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Charlie Phipps. A single massive Helvetica headline and one full-bleed photograph, nothing else.

  • Design tools
  • Mixed theme
  • 8 colors
  • 2 typefaces

Charlie Phipps is a London graphic designer's portfolio rendered as an oversized editorial poster system: full-bleed photography as hero canvas, one monumental Helvetica Neue headline per screen, and near-total chromatic silence. The site reads like a printed zine blown up to wall scale — weight 400 at 162px is a deliberate anti-convention (no bold shout, just confident whisper-thin letters) paired with aggressive negative tracking that lets the headline crop the viewport. The base canvas is near-black (#101011) to make photographic color explosions land harder, but content sections flip to white with the same dramatic restraint. No buttons, no rounded corners, no shadows, no color tokens — interaction is implied by thin underlines and cursor states, and navigation is reduced to three thin links in a corner. Whitespace is the primary structural device, not cards or dividers.

Visit phippscharlie.com
Screenshot of Charlie Phipps
Captured from phippscharlie.com on October 11, 2026

Charlie Phipps design system

Charlie Phipps

Neutrals8

  • Heading and body text on light surfaces; second structural border color — used wherever a slightly harder edge than #101011 is needed

  • Near-pure black for the darkest link borders and emphasis text — visually indistinguishable from #000000 but kept distinct in the scale for deepest emphasis

  • Base page canvas beneath full-bleed photography and dark bands; primary text on light surfaces; link underlines in dark contexts

  • Deepest secondary border and muted text on light sections — just one step lighter than canvas black, used to keep dark elements feeling part of the same family

  • Body text metadata, link underlines in light contexts, and mid-weight borders — the workhorse neutral for anything that should be seen but not foregrounded

  • Muted heading accent — used for secondary headings and borders where the hierarchy needs to recede below the primary type

  • Subtle surface tint separating content blocks from white paper; soft borders on body text and cards where a pure white hairline would disappear

  • Primary text color on dark/photographic backgrounds; content section background; dominant border color (hairline rules and dividers across the layout)

Try a pairing

Pick any two colors from the palette to check whether text stays readable on top.

Aa

Paper White on Ink Black

21.00 : 1 contrast

Background
Text
  • Body textPasses AA 4.5
  • Large textPasses AA 3
  • StrictPasses AAA 7

More DESIGN.md files. Same web, different personalities.