Seismograph Trace is the language of the helicorder drum — a rotating cylinder that drags a stylus across soot-blackened paper, leaving a helical record that flattens into stacked horizontal lines. Hours are stamped at the margins, minute tic marks run an inch apart, and the calm baseline erupts into sharp red spikes when the ground moves.

This is stark, instrument-honest design: monospace time-stamps, a fine grid ledger, and one iconic red trace against deep smoked black. Nothing is soft or decorative. Every line is sharp, linear, and grid-locked, the way a machine draws when it is only trying to tell the truth about the earth.