Platform Note 005

Viking-UI Premium Theme: Dark-First Engineering Aesthetic

The Viking-UI design system introduces aerospace-inspired dark themes, machined metallic borders, and WCAG 2.1 AA compliance across all DEML surfaces.

  • Viking-UI
  • Design
  • Accessibility
  • CSS

What shipped

  • Charcoal/teal/crimson palette with --viking-* CSS custom properties
  • Mobile-first 8px grid system (no CLS layout shifts)
  • Native SVG telemetry charts (zero-dependency visualization)
  • WCAG 2.1 AA automation via @axe-core/cli in pre-commit hooks

Design principles

  • Dark-first: Charcoal backgrounds with teal/crimson accents
  • Machined precision: Metallic borders, restrained shadows, no decorative clutter
  • Zero dependencies: No Material, Bootstrap, or utility frameworks
  • Composable primitives: viking-button, viking-field, viking-card, etc.

Technical details

The package exports multiple consumption paths:

  • Angular: @dataengineeringformachinelearning/viking-ui npm package
  • Web Components: /web-components.js for framework-neutral use
  • Static CSS: /viking-ui.css bundle for Django templates
  • CDN: jsDelivr for external site embedding

This unified the frontend, docs, and backend under a single design language.

Living release record

Blue Notes summarize shipped outcomes. The public repository remains the detailed engineering record.

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