07Identity system & generative software
Dynamic Identity
A small generator that redraws the mark itself — seeded and deterministic, legible from a business card down to a 16px favicon.
- Client
- Threads (in-house)
- Year
- 2026
- Role
- Concept, generation logic and implementation
- Built with
- Canvas, a seeded PRNG, a Lit custom element
One identity.
Never the same twice.
This front page already works this way: one stitched hero, picked at random on every visit, out of fourteen. Dynamic Identity carries that same idea down to the smallest unit of the mark itself — a generator instead of a fixed file, seeded so any single result can still be reproduced exactly.
Live — stitches in, holds, unpicks itself, and re-stitches. Click it to skip ahead.
A zigzag,
not a knot.
The stitch is a real one: a continuous zigzag, the way a sewing machine actually lays thread, rather than an illustration standing in for thread. Direction, peak count and amplitude are redrawn on every generation — the rule stays fixed, the result never repeats.
Horizontal or vertical.
Each generation picks an axis to cross the square on, chosen fresh.
Six to ten peaks.
More or fewer stitches, spaced with a little give rather than a ruled grid.
One end left loose.
The far end keeps running past the square instead of stopping flush at the edge.
Legible,
down to a favicon.
Same generator, four real sizes. The smallest one is the pixel budget a browser tab actually gives a mark.
Trimmed in the tile.
Loose everywhere else.
Inside a favicon, a browser clips to the square regardless, so the untrimmed tail above simply isn't drawn there — trimmed by the frame, not by us. Anywhere looser than a tile — this page, a loading state, a business card — it's left hanging, the way a seam actually looks before someone cuts the thread.
Built to
keep moving.
Not a fixed mark redrawn by hand for every new use, but a small generator that can sit anywhere in the system — favicon, loading state, a foil-stamped corner on a business card, a section break on this site — always the same rule, never quite the same seam.
Project context
Design and engineering: Threads, in-house. Every mark on this page is generated live in the browser from a seeded random source — reproducible on demand.