You bring the idea. We'll walk you through the rest.v1.0 · Oct 2026
01 · The idea
A floor, and someone standing on it.
Most people with an idea for a brand don't fail for lack of talent. They fail because nobody told them where to start.
Brand School sets the floor. It is the minimum every founder needs to have in place: a name that holds, a promise someone can repeat, a look that doesn't embarrass you, a first place to show up. We make that floor solid, so you never wonder whether you're standing on anything.
The dot is you. It stands on the floor, a little right of centre, leaning into what comes next. It is not on a podium and it is not falling. It is about to step up, and Brand School is the one saying: go on, it'll hold.
That is the whole identity. One heavy bar, one solid dot, and a voice that believes in you a bit more than you do.
The floor is the bar: heavy, rounded, steady. The founder is the dot: solid, right of centre, about to step up.
Brand School brand guidelines2
02 · The mark
Floor, drawn on a 100-unit grid.
Construction
Canvas
viewBox 0 0 100 100
Bar
x 8, y 70, w 84, h 14, rx 7
Dot
cx 66, cy 59, r 11
Tight crop
viewBox 4 44 92 44
The dot's lowest point (y 70) touches the top of the bar. It stands on it, it does not float.
Clear space and size
Clear space
One dot diameter on every side
Minimum, screen
16 px wide
Minimum, print
6 mm wide
Smaller than that
Use the favicon tile
Brand School brand guidelines3
03 · Mark versions
Five versions. Each has its own background.
Colour. The default. Ink bar, sun dot. On paper or white. floor-mark.svg
Ink. One colour: print, stamps, fax-grade situations. On light. floor-mark-ink.svg
White. On ink, photos and notification badges. floor-mark-white.svg
Paper tile. App icon, avatar. Rounded square, radius 22%. floor-mark-paper-tile.svg
Ink tile. Team app icon, dark avatars. Bar turns paper, dot stays sun. floor-mark-ink-tile.svg
Which one?
Light background: colour. Dark background or photo: white. Single colour printing: ink. Anywhere a small square is needed: a tile. On ink, the bar turns paper and the dot stays sun.
The tile versions centre the mark by its own bounding box at 62% of the tile width, which keeps it inside the safe area on Android and iOS. The maskable icon uses 37% on a full-bleed square.
Brand School brand guidelines4
04 · Lockups
Mark plus name, two shapes.
Horizontal. The default. Headers, email footers, documents, anywhere there is width. The wordmark's baseline sits on the floor line.
Stacked. Square and tall spaces: social posts, posters, covers, the splash screen.
Use
When
Horizontal
Anything wider than it is tall. Prefer it unless the space is square or portrait.
Stacked
Square or portrait formats. Never stack in a header bar.
Mark alone
Where the name is already clear: app icon, avatar, favicon, a watermark.
Colour on light
Default. White on ink for dark surfaces. Ink on paper for one-colour documents.
Lockup files already include the clear space. Use .svg (wordmark in outlines) wherever possible; -live.svg needs Familjen Grotesk to be loadable.
Brand School brand guidelines5
05 · Colour
Mostly paper. Sun is rare.
Paper
#EFEDE6 RGB 239 237 230 CMYK 0 1 4 6
Ink
#141414 RGB 20 20 20 CMYK 0 0 0 92
Sun
#FFB400 RGB 255 180 0 CMYK 0 29 100 0
White
#FFFFFF RGB 255 255 255 CMYK 0 0 0 0
Proportion on any screen
Paper ~70%Ink ~20%White ~8%Sun 2% or less
The rules
Paper dominates. It is the page. Ink is for text and the bar. Never grey text on paper below #6B6A63. Sun is the dot, plus one highlight per screen. Not two. White is for cards that sit on paper.
Product accents
Coral #FF5A36 RGB 255 90 54 · CMYK 0 65 79 0
Lime #D8FF4A RGB 216 255 74 · CMYK 15 0 71 0
UI only, from the app. Never in the logo, never behind it.
CMYK is a plain conversion. Proof on your stock before a print run. Data: colours/palette.json6
06 · Typography
Two typefaces. Both free.
Display · Familjen Grotesk 700 · tracking -1% to -2%
Pick one customer and describe them in a sentence. Not a market, not a demographic: one person you could picture sitting across from you. Everything else in your brand gets easier once you can do that.
Semibold for emphasis and labels. Not bold-on-bold.
Scale
Display
48 to 72 pt Familjen 700, lh 0.95
Heading
24 to 32 pt Familjen 700, lh 1.05
Subheading
14 to 18 pt Familjen 700, lh 1.2
Body
10.5 to 11 pt (16 px) Jakarta 400, lh 1.6
Label
8 pt, caps, +14% Jakarta 600
Both families are on Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License, so they are free to use anywhere, including in the app and in print. Fallbacks: Segoe UI, system-ui, sans-serif. Sentence case everywhere; no all-caps headings.
Brand School brand guidelines7
07 · App icons and favicon
Small things, same floor.
App icon, paper. The founder app. app-icon-1024.png
App icon, ink. The Team app. app-icon-ink-1024.png
Maskable. Full-bleed, mark at 37%, survives any shape of mask. maskable-1024.png
Favicon
At 16 and 32 px the mark is drawn larger inside its tile (78% wide instead of 62%) so the dot stays legible. favicon.ico holds 16, 32 and 48 px.
16 px
32 px
64 px
120 px
Rules for icons
Icons always use a tile: paper or ink, never colour. The notification badge is the white mark on transparent. Never put the wordmark in an icon. Let the OS round the corners of the iOS touch icon; do not bake extra rounding into the square.
Brand School brand guidelines8
08 · Social
Show up the same everywhere.
Avatar. Mark centred inside the circle-safe area.
Avatar, ink. For dark profiles and the Team account.
Instagram post. Stacked lockup and tagline.
LinkedIn banner, 1584 x 396. Paper. Lockup sits right of the profile photo overlap.
X header, 1500 x 500. Ink version: white lockup, paper tagline.
Share image, 1200 x 630. The Open Graph card, also served as /media/share.png. One idea per post, plain words, the mark or lockup in a corner, never over a busy photo.
Brand School brand guidelines9
09 · Don'ts
Eight ways to break it.
Recolour the bar. Ink, paper or white only.
Move the dot to the centre or left. It stays right.
Rotate or tilt. The floor is level.
Add a gradient or shadow. Flat colour only.
Outline it. The weight is the point.
Put it on coral (or lime, or a busy photo).
Stretch or squash. Scale evenly, always.
Add a face or any mascot. It's you, not a character.
Also don't
Add a second dot or change the dot's size. Set the wordmark in another typeface. Rebuild the lockup by hand. Put the mark on a coloured tile inside the website header. Use the mark smaller than 16 px / 6 mm. Fill the clear space with other things.
If unsure
Use the file from the kit as it is. The kit was built so that nobody needs to redraw anything. If a situation is not covered here, choose the version with the most paper around it.
Brand School brand guidelines10
10 · Voice
A mentor who believes in you more than you do.
Who we are
Someone who has built this before and wants you to get it right. Warm, direct, on your side. Never corporate, never cute.
How we talk
Plain words, short sentences, one next step at a time. We say what to do, why it matters, and how long it takes. We praise specifics (you picked a real customer) rather than effort in general. When something's weak, we say so, then say how to fix it. No mascots, no emoji, no confetti.
A nudge
"You've got a name. Tonight, write down who it's for, in one sentence. That's the whole job. Come back when it's done."
A level-up
"Foundations done. You have a name, a promise and a first customer in mind. That's the floor. Now we build on it."
Words we avoid
Synergy, leverage, unlock, game-changer, crushing it, hustle, guru, "Oops!", "Congrats!!!", "Amazing job, superstar". Anything that sounds like a pitch, a badge or a pat on the head. Also: shaming, deadlines made up to create urgency, and the word "just" when the thing is hard.
Brand School brand guidelines11
11 · Files
Where everything lives.
All files are in site/media/brand/ and served from /media/brand/. They are generated by scripts/make-brand-kit.py; regenerate, don't hand-edit.
Folder
What's inside
logo/
The mark. floor-mark.svg (colour), -ink, -white, -paper-tile, -ink-tile, -tight.svg. PNG at 256, 512, 1024, 2048. PDFs of colour and ink. floor-mark.png is the 512 colour mark at the fixed URL /media/brand/floor-mark.png that emails use.
lockup/
Horizontal and stacked, in colour-on-light, white-on-ink and ink-on-paper. SVG (outlines), -live.svg (Google Font), PNG at 1200 and 2400 wide, PDF.
