Arcan Glass

Arcan Glass

Arcan Glass is BroomVA's trademark web design language — ArcanBG's brand DNA (AI Blue #0066FF + Web3 Green #00CC66 + dark surfaces) fused with liquid glass web effects (backdrop-filter blur, layered highlights, adaptive tinting, morphing transitions). Dark-first, glass-elevated.

Light mode is Day Glass: a luminous 275° violet surface system, not a white inversion. It keeps hue continuity, uses low chroma to avoid glare, and preserves clear OKLCh lightness distance between surfaces, text, borders, and shadows.

Quick Start

1. Copy assets/globals.css into your Next.js project as app/globals.css
2. Import in your layout: import "./globals.css"
3. Use glass classes: <div class="glass-card">, <button class="glass-button glass-button-primary">

That's it. All shadcn/ui components will automatically pick up the Arcan Glass theme.

7 Design Principles

1. Dark-first, Day Glass second — The default is dark mode. Light mode keeps the same 275° hue DNA with higher lightness, low chroma, and grounded shadows.
2. Glass is earned — Only key surfaces (nav, sidebar, modal, featured cards) get backdrop-filter. Limit to 3-5 per viewport.
3. Brand through surface — Surface hue 275° (blue-purple) connects all surfaces to AI Blue without competing.
4. OKLCh primary — Perceptually uniform lightness enables clean depth scales and natural color mixing.
5. Additive on shadcn — Glass effects layer on top of shadcn/ui, never replacing base accessibility.
6. Motion with purpose — Every animation communicates state (glow = active, lift = interactive, reveal = entering). Reduced motion is always respected.
7. Token-prefixed — All custom properties use --ag- prefix to avoid collisions with shadcn (--) and Tailwind (--tw-).

Glass Effect System

Every glass component is built from 4 composable layers:

Three intensity presets: glass-subtle (40% / 8px), glass (60% / 16px), glass-heavy (80% / 24px).

See references/glass-components.md for full component patterns.

Color System

Brand colors in OKLCh with hex fallbacks:

5-step surface scale at hue 275°, 4-level text hierarchy, semantic colors, 3-level border scale.

Full palette: references/color-system.md

Tailwind Integration

All tokens wired via @theme inline:

<!-- Brand colors as utilities -->
<div class="bg-ai-blue text-white">Primary</div>
<span class="text-web3-green">Accent</span>

<!-- Glass utilities -->
<div class="glass p-6">Standard glass</div>
<nav class="glass-heavy sticky top-0">Heavy glass nav</nav>

<!-- Glow effects -->
<div class="glass-card glow-blue">Glowing card</div>

shadcn/ui components work unchanged — bg-primary, bg-card, text-muted-foreground, etc. all resolve to Arcan Glass tokens.

Full mapping: references/tailwind-integration.md

Component Index

Full patterns with raw CSS + Tailwind composition: references/glass-components.md

Animation Index

Plus hover lift, morph, focus ring, scroll reveal patterns.

Full patterns: references/animation-patterns.md

shadcn/ui Compatibility

Arcan Glass defines all required shadcn/ui CSS variables. To add glass variants to shadcn components, extend with cva:

// In your button.tsx variants
glass: "glass glass-highlight hover:-translate-y-px hover:shadow-lg",
"glass-primary": "glass-button glass-button-primary",

See references/tailwind-integration.md for full cva examples.

Dark/Light Mode

Uses next-themes with class strategy (.dark / .light). All tokens auto-adapt via CSS custom properties — explicit dark: prefixes are rarely needed. Light mode should be authored as Day Glass: tinted surfaces around OKLCh L=0.91-0.985, primary text near L=0.19, and darker low-chroma borders with alpha instead of pale gray outlines.

<ThemeProvider attribute="class" defaultTheme="dark">
  {children}
</ThemeProvider>

Performance Notes

• Limit backdrop-filter to 3-5 elements per viewport — each creates a compositing layer
• Use glass-subtle for repeated items (list items, table rows)
• Reserve glass-heavy for landmark surfaces (nav, sidebar, modal)
• Test on lower-end devices — backdrop-filter perf varies by GPU
• P3 gamut enhancement is automatic via @media (color-gamut: p3) — wider chroma on capable displays
• Reduced motion is handled globally — all transforms and animations respect prefers-reduced-motion

Resources

references/

• color-system.md — Full OKLCh palette, hex fallbacks, surface scale, text hierarchy
• design-tokens.md — Shadows, blur, radius, spacing, typography, transitions
• glass-components.md — 4-layer glass system, component CSS patterns + Tailwind composition
• animation-patterns.md — Glow pulse, hover lift, morph, scroll reveal, gradient flow
• tailwind-integration.md — @theme inline wiring, @utility blocks, shadcn mapping, cva extensions

assets/

• globals.css — Drop-in CSS file with all tokens, glass utilities, components, and animations

Source: broomva/arcan-glass — distributed by TomeVault.