Brand guidelines

Brand Guidelines — Brand Keeper

"Build a brand kit"

When to use

• A company has a one-liner and nothing else — "we need a brand for this".
• Visuals exist but are incoherent — "our colors and fonts differ on every page; fix the source".
• Copy has no consistent voice — "define how we sound in the product and in emails".
• Upstream of sibling skills — run before ui-ux-pro-max or frontend-design for a new venture.

Workflow

1. Extract positioning from the one-liner. Ask or infer the audience, the enemy (what the brand stands against — "enterprise bloat", "hidden fees"), and the price position. Distill into exactly three positioning adjectives plus one anti-adjective: "confident, warm, precise — never cute".
2. Translate adjectives into a palette. One ground, one text, one accent, plus semantics — each with a hex code, a name that carries meaning ("Glacier", not "Blue 2"), a usage ratio (60/30/10), one do and one don't.
3. Pair type. One display face + one text face with real contrast between them (serif/sans, geometric/humanist), the weights worth licensing, and a CSS fallback stack for each. State the pairing logic in a single sentence.
4. Write the voice & tone table. Four traits, each with a verbatim say-this sentence and a verbatim never-say-this counter-example, all grounded in the positioning adjectives.
5. Draft the logo brief — not the logo. Concept direction, construction (wordmark vs mark, geometric basis), clearspace rule, minimum size, and the misuse list: no gradients, no stretching, no drop shadows, no recoloring.
6. Assemble BRAND.md, one page. Downstream skills must be able to consume it without asking a single follow-up question.
7. Stress-test the kit. Apply it mentally to a button, an error message, and an invoice footer. If any feels off-brand, revise the kit — never the artifact.

Output format

# BRAND.md — <Company>
**One-liner:** <as given>
**Positioning:** <adj>, <adj>, <adj> — never <anti-adjective>.

## Palette — 60/30/10
| Name | Hex | Role | Ratio | Do | Don't |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper | #FAF9F7 | ground | 60% | page and card backgrounds | text |
| Ink | #101828 | text | 30% | body copy, headings | large filled areas |
| Glacier | #2563EB | accent | 10% | CTAs, links, focus rings | full-bleed backgrounds |

## Type
- Display: <face> (<weights>) — fallback: <stack>
- Text: <face> (<weights>) — fallback: <stack>
- Pairing logic: <one sentence>

## Voice & tone
| Trait | Say | Never say |
|---|---|---|
| Precise | "Backups run every 10 minutes." | "Blazingly fast backups!" |

## Logo brief
<direction> / <construction> / clearspace: <rule> / min size: <px> / misuse: <list>

Quality bar

• Exactly three positioning adjectives plus one anti-adjective, all load-bearing
• Every palette entry has hex, role, ratio, one do and one don't — no orphan swatches
• Type pairing ships real fallback stacks and names the weights to license
• Voice table uses verbatim example sentences, never abstract descriptions
• BRAND.md fits one page and pre-answers the questions downstream skills would ask
• Text color on ground color passes WCAG AA

Example

Invocation: "Brand kit for 'Ledgerly — bookkeeping that closes your month in a day'."

Produces: BRAND.md: positioning "precise, calm, unstoppable — never playful"; a palette of warm Paper ground (60%), Ink #101828 text (30%), Ledger Green #0E9F6E accent (10%) plus amber/red semantics, each with do/don'ts; Fraunces display over Inter text ("editorial authority over utilitarian clarity"); a four-row voice table (Say: "Your month is closed." Never: "Boom! Books done!"); and a wordmark brief with tabular numerals as the identity hook, cap-height clearspace, and a no-gradients-ever misuse list.