Signals Colour, type and surface
The indigo-to-violet gradient
- Category
- Colour, type and surface
- Direction
- Pushes the score up
- Weight
- +15
What it is
The visual defaults, applied unedited. Looks are the weakest evidence in the whole set. Anyone can reach for a gradient on purpose, which is why craft damps this entire category.
How it is weighted
15 points puts this in the upper tier — strong evidence, though the curve saturates, so it means far more on a clean page than as the tenth tell on a page already covered in them.
What to do about it
Pick a palette that comes from the product, not from the default. Choose one accent and define it as a token.
Where it fires
Of the homepages we scan as worked examples, this signal fired on one:
- tailwindcss.com 75/100 — The loudest tell of 2026, fully deployed. It descends from Tailwind's indigo-500 and from Notion/Vercel-era marketing, which taught the models that innovative software is purple.