Thick borders and zero gradients

Every messenger looks the same: rounded bubbles, a blue-purple gradient, circular avatars, a background that blurs. We went the other way.

Slightly broken paper background, near-black ink, a public-bench green as the signature colour. Two-pixel black borders, hard drop shadows — offset four pixels, zero blur, solid black. Barely rounded corners. No gradient anywhere.

The detail that does the work

Messages aren't bubbles. They're laid out like lines in a play: the name in small green caps, a dash, then the sentence.

FIRMIN — Chucking it down again.

It changes the reading entirely. A bubble says "this is a message addressed to you". A line of dialogue says "someone spoke out loud and you happened to be there". On a bench, the second one is true.

Light, too: generous margins, air, a clean hierarchy. Brutalist in the outlines, not in the chaos.