The IALA Maritime Buoyage System exists so a mariner can enter an unfamiliar port and read the water without reading a word. Six surface colours are fixed by luminance factor and CIE chromaticity boundary, then mixed as RAL traffic paints; shape carries the message alongside colour, so the system still works in fog, at distance, and to a colour-blind eye.

This design system inherits that discipline. Deep navigable water is bare white paper. Green, red, yellow and jet black are signals, never decoration. Cans, cones, spheres, pillars and paired-cone topmarks do the structural work that gradients and shadows would do elsewhere.