The brand system, version one
Type, colour, layout and voice — the rules that hold before the logo does.
A logo is one decision. A brand system is the fifty decisions around it that make everything else look like it came from the same hands. We wrote ours down before the logo was chosen, on purpose: the system has to hold with the wordmark as plain type, because that's what it is right now.
Type
One sans for everything — headlines, interface, body. It's cut tight at display sizes and stays legible at 12px. A serif is allowed for exactly one job: a single italic word in a headline. That word carries the warmth so nothing else has to. Metadata — dates, categories, version strings — is set in a monospace at small sizes, uppercase, spaced out. Three families, three jobs, no overlap.
Colour
Paper and ink. The paper is warm, not white; the ink is warm, not black. One accent — oxblood — used for link hover, text selection and the status dot on the homepage. It never fills a button, never colours a heading. If you notice the accent, we've used too much of it.
Layout
Full width, with generous page padding. Sections are separated by hairlines, not by background changes. Headlines sit left; the description sits in the right columns beside it. Lists over cards, and cards only for things that genuinely are items — journal entries, releases.
Lists over cards. Hairlines over boxes. One accent, rarely.
Voice
Say what exists, and date it. Prefer the specific number to the adjective. Never claim a result we can't link to. Write like the reader is smart and busy. Humour is allowed in one place per page, and it's usually typographic.
Motion
Elements fade up twelve pixels when they enter the viewport, once. Images ease very slightly on hover. Nothing loops, nothing floats, nothing follows the cursor except the small preview on index rows — and even that's optional. Reduced-motion turns all of it off.
Version one is deliberately small. It will grow as the companies do — Wear will need rules for print and thread, Studio for motion — but every addition has to pass the same test: does it make the four companies look more like one family, or less?
