Wombinary
A coined-word dictionary that performs the act of naming.
00 — About the client
A growing dictionary of invented words for feelings that don't have one. The brief: keep the warm, candlelit world, but lift it from costume-antiquarian to a modern editorial dictionary.
01 — The brief
What they needed
Make the site perform the act of naming — a hero that dives from a candlelit room into the open book.
The constraint that shaped it
Warm and literary without tipping into kitsch. The display type stays light, never bold; one rationed candle-amber accent.
02 — Typography
Display — Fraunces
Aa Gg
The quick brown fox.
Body — Geist
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789 — legibility holds from caption to paragraph.
Why this pairing
Fraunces held light and italic is the tender voice; Geist Sans for prose and Geist Mono for the dictionary 'apparatus' — phonetics, part of speech, entry tags.
03 — Color
Unlit room
#140d07
Candle amber
#d8a23c
Ink
#211610
Paper
#f1e7d4
04 — Wireframe → Mockup → Live
Wireframe
The hero is a scroll-scrub dive — fly through the room, into the book, to a top-down spread.
Mockup
Rooms alternate light and dark for rhythm; film grain kills banding; amber is rationed.
Live
A searchable entry grid with word modals, deep-linked entries, and a submit-a-word form.
05 — Outcome
Coined-word dictionary, searchable and shareable
06 — In their words
“It performs the thing it's about — you scroll and you're inside the book. People feel it before they read a word.”
Founder
Wombinary