Clicks & Clients
The working standard.
A working set of standards for the firm. Written down so the brand survives the people who'll join later, the contractors who already work alongside us, and the volume of decisions that come with growth.
Why we wrote this down.
Clicks & Clients runs paid media for service businesses, ecommerce brands, and SaaS teams out of Atlanta. We've spent our time learning what works, what doesn't, and what most agencies in our category get wrong. What follows is an attempt to put those things on paper.
We work with contractors — designers, media buyers, occasional engineers — and the brand is only as consistent as the worst-briefed person on a given project. Writing things down also forces us to know what we actually believe. Half of the value of this document is in the decisions we had to make to produce it.
The pages that follow describe how the firm sounds, how the firm looks, and where the visual identity draws from. The standards come from running real accounts, watching what happened, and reading widely outside the marketing category for reference points the category itself rarely supplies.
How to use it
This is a reference document, not a manifesto. The first half lays out the firm's positioning, voice, and visual system. The second half covers the practical layer: how the brand applies to specific surfaces. Most readers will skim it once and reference it later when a specific decision needs to get made.
Where the document is prescriptive, it says so. The wordmark, the type pairings, the color palette, and the layout grid are settled and shouldn't be modified. Where the document is descriptive, it's offering a frame for making good decisions in cases the rules don't cover. When something genuinely isn't addressed here, and a lot won't be, the answer is usually findable by going back to chapter one and asking what tradition the brand draws from.
This is a living document. We expect to revise it as the firm grows and as we learn things we don't yet know. The version number on the cover is a real version number. Future editions will reflect what changed and why.
Contents
Foreword
Why this document exists and how to use it.
Chapter 01Spine
Where the visual identity comes from and the design tradition it draws on.
Chapter 02Voice
How the firm sounds and the editorial tradition behind it.
Chapter 03Logo
The wordmark, the mark, and the rules around them.
Chapter 04Typography
The three typefaces in the system and what each one is used for.
Chapter 05Color
A near-monochrome palette with two accents used sparingly.
Chapter 06Layout
How a page is structured across every brand surface.
Chapter 07Imagery
Three categories of imagery the brand uses, and what we avoid.
Chapter 08Tonal Range
How the brand modulates between editorial and modern registers.
Chapter 09Applications
Rules for the specific surfaces the brand applies to.
Origins, references, rationale
Where the visual identity comes from, and why it looks the way it does.
A brand built on editorial tradition, mid-century design discipline, and the belief that restraint communicates more than volume.
Where this comes from.
The visual identity draws on two traditions that rarely appear together in the marketing-agency category. The first is the editorial tradition — broadsheet newspapers, long-form financial publications, the printed documents that communicate seriousness without decoration. The second is mid-century design discipline — the conviction that restraint, proportion, and typographic clarity do more work than color or ornamentation ever could.
Neither tradition is fashionable in our category. Most agencies in this space reach for gradients, geometric patterns, neon accents, and the visual language of Silicon Valley SaaS. We went the other direction. The references below explain why.
The editorial lineage
The brand's surface palette — parchment, ink, white — comes from printed documents. Legal briefs. Financial reports. The front page of the Financial Times. Broadsheet newspapers before the web taught everyone to fill every pixel. These are surfaces that communicate authority through what they leave out. A broadsheet doesn't need a gradient to signal that its contents are serious. The paper does that work.
The same logic runs through the brand. Parchment is the editorial surface: warm, papery, immediately distinguishable from the pure-white default of a web page. Ink black is not pure black — it's #0E0E0C, softer and warmer, the way aged printed documents read under natural light. The accent colors (Oxford Navy, Archival Red) are used the way the Financial Times uses its salmon background — as quiet identity, not decoration.
The advertising tradition
David Ogilvy's long-copy print advertisements demonstrated that advertising could be literate. A full page of body copy in a newspaper, set in serif type, with a single photograph and a headline that made a specific claim. The reader was trusted to read. The copy rewarded the trust. Most of the industry moved away from that model. We think it still works, and the brand's editorial register — Playfair Display headlines over parchment surfaces — is a direct descendant of that tradition.
The Concorde-era advertisements for Rolex, British Airways, and IBM operated on the same principle. Clean typography. Confident product presentation. A photograph that showed the thing itself, not an abstraction of the thing. The IBM 5110 advertisements of the late 1970s are a useful reference: a computer on a desk, a price in the headline, body copy that explained what the machine did and why it mattered. No gradients. No lifestyle photography. No stock images of people pointing at screens. The product and the argument were enough.
The design lineage
Paul Rand's identity work for IBM established that a corporation could communicate through typography and restraint alone. The eight-bar logo, the Helvetica system, the consistent application across every surface — from mainframe manuals to trade-show booths — proved that visual discipline at scale reads as authority. Massimo Vignelli's work for American Airlines and the New York subway carried the same conviction: the grid, the type hierarchy, and the color system do the work. Everything else is negotiable.
Dieter Rams's ten principles for good design — particularly "good design is as little design as possible" — inform the palette and the layout. The near-monochrome color system is a deliberate constraint. The whitespace on every page isn't empty; it's doing the same work that negative space does in a Braun product photograph. Josef Müller-Brockmann's grid systems, originally developed for Swiss typographic design in the 1960s, are the structural ancestor of the layout grid used throughout this document and every brand surface.
| David Ogilvy | Long-copy print advertising. The proof that advertising could be literate and that trusting the reader to read was a competitive advantage, not a risk. |
|---|---|
| Paul Rand / IBM | Corporate identity through typography and system. The demonstration that visual discipline across every surface communicates more than any single piece of creative. |
| Dieter Rams / Braun | Less but better. The near-monochrome palette and the restraint in the layout are direct applications of this principle. |
| Massimo Vignelli | The conviction that a small number of typefaces, rigorously applied, can carry an entire identity. The type system uses three faces. Vignelli used fewer. |
| Concorde-era advertising | Rolex, British Airways, IBM. Advertisements that trusted the audience to be intelligent, and presented the product with confidence rather than spectacle. |
Why the system looks this way.
Every element in the visual system exists for a reason. The choices below aren't aesthetic preferences dressed up as principles. They're functional decisions about what communicates authority in a category where most firms default to visual noise.
Why these typefaces.
Inter was designed by Rasmus Andersson in 2017, originally for computer interfaces. It descends from the same Swiss grotesk tradition as Helvetica and Univers but was built from the ground up for screen rendering at small sizes. We use it as the workhorse — body copy, navigation, captions, data — because its metric consistency holds up across every size the brand needs. It carries roughly ninety percent of the type the firm produces.
Playfair Display is a transitional serif designed by Claus Eggers Sørensen. Its high-contrast strokes and refined details place it in the lineage of Baskerville and the typefaces used in eighteenth-century European printing. We use it only at display sizes, only for editorial moments — cover statements, section openers, pull quotes. The restraint in its use is the point: a serif headline on a parchment surface earns its weight precisely because it appears infrequently.
JetBrains Mono was designed for code editors, which is exactly why it works for the system layer of a brand built around data. Every character occupies the same horizontal space, the digits are calibrated for legibility at small sizes, and the typeface signals "system" without needing to be styled into doing so. We use it for numbers, dates, captions, section markers, and metadata — the same role monospaced type plays in financial documents, engineering specifications, and broadsheet datelines.
Why this palette.
The near-monochrome system is a constraint, not a limitation. Ink, parchment, and white form a surface vocabulary drawn from printed documents — materials that have communicated seriousness for centuries without needing color to do it. The two accent colors (Oxford Navy and Archival Red) exist for data callouts and rare emphasis. They're used the way a broadsheet uses a colored rule or a pull quote — to mark something as structurally different, not to decorate.
Ink black (#0E0E0C) is warmer than pure black. The difference is subtle on a backlit screen but significant in print and on parchment surfaces, where pure black reads as harsh and synthetic. Parchment (#FAFAF7) sits just off-white — warm enough to feel like paper, neutral enough to not compete with the type. The palette reads as considered because there's so little of it. Every color that isn't on the page is a deliberate absence.
Why restraint.
The design philosophy across every surface is that less communicates more. Generous margins. Deliberate whitespace. A type hierarchy that doesn't need more than three faces. A color system that doesn't need more than five values. This isn't minimalism as an aesthetic — it's minimalism as a working method. A page with fewer elements asks the reader to evaluate each one more carefully, which is exactly the disposition we want when someone is reading about the firm's work.
The reference point is the editorial page, not the marketing page. An editorial page earns attention through the quality of what's on it. A marketing page competes for attention through volume and visual stimulus. The brand is built for the first model. Every surface — from the pitch deck to the email signature to this document — follows the same rule: when in doubt, remove something.
Voice
How the firm sounds, and the editorial tradition behind it.
The voice isn't a personality. It's a posture, a register, and a set of writing disciplines drawn from the editorial tradition the brand belongs to.
How we sound.
The shortest version: we write the way a serious business publication writes about business. Closer to the Financial Times than to a marketing blog. Closer to a Stripe Press essay than to a SaaS landing page. The reference set is editorial; the subject matter happens to be marketing.
Most agency copywriting fails in a predictable way. It performs confidence rather than holding it. It uses language that's been laundered through a thousand other agency websites until none of the words mean anything anymore. Leverage as a verb. Unlock. Full-funnel. At scale. The reader recognizes the category at a glance and stops reading. We don't want to be in that category, so we don't write the way that category writes.
The posture we're after is something like a senior operator explaining their work to another senior operator. There's no need to oversell. There's no need to attack competitors. The reader is presumed to be busy and intelligent, and the copy gets to the point quickly and respects them throughout.
The editorial tradition
The voice draws on an editorial tradition rather than a marketing one. The publications and writers below represent the standard the brand measures itself against. None of them are marketing publications. That's the point.
| The Economist | For the discipline of stating a clear position briefly, with reasoning visible underneath. The leader column in particular: an argument made in eight hundred words that holds up under scrutiny. |
|---|---|
| Financial Times | For the calm authority of the writing, especially in the longer features. Information dense without being exhausting. Specific without being technical for its own sake. |
| Stripe Press essays | For modern technical writing that respects the reader's time. Argument-driven, not persona-driven. Confident without being smug. |
| Patrick McKenzie's writing | For specificity. Real numbers, real situations, real reasoning. The reader finishes feeling like they've learned something concrete rather than been pitched something abstract. |
| The Browser, Marginal Revolution | For the cadence of writing that assumes intelligence in the reader. Compact sentences. No throat-clearing. No "in this article, we will explore..." |
The pattern across all of them: claims supported by reasoning, specificity over abstraction, and a refusal to perform expertise where holding it quietly would do. The brand's voice belongs to this lineage more than to the marketing category it operates in.
Register.
The voice is closer to the editorial register than to the conversational one. It's not stiff. It's not formal in a starched-collar sense. It's the register of a written argument, set down deliberately, edited for clarity, and meant to hold up to a careful reader.
A few things this rules out. The voice doesn't do the LinkedIn-influencer plainspoken thing where every paragraph is one sentence and every sentence is supposed to be a hook. It doesn't do the casual "hey, it's me, your friend" register that's everywhere in B2B SaaS. It doesn't do the "we're disrupting the agency model" anti-positioning that most boutiques fall into. It also doesn't perform a heritage register the firm hasn't earned, which is a failure mode worth flagging because it's the one this voice is closest to.
The honest register sits between editorial and operational. We're describing real work in plain language with the reasoning visible. The reader should feel like they could ask a follow-up question and get a substantive answer.
Words.
A short list, on each side. The "use freely" column is a reminder of what plain operational language looks like in our category. The "avoid" column is more important: these words aren't wrong, they're just everywhere in the agency category, and using them puts us in the same visual lane as the work we're trying to differentiate from. The list isn't exhaustive and isn't meant to be.
Use freely
specific numbersreal client outcomesspendcreativehookofferlanding pageconversioncost per leadaccountcampaignauditconcentrationfundamentalscraft
Avoid
leverage (verb)deployfull-funnelintegrated solutionsecosystempartner (verb)unlockworld-classat scalebest-in-classholisticsynergygrowth hacking10xgame-changingninjagururockstar
Editorial standards
A short set of disciplines that show up consistently in the writing the brand admires and tries to match.
- Be specific. A real number is almost always better than a relative claim. "Cost per lead at $14" is more useful than "strong results."
- Cut what can be cut. Most first drafts get tighter when fifteen percent of the words come out. The shorter version is usually clearer.
- State the reasoning, not just the conclusion. The reader should be able to evaluate the claim, not just be asked to accept it.
- Acknowledge the trade-off when there is one. Most worthwhile recommendations have a cost. Naming the cost makes the recommendation more credible, not less.
Logo
The wordmark, the mark, and the small system around them.
The logo is monochromatic and typographic. The work it does is done by the type itself, and by the ampersand standing in as the firm's single ownable glyph.
The wordmark.
Inter Medium, set tight. The ampersand sits at the optical center of the lockup, doing the work most logos hand off to a separate symbol. There is no flourish, no enclosing shape, and no secondary mark in the system.
The wordmark is set in Inter at 120 point with letter-spacing of −7. The proportions are fixed by the type design and shouldn't be modified. Inter is open-source under the SIL Open Font License, which is why we picked it: the firm doesn't pay for the typeface, and contractors can install it without licensing friction.
Inter · Medium · 500 · letter-spacing -7 at 120pt · ink black on parchment
Variants
Four wordmark variants cover the surfaces we use. The variant should match the surface, not be picked for visual variety. Most of the time the choice is automatic: parchment for editorial pages, white for working surfaces and web, ink for inverted contexts.
The mark.
In any space too tight for the wordmark (a favicon, a social avatar, an app icon, a sign-off in a deck footer), the ampersand carries the brand on its own. It's the same character from the wordmark, set at the same weight, isolated.
An ampersand is a generous glyph for this kind of work. It has presence at small sizes where most letterforms would lose their character. It's also unusual enough as a standalone identity choice that the firm gets some distinction from it without having commissioned a custom mark.
Clear space
The wordmark and mark both maintain a minimum clear space equal to the cap-height of the wordmark on all sides. No other elements (type, imagery, lines, edges) encroach inside that perimeter.
Use and misuse.
The wordmark and the mark are both finished as supplied. They don't need outlines, drop shadows, color variants, or supporting marks. Most of what follows is a list of the modifications we've seen go wrong elsewhere and would rather not see applied to ours.
Do
Use the wordmark as supplied. Pick the variant that matches the surface (parchment, white, or ink) and let the typography carry the brand.
Don't
Stretch, skew, rotate, or distort the wordmark. The proportions are fixed by the type design and any modification breaks the lockup.
Do
Place the wordmark on clean surfaces: solid color, minimal pattern, or restrained imagery. Give it room.
Don't
Place the wordmark on busy photography, gradient backgrounds, or any surface that fights for attention with the type itself.
Do
Use the standalone ampersand below 16px wordmark height. The wordmark loses legibility at small sizes; the mark holds.
Don't
Add color to the wordmark or the mark. The brand has accent colors, but they live around the logo, never inside it.
Do
Use the outlined SVG variants for print, signage, or any context where Inter cannot be guaranteed installed.
Don't
Pair the wordmark with a tagline directly attached to it. Taglines, when they exist, live elsewhere on the page.
Typography
Inter, Playfair Display, and JetBrains Mono. What each does and why we picked them.
The type system uses three faces. Each one has a role; none of them overlap. The decisions behind which type to use where are usually automatic once the role assignments are clear.
The type system.
The system runs on a single working rule: sans for content, serif for statement, mono for system. Inter is the workhorse and handles roughly ninety percent of the type the firm produces. Playfair Display appears at the editorial moments that earn it. JetBrains Mono carries the data, captions, and system labels. Once the rule is internalized, most type decisions get made without thinking.
All three faces are open-source under SIL Open Font License. We picked them in part for design reasons (they're good) and in part because contractors can install and use them without licensing complications. Where higher-end alternatives exist (GT Sectra in place of Playfair, Söhne in place of Inter, IBM Plex Mono in place of JetBrains), the system can be upgraded without breaking the role assignments.
Inter
Sans · the workhorseA clean, modern grotesk that holds up across the full size range.
Inter was designed by Rasmus Andersson for screen reading at small sizes, which is most of where we use it. It has the metric consistency of a Swiss grotesk and a wide character set, including good tabular figures for the data work the firm does in dashboards and reports. We use it for body copy, navigation, buttons, captions, and most of the headlines that aren't doing editorial work.
Weights: 400 regular, 500 medium, 600 semibold. Free under SIL Open Font License. Source: fonts.google.com/specimen/Inter
Playfair Display
Serif · used sparinglyUsed at large sizes for editorial moments only.
"Playfair Display is a transitional serif with high contrast strokes. It earns its place at display sizes."
Weights: 400 regular, 400 italic. Used only at 18 point and above. Never used for body copy. The italic carries pull quotes and editorial callouts. The roman handles section openers, cover statements, and large editorial headlines. Free under SIL Open Font License.
JetBrains Mono
Mono · the system layerCPL
$14.20
previous quarter $32 · −56%
Spend / mo
$48,200
unchanged
Lead volume
+182%
on flat budget
JetBrains Mono was designed for code, which is why it works for data: every character has the same width, the digits are calibrated for legibility at small sizes, and the typeface signals "system layer" without needing to be styled into doing so. Used for numbers, dates, file IDs, captions, system labels, eyebrows, and page numbers. Sample numbers above are illustrative. Free under SIL Open Font License.
Sizes.
The size system uses six working sizes for prose and a handful of display sizes that scale with the surface. The pattern: smaller sizes are more likely to be in the mono. Captions, eyebrows, and labels are mono almost without exception. The smaller the type, the more system-layer signaling it does.
| Display Statement | Playfair Display 400 · 56 to 96 point · letter-spacing −1.5 to −3 · cover slides and section openers |
|---|---|
| Display Modern | Inter Medium 500 · 40 to 60 point · letter-spacing −1.2 · case study heroes and feature pages |
| H1 Editorial | Playfair Display 400 · 40 to 60 point · letter-spacing −1.2 · page-opening headlines in the editorial register |
| H2 | Playfair Display 400 · 30 to 40 point · letter-spacing −0.9 · section breaks within a page |
| H3 / Subhead | Inter Medium 500 · 17 to 18 point · letter-spacing −0.2 · subsection headers, list lead-ins |
| Lede | Inter Regular 400 · 19 point · line-height 1.6 · the orienting paragraph after a headline |
| Body | Inter Regular 400 · 16 point · line-height 1.7 · default reading size for prose |
| Caption | Inter Regular 400 · 13 point · line-height 1.55 · supporting copy under images, secondary content |
| Eyebrow / System | JetBrains Mono Regular 400 · 11 point · letter-spacing 1.5 to 2px · uppercase · category labels, section markers, dates, page numbers |
| Pull Quote | Playfair Display Italic 400 · 22 point · line-height 1.45 · used inside a left-bordered callout, with mono attribution beneath |
| Numerical Display | JetBrains Mono Regular 400 · 24 to 28 point · letter-spacing −0.5 · key metrics in case studies and dashboards |
Color
A near-monochrome palette with two accents and three supporting neutrals.
Most of the brand is black on cream or black on white. The accents are used sparingly and do specific kinds of work. The whole palette borrows visibly from the editorial publishing tradition.
Foundation.
Three foundation colors carry the bulk of the brand. Ink Black for type and structural elements. Parchment for the editorial register. Pure White for working surfaces. Most pages use one of the three for ground and another for type, and that's the whole palette doing its job.
The decision to anchor on a near-black, a warm off-white, and a clean white is borrowed almost directly from the editorial publishing tradition. Page interiors of the Financial Times, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and most book typography of the last century run on a similar set of three. We picked these because the tradition works, and because reaching for a more inventive palette in a category as visually busy as digital marketing tends to compete with the work rather than support it.
Tap any swatch to copy its hex value to the clipboard.
Accents
Two accent colors. They behave differently and shouldn't be used interchangeably. Oxford Navy is the structural accent. It appears on roughly one element in six and does the work of drawing the eye to category labels, key data, links, and ordered list indices. Archival Red is the rare-emphasis accent, used once or twice on a page at most, reserved for the moment that matters more than the others around it.
Supporting neutrals
Three grays handle the in-between work: secondary type, captions, hairline rules. They aren't perceived as brand colors and aren't supposed to be. Their job is to give the system room to differentiate primary from secondary information without using color in the conventional sense.
Using the palette.
The palette is small on purpose. Most of the design work that color has to do is handled by the structural restraint of running mostly on the foundation three. The accents do specific work and shouldn't be used decoratively.
Do
Use Oxford Navy on roughly one element in six. Section labels, key data, ordered list indices, chart bars. Enough to draw the eye. Not enough to compete with the content.
Don't
Use Archival Red as a default accent. It loses meaning if it appears more than once or twice per page. It functions like the red box on the cover of The Economist, not like a highlighter.
Do
Pair the foundation colors deliberately. Parchment for the editorial register, white for the modern register, ink for inverted contexts and cover variants.
Don't
Introduce additional colors into brand surfaces: teal, electric blue, neon orange, pastel pink, gradient anything. The palette is closed. New colors at the brand level break the system.
Do
Use additional colors freely in client work and in case-study charts where the data calls for them. Brand surfaces are restricted; the work the firm produces for clients is governed by their brand systems, not ours.
Don't
Use Oxford Navy as a fill for large surfaces. The accent is meant to anchor small elements and short type. A full navy slide reads as an unrelated brand.
Layout
Grid, whitespace, and the publication frame applied to every surface.
The brand's surfaces are designed to feel like they came out of the same publication. The rules below describe how a page is structured and what holds the visual identity together across formats.
Where the layout comes from.
The reference set for the layout is editorial. The Financial Times, Monocle, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the Stripe Press essay format. Generous columns. Strong header rules. Captions on imagery. A typographic hierarchy that lets the reader skim without losing context. The surfaces we produce should feel adjacent to those references rather than to the marketing-site category we work in.
The choice to model the system on editorial layout rather than on SaaS or agency layout is partly aesthetic and partly about what the layout signals. Editorial layouts signal that the writing is the point and that the reader is expected to engage with it. SaaS marketing layouts signal that the visual design is doing the persuading and that the writing is an afterthought. We'd rather be in the first category, even on surfaces that don't look like editorial in the strict sense.
What the system requires
Five rules carry most of the visual identity from one surface to the next. They aren't presented as creative principles. They're closer to a checklist a designer applies before signing off on a layout.
- A header rule at the top of every page or slide. Above the rule, nothing. Below the rule, a single line of mono containing a section number on the left and a page identifier on the right. Eleven-point JetBrains Mono, 1.5px letter-spacing, uppercase. This is the most identifiable element of the system.
- Generous whitespace. Editorial publications and well-designed tech brands both leave room around their content. Cramped layouts read as low-budget regardless of what's in them. The defaults assume more space than feels natural.
- A fixed grid. The same column structure across surfaces. The same maximum measure for body copy. The grid is rigid; the content within it is allowed to vary in density and treatment.
- Captions on imagery. Every image gets a mono caption underneath it with attribution and any relevant identifying detail. Captions are small, but they signal that the image was chosen rather than just placed.
- Data set in mono and treated as editorial. A single key number, set large in JetBrains Mono with a short label and any relevant comparison underneath. Reads like a number in a serious newspaper, not like a metric card on a SaaS dashboard.
The page anatomy.
A page in the system has four working components. Most pages contain all four. Some short or specialized surfaces (a contract page, a dashboard slide) drop one or two. The order is consistent: header rule first, then opening type, then body, then any structural elements at the bottom.
Header rule
A horizontal hairline at the top of the page. Below it, a single line of mono running the section number on the left and a page identifier on the right. The page identifier varies, sometimes a date, sometimes a slug, sometimes a page number, but the format is consistent.
Eyebrow and headline
A short mono eyebrow above the headline establishes category. The headline runs in either Playfair Display or Inter Medium depending on the page's register: serif for editorial pages and section openers, sans for case studies and modern-register surfaces. The choice is determined by the surface, not by mood.
Lede and body
A 19-point Inter Regular lede paragraph follows the headline. Its job is what a magazine standfirst does: orient the reader in two or three sentences. Body copy follows at 16 point. The measure is capped at roughly 640 pixels because longer lines are harder to read and the firm's writing assumes a careful reader.
System chrome
Anything structural goes below the body: callouts, tables, lists, image grids, charts. The closing element on a long page is a footer slug in mono carrying a section number and page count.
Imagery
What runs alongside the type, and what we'd rather avoid.
The brand uses three categories of imagery, each doing different work. The categories aren't a creative direction so much as a frame for choosing images that aren't stock.
Imagery.
Most agencies in our category don't have an imagery system at all. They fall back on stock photography of teams in glass-walled conference rooms and abstract gradient backgrounds, both of which read as generic and signal that the firm wasn't careful about the visual layer. We'd rather take more time on fewer images.
The brand uses three categories of imagery. They aren't equally weighted. Most surfaces use one or two; only the longer-form documents (this one, full pitch decks, deeper case studies) use all three. The reference images below illustrate the visual register each category operates in. As the firm's image library grows, additional images follow the same conventions and captioning discipline.
What we avoid.
The list below covers the imagery categories we won't use on brand surfaces. Most of them are stock conventions of the digital agency category. Avoiding them is part of how the firm signals that it isn't running on the same visual library as everyone else.
Avoid
Stock photography of people in glass conference rooms, "diverse teams" laughing at laptops, generic handshakes, generic city skylines.
Avoid
Abstract gradient backgrounds, mesh gradients, blurred geometric shapes, "AI-themed" visualizations, glowing data lines.
Avoid
Mockups of dashboards with fabricated data presented as if real. The line: representative numbers in a sample chart are fine and labeled as such; numbers presented to a prospect or client as real when they aren't is misleading.
Avoid
Founder or team portrait photography that isn't both deliberate and well-shot. A bad portrait reads worse than no portrait.
A note on illustrative charts
A separate question, since the brand does produce charts in case studies and reports. Illustrative charts are normal and expected, and we use them regularly. The discipline isn't avoiding them; it's labeling clearly. A chart with real numbers from a real account should be labeled with the client (with permission) and the date range. A chart showing a representative pattern or industry benchmark should be labeled as such, with the source named. The reader should never have to guess whether a number is real, anonymized, or illustrative.
Captions
Every image in the brand carries a caption in JetBrains Mono at 9 to 10 point, uppercase, 1.2 to 1.5px letter-spacing, set in graphite or ash. The caption names the image source, the subject if it's a heritage reference, and the year if relevant. Captions are small but they signal that the image was chosen carefully and that the firm knows what it's looking at. Most of the editorial weight of the imagery system comes from this single discipline.
Tonal range
When the brand leans editorial, and when it leans modern.
A long-form essay calls for a different surface than a performance dashboard. The system is built so both can come from the same firm without feeling like different brands.
Reserved and expressive.
The visual system has two registers it can operate in. The reserved register leans editorial: serif headlines, parchment surfaces, generous whitespace, captioned imagery. The expressive register leans modern: sans-serif at large sizes, white surfaces, mono data, tighter pacing. Both registers use the same logo, typefaces, and palette. They modulate which side of the system carries the weight on a given page.
The choice between registers is determined by the surface, not by mood. A long-form essay about how the platforms have changed needs the editorial register because the writing is the point. A case study showing the cost-per-lead movement on a real account needs the expressive register because the numbers are the point. Forcing either kind of content into the wrong register weakens both.
Some surfaces use both. A pitch deck moves between them: editorial register for the opening positioning slides, modern register for case studies and proof, back to editorial for the close. The header rule and footer slug stay constant throughout, which is what holds the surface together visually while the registers shift underneath.
A statement in each register.
Two statements about the firm's work, written in the way each register would handle them. Both are correct expressions of the same brand.
Reserved · editorial
Running real accounts has taught us that the leverage is no longer where most agencies still spend their hours.
Set in Playfair Display Italic on parchment
Expressive · modern
Cost per lead down sharply on flat budget. The lever was the creative, not the targeting.
Set in Inter Medium on white
CPL
$14.20
illustrative
Leads
+182%
illustrative
Budget
flat
period over period
Sample numbers above are illustrative and labeled as such. Real metrics from client accounts will be substituted in case studies, with the client named where permission has been granted.
When to use which
| Reserved | Cover slides, About pages, principles and philosophy sections, long-form essays, the firm's perspective on industry shifts. Serif leads. Parchment is the surface. Captioned heritage imagery sits alongside. |
|---|---|
| Expressive | Case studies, performance reports, services pages, dashboard treatments, anything data-forward. Inter leads at large size. White is the surface. Mono carries the numbers. |
| Both | The pitch deck and the website use both. The transition between registers happens at section breaks, marked by a change of surface color and a shift in the typography of the headline. The header rule and footer slug stay constant. |
Applications
The surfaces the brand applies to and the rules for each one.
The system covers a deliberately small set of surfaces. The pitch deck, the website, social and ad creative, contracts and invoices, email, internal documents, and the asset library.
Surfaces.
The brand applies to seven surfaces. Each one has a small set of rules attached to it. The rules below are pragmatic, written to keep contractors aligned and to keep the firm from spending time re-deciding things that should already be decided.
Pitch deck
The primary sales artifact. Three variants exist: cold outbound, warm-lead follow-up, and post-discovery proposal. All three use the same skeleton. The variants differ in the opening positioning slide, the depth of the diagnosis section, and the structure of the closing call to action. Every variant uses the same header rule, footer slug, type system, and color palette. Cover slides lead with the editorial register; case study slides shift to the modern register.
Website
A single editorial site rather than a marketing template. The home page, about page, and principles pages live in the reserved register. Case studies and services pages live in the expressive register. Navigation is minimal: wordmark on the left, four links on the right, no dropdown menus. The footer is mono and carries section number, address, and copyright slug.
Social and ad creative
Static posts and short videos use the modern register exclusively: Inter Medium statements at large size, Oxford Navy data callouts where appropriate, parchment or white surfaces. The ampersand mark sits as a small corner anchor. Stories and ephemeral formats can use the reserved register where the content warrants it. Ad creative produced for clients is governed by their brand standards, not ours; the system here applies only to the firm's own house creative.
Contracts and invoices
Set in Inter Regular on white at 11 point. Header rule with a mono section label and a contract or invoice identifier. Numbers in mono. Engagement title in Playfair Display Italic at the top. Footer slug with firm address, contract reference, and page numbers. The visual register makes the documents recognizable as part of the firm even before the wordmark is read.
Email signature
Wordmark at 200 pixels wide, ink on white. Two lines of mono caption beneath: name and role on the first line, contact and URL on the second. No taglines, no inspirational quotes, no environmental sign-off lines. The signature should be invisible until someone needs it.
Internal documents
Briefs, retrospectives, strategy memos, and any other document a contractor or client might see. The same header rule and footer slug as the rest of the system. Inter throughout. Mono captions on imagery. Internal documents and external documents are intentionally visually indistinguishable, partly because the line between internal and external is porous in a small firm, and partly because consistency at this layer is cheap to maintain and pays off when documents move between contexts.
Asset library
A single source-of-truth folder accessible to anyone working on the firm's brand. Logo files in SVG, PNG, and ICO. Font files for Inter, Playfair Display, and JetBrains Mono. This guidelines document. Templates for the pitch deck, contract, and invoice. Updated centrally. Referenced from every contractor brief. The folder structure matters less than the discipline of pointing every collaborator at the same canonical version.
A note at the end.
Brand standards documents tend to fail in one of two ways. They're either too prescriptive, fifty pages of don'ts that nobody reads, or too vague to be useful. We've tried to keep this one in the middle. The wordmark, type system, palette, and grid are settled. Most of the prose around them is descriptive and offers a frame for making decisions in cases the rules don't cover.
When something isn't addressed here, the answer is usually findable by going back to chapter one and asking what tradition the brand draws from and what the visual system is for. The register, the references, and the pages to model on all follow from that.
When in doubt, do less. The brand reads as considered because the surfaces don't try to fill space. That discipline costs the firm nothing to maintain and reads as careful from the outside.
This document will be revised. The decisions in it are working ones, not final ones. Future editions will note what changed and why. If you're reading a later version and the page numbers don't match what someone told you to look for, the document is probably newer than they are.