A New Identity
When I changed my digital presence from littletokensbigripples.com to maansee.com, every design decision had to answer a question I hadn’t needed to answer before: what does it look like when the site is about a person, not a project?
The answer turned out to be six colors, a hand-drawn script, three doorways, and a lot of brown text on cream. Here’s why.
Who am I here?
There is no “logo” on this site. That’s intentional.
A logo is designed by someone for something. This site is made — the same way a token is made, the same way an essay is made. The script you see in the header is my name, hand-drawn in Devanagari script, without the shirorekha or top bar.
Not typed, not generated. Drawn by me.
If you want the full story of why I left the shirorekha off, it lives here and in longer formhere. The short version: I get to decide which traditions I carry forward and which I reshape. That decision — rooted and free — is the design philosophy of the entire site.
Where do I belong?
The old site had one color: teal. It did everything. One color for one project.
The new site has six. Not because more is better, but because the site now holds more of who I am — and each part needed its own way in. Together they function as wayfinding. The colors aren’t asking you to identify with them. They’re helping you navigate the path you want to explore.
Lilac is for reading. When you see it, you’re near the essays, the words, the quiet reflection.
Coral replaced teal as the site’s primary accent. Once everything else went warm, coral felt like what making feels like: warmth and play, hands moving without a plan.
Teal stayed — but only where it’s true. The Ripple Station™. Teal started with a pumpkin painted for a baby with allergies, and it still means the same thing it always meant: this is a safe place, you belong here.
Green is for the studio — verde, what’s organic and honest. Inside the Studio is where the unfinished work lives. I’m making something there right now, mid-process, still finding its shape. Green felt like the color of that honesty.
Gold is for the shop. I goldify everything — bookmarks, tokens, the edges of paintings, the washi tape on journal spreads. Gold is my signature. The shop is where that signature becomes something you can hold.
Brown is me. The Aboutpage, the gathering spaces — anywhere it’s my presence and my practice. Brown is also the text color. I wanted the site to feel warm all the way through: not just in the images, not just in the words, but in the color of the words themselves.
How do I find my way in?
The old homepage had one way in: learn about the RIPPLE Practice™, then decide if you want to stay. The new homepage has three doorways, and each one asks you a different question.
Start with honesty leads to Read. For people who process through words, who want to sit with something before they move.
Start with curiosity leads to Make. For people who process through their hands, who need to make something to understand it.
Start with connection leads to Ripple. For people who felt something and want to be part of it — the station, the community, the ways this practice moves beyond me.
Nobody gets sorted. Nobody gets told which door is right. You walk toward the one that pulls you, and if you’re not sure, there’s a fourth option that says: start here with a two-minute assessment.
I wanted a site where the first thing that happens is the visitor recognizes themselves — not in me, not in my story, but in their own impulse. The three doors are mirrors, not funnels.
What does it feel like to be here?
It’s unhurried. There’s air. You don’t feel sold to.
That’s what I wanted.
Brown text on cream. Playfair Display for headings — serif, with weight. Lato for body text — clean, doesn’t compete. Space that breathes. No stock photography.
The mark-making strips between sections — the rainbow lines and dots — are my actual mark-making. Scanned from art journal pages. The fingerprints are mine. The florals, I painted. Those leaves you recognize as my signature motif.
That was the rule from the beginning, and it’s the thing that makes it feel wholly, irrevocably mine.
The container shifted. Little Tokens Big Ripples is still the work I love, still where the ripples move. But the site needed to hold more than a project — it needed to hold a person.
One name. Six colors. Three doors. Everything behind them.
Welcome to માનસી.
