and the systems that hold them up, experimenting with the mathematics of rhythm, type, and movement.
My biggest experiment: Decision Themes, an open-source design system generator that turns decisions into a coherent system.
the laboratory
A solo designer lab
These are its experiments.
The common thread is visualization — systems made visible. Typographic engines, manuscript-flavored interfaces, motion tools, timelines, breathing worlds: different shapes of an inspired craft.
Decision Themes
studio DTS
Visualization experiments
VISUALIZATION SYSTEMS
We Are Patterns
Where patterns meet
The Chaos Garden. The wilder growth lives one gate over: the Pendragon Companion, Ruby’s Workshop, AI NPCs, Brink World, Animations, Videos, Scripted HUDs, Particles — experiments, fragments, and worlds in progress, unfiltered and unapologetic. Wander in when the gate opens… (Soon.)
fund the lab
Every experiment needs funding.
If you enjoy my style and have the means to support my work, i opened three channels for it, or you can always hire my skills for commissions.
- 1 Buy me a cappucino. Small fuel, gratefully burned. Lactose free. — buymeacoffee.
- 2 Sponsor the experiments. The goal is to create open source applications. Every sponsored hour is an hour the lab spends experimenting instead of invoicing — GitHub Sponsors.
- 3 Commission the lab. How it runs today: a limited number of client projects a year, chosen for fit. The biggest single way to fund the work — it just borrows the scientist while it does. Read on.
Brand & identity systems
From logo to style guide to working templates — an identity that behaves the same on the hundredth asset as on the first.
Websites & automation
Sites designed and built from structure to ship — for small businesses, artists, craftsmen, practices, theatres, foundations and schools.
Visualizations & design systems
Making complex information visible: timelines, diagrams, motion, interfaces.
The mad project
DTS: A Design Decision System
Three decisions. Everything on the right is consequences.
Play just to relax. The scale, the swatches and the spacing below all derive from the three decisions on the left — the same way a whole site can.
Decision Themes, my design system generator, turns a few base decisions — size, rhythm, color — into a complete, coherent design system, derived by rule. The math underneath is public: on GitHub and npm, with a live playground at decisionthemes.com.
- 1 Change one decision and its consequences follow. No hunting through forty files for everything that depended on it.
- 2 Relational Typography: Style guides that stay true on the hundredth asset, not just in the pitch deck.
- 3 Designs survive revision. The logic holds even when the content, the language, or the brand color doesn’t.
We are Patterns
How looking ourselves as interacting patterns changes the perspective
Taking an attempt at writing a book about how looking at life as an infinite generation of patterns affects our thinking about the world, life, death, and relationships. It is a meditation, an observation through a unique lense.
Right now it is too dense, but a great project I am happy to share chapter by chapter (unedited, work in progress) – hopefully one day I even finish.
circling similar patterns
Fighter of chaos since 1992
34 years ago I opened Budapest’s Dragon’s Lair RPG store and edited Rúna, Hungary’s fantasy magazine; today I run a one-woman lab building all sorts of visualizations — design systems, interfaces, motion, timelines, helpful apps — and I write books and design worlds, so far for the drawer. In between came localization projects for Electronic Arts in Madrid and eight years of marketing asset design at NeocoreGames.
Some side quests in film production and UI/Brand design, website project management. I also still take care of marketing localisation projects for the clients of a dear departed friend.
I work solo, with AI: I use it for brainatorming, process creation, structure probing, experimenting, development and administrative purposes. I have severe AuDHD and PDA; external structure isn’t a productivity hack for me, it’s how the work gets done at all. Just as each design, working with ai needs a careful balancing, and I enjoy and take pride in the process, trying to be as ethical and honest as I can be about it.
