Monotile background

Einstein Light Dark Construction Download

The aperiodic monotile behind the texture

An aperiodic monotile, commonly known as an "einstein," is a shape capable of tiling the plane exclusively in a non-periodic manner. Our jumbotron pattern features the first true aperiodic monotile: a shape that naturally enforces aperiodicity through its own geometry, without the need for additional constraints such as matching conditions.

The jumbotron pattern is based on the aperiodic monotile - also called an einstein - a polykite shape that tiles the plane only without repeating. It comes from the work of David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss. We like elegant maths.

Same explainer ships on the public Colophon page; this tab is the canonical surface-context version inside the design system.

Light · paper-cool surface with subtle vignette

The recipe the homepage hero + light CTA bands sit on: paper-cool fill (#ECEDF0), einstein-hats monotile, directional fade easing from dense-left to clear-right, soft near-black Houdini spot anchoring the bottom-right rule-of-thirds.

Dark · navy surface with peak-blue glow

Same recipe at navy: deep #0F1F3D fill, einstein-hats in the dark palette, navy fade overlay, Houdini spot in peak-blue (#93B4F5) so it reads as a soft glow against the dark band. Used on the CTA band and dark heroes.

How the three layers stack

The full recipe in one pre-rendered SVG — three layers composited into a single static file per variant.

Three-layer composite in one static SVG file:

  1. einstein-hats paths   (full-bleed monotile)
  2. linear-gradient fade  (denser left → lighter right, 96%/74%/50%
                            alpha on light, 96%/65%/35% on dark)
  3. radial Houdini spot   (centred at (820, 540) in the 1296 × 809
                            natural viewBox — bottom-right rule-of-
                            thirds anchor)

Light variant
  · fade colour : #ECEDF0  (paper-cool)
  · spot colour : #0F0F0F  (near-black, low alpha, reads as vignette)

Dark variant
  · fade colour : #0F1F3D  (navy)
  · spot colour : #93B4F5  (peak-blue-lifted, brighter than navy bg)

Pull the live SVG from the inspector

The monotile backgrounds are pre-rendered to static SVGs (one per variant) and served as cacheable images. Changing the recipe constants regenerates both variants.