Looking at identity through 152 colours: a visual guide to the HankyCode

A language you read, not speak

The hanky code began as a way to be understood without a conversation. That makes it unusually good for identity, which most of us can feel long before we can explain. You look at a colour and something in you says yes, no, or not quite.

This guide is the whole public code arranged two ways. By colour family, for people who start with the eye. By cluster, for people who start with the question.

By colour family

Twelve families run from blacks to pinks and magentas. Each family page shows every code in it, its pocket words and its drop. Because the code was built to be read across a room, near colours were kept apart on purpose; where the record itself holds two near colours we tell them apart by surface, never by changing the historical hex.

By cluster

Who you are is the gender grid: thirty colours from cis man to classic and timeless, each with a word for the person and a word for who is drawn to them. Who you love is orientation. How you love is relationship shape. Your energy is how you move; Your place in the room is what you hold for others. The record is the 1970s and 80s codes that can be shown to anyone, exactly as they were worn.

How to use it

Start with the quiz or start with a colour you already like. Every page links sideways to its neighbours, so you cannot get stuck. When something fits, make the free swatch. If you want it on a wall, the code page has the print.

Where the words come from

Every historical meaning traces to Fischer 1977, Damron 1980, Townsend 1983 and the archives that hold them. Every 2026 word is marked as a HankyCode Original. We do not blur the two, and we say plainly that the code belongs to the men who built it.