The Dolga Design Language

The frame, not the picture

Think of a publisher’s mark on a book spine. Every spine carries the house mark; every cover is the book’s own. We standardise the frame so the banner carries — and we never standardise the picture inside it. Same family, never a uniform.

The signature

Some things do not vary by app, family, or theme — they are how a stranger knows whose work this is:

• One metal. Gold is the studio’s accent in every app. An app’s own colours live under gold, never instead of it.
• The wordmark first. A first launch opens on the gold DOLGA wordmark, briefly — then straight to the one thing the app does. Never a ritual, never a permission ask.
• Plaques and titles are set in letterspaced gold serif; the reading text stays in the system’s own sans. No app invents a second display face.
• Sheets that feel familiar. How to Play, Statistics and Settings share one layout grammar across titles — own two Dolga apps, and the third already feels known. Statistics print the same family set, in the same language, every number carrying its meaning.
• The same last page. Every app’s settings end the same way: Send Feedback, Rate the app, More from Dolga Studios, and the version — read from the app itself, never typed in by hand.
• Shares carry the name in one small, consistent line — the same wording, the same place, whether it is a deal code, a race link, or a result.
• Calm is part of the finish. Animation is a moment, not a wall. Sound stays where you left it. Nothing asks for notifications on launch. Restraint is a feature.

Four dresses

Inside the frame, each family wears its own dress:

• The card table — Solitaire, FreeCell, Spider. Deep green felt, ivory, and gold; a plaque over dark pills; the same three card faces across every table, so a hand learned at one is known at all.
• Paper and ink — Sudoku, Minesweeper, Nonogram, and our word games when they come. Wells of ivory paper, ink numerals and marks, gold rules between regions. Quiet, exact, printed.
• The heritage dress — DailySheet and the Tamil line. Manuscript cream, palm-leaf green, and gold: the dress of the tradition it computes, kept properly.
• Their own calm — Countdown and the utilities. Each keeps its own surface — a night sky is a night sky — and the signature carries the banner instead.

The family palette — swatches, not specifications. The numbers stay in the studio.

Room to be itself

Hero art, icon art, an app’s own hues, and the themes a player chooses are never standardised. A theme may re-dress the felt; it may not move the plaque, restyle the pills, or touch the last page. The frame is the studio’s. The picture is the app’s.

Icons: pleasing, not bleeding

An icon is the banner at its smallest. Ours sit composed: one hero element, held inside a calm ground with real breathing room — artwork never runs edge to edge. The ground is the family’s ground, framed by a single gold keyline, the same hairline on every icon. One glyph, no words. On a home screen full of shouting, a Dolga icon is the quiet one you can still name.

Dolga Studios exists to prove that focused products, built properly, outlast everything else. One purpose at a time, without compromise — that is our calling, and we will remain true to it.