WEST AFRICAN — KENTE ADINKRA VISUAL LANGUAGE

VISUAL STYLE: The visual traditions of West African textile and symbolic art — specifically Kente cloth weaving and Adinkra symbolic printing. Two distinct but related systems: Kente's geometric strip-woven patterns and Adinkra's stamped symbolic vocabulary.

COLOUR PALETTE: Kente's royal palette — gold (#C9943A) as the dominant colour, deep green (#1A4A1A), black (#000000), and red (#8B0000) as the four primary values. These are the colours of prestige and ceremony in the Asante tradition. Each colour carries meaning — gold for royalty, green for growth, black for maturity, red for sacrifice.

KENTE PATTERNS: Woven strip geometry — narrow strips of complex geometric pattern sewn together into the full cloth. Each strip contains its own repeating geometric unit. Where strips meet, a larger pattern emerges from the combination. The weave structure is visible — warp and weft threads in their interlocking logic.

ADINKRA SYMBOLS: Stamped black geometric symbols carrying philosophical meaning — Sankofa (know your past), Gye Nyame (except God), Dwennimmen (strength and humility). Each symbol is a complete visual statement. They can appear as a field of repeated stamps or as individual large-scale elements.

GEOMETRY: All pattern is rectilinear or based on simple curves — the geometry of the weave and the stamp. No naturalistic representation. Abstract visual language carrying encoded meaning.

SCALE: Both intimate (the individual thread, the individual stamp) and monumental (the full cloth as architectural field).

No figurative representation. No Western decorative convention. No colour outside the Kente palette. Only the geometry of a textile tradition that has carried cultural knowledge for centuries.