How a block printing colour tool and a meal composition tool turned out to be the same idea
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We built Match first.
Match is a colour recipe tool for block printers. You give it a target colour — a hex code, a swatch, a shade you're trying to recreate — and it tells you how to mix eight binder-based pigments to get there. Yellow, Orange, Red, Blue, Purple, Black, Green, Brown. Each one behaves differently in the mix. Some activate fast and fade. Some anchor everything around them. Some transform in small quantities and overwhelm in large ones.
We spent time calibrating this. Not with colour theory formulas, but with real data from real mixing sessions — because pigments don't behave the way RGB math predicts. A little Red shifts everything. A lot of Black consumes the mix. Orange at low volumes extends warmth without pulling the colour in a new direction. At high volumes, it takes over.
We wrote these behaviours down as principles. Not rules — principles. Descriptions of how each colour tends to act in a composition.
And then something unexpected happened.
While writing the principles for Match, we kept noticing that the descriptions fit somewhere else entirely.
Activates fast. The effect is real but short. Needs support to last. — that's Yellow pigment in a binder mix. But it's also simple carbohydrates in a meal. White rice, banana, honey. Fast energy. Real but short. Needs protein or fat to hold it.
Sets the foundation. Everything else is built on this or it doesn't hold. — that's Red pigment, which anchors a colour composition with density and direction. It's also protein. Remove it and the meal has no structural staying power.
Transforms in small quantities. Excess doesn't add — it takes over. — Black pigment, yes. But also spices. Cumin, black pepper, dark chocolate. A small amount changes everything. Too much and it becomes the only thing you taste.
The principles weren't metaphors. They were describing actual behaviour — and that behaviour was the same whether the medium was a dye bath or a digestive system.
This is how Palette came to exist.
Palette is a meal composition tool built on the same eight colours and the same eight principles as Match. You select your ingredients — spinach, lentils, oats, olive oil — and the tool maps them to their colour group, mixes them visually, and tells you what kind of composition you've built.
But unlike a standard nutrition tracker, Palette doesn't count calories or micronutrients. It asks a different question: what is this meal doing, and is it doing what you want?
Select an effect — Energy, Satiety, Clarity, Longevity, Calm, Anti-fragility — and the tool tells you how well your ingredients are aligned with that outcome. It shows you which groups are primary, which are supporting, which are working against you. It suggests a shift if the composition is off.
The colour mix changes based on your ingredients and your effect. A meal built for Energy pulls warm — Yellow and Orange dominant, the colour running bright and fast. A meal built for Calm pulls cool and deep — Blue and Green primary, Brown in support, Yellow suppressed.
The connection between Match and Palette isn't visual. It's structural.
Both tools are built on the idea that composition produces an outcome — and that the same compositional principles govern very different domains. In a block print colour mix, Orange extends warmth and prevents early collapse. In a meal, complex carbs sustain energy beyond the first hour. The principle is identical. The medium is different.
Eight colours. Eight principles. One framework.
Both tools are free to use.
Match — colour recipes for block printers. Palette — meal composition through colour.
Built by bizemind × Creatis.
