--- name: rampstackco/brand-identity source: https://app.decimal.ai/s/rampstackco-brand-identity@1/SKILL.md source_sha256: b5fdffeee0eb --- # Brand Identity Design or evaluate the visual artifacts that express a brand: logo system, color, typography, imagery, iconography, and motion. Stack-agnostic. Tool-agnostic. This skill assumes a brand direction is already approved (positioning, mood, name). If not, run `brand-ideation` first. --- ## When to use - Designing a logo system - Defining a brand color palette - Choosing brand typography - Developing iconography or illustration style - Defining imagery direction (photography, illustration) - Establishing motion principles - Auditing an existing identity for cohesion or gaps ## When NOT to use - Brand direction is not yet defined (use `brand-ideation`) - Documenting a finished system (use `brand-style-guide`) - Defining voice and tone (use `brand-voice`) - Building UI components from an existing brand (use `design-standards` or `design-system`) --- ## Required inputs - The brand name and approved positioning - The mood direction (from ideation, or supplied as references) - Audience and category context - Application contexts (web, print, packaging, motion - whatever applies) - Constraints (parent brand requirements, regulatory marks, accessibility minimums) --- ## The framework: 5 elements A complete identity has five elements. Each element should reinforce the others. Inconsistency between them is the most common identity failure. ### 1. Logo system Most brands need not one logo but a system of marks for different contexts. **Components of a logo system:** - **Primary mark.** The main logo. Used wherever there is room. - **Wordmark.** Just the typography, no symbol. Used in tight horizontal contexts. - **Symbol or glyph.** Just the symbol, no type. Used in app icons, favicons, social avatars. - **Lockup variations.** Horizontal, stacked, square - whichever apply. - **Monogram.** The initial(s) styled as a mark. Optional but useful for small contexts. **Design principles:** - **Legible at 16 pixels.** Test the logo at favicon size. If it falls apart, redesign. - **Reproducible in single-color.** If the logo only works in full color, it cannot be screen-printed, embroidered, or rendered in browser favicons. - **Distinctive silhouette.** Squint at it. Can you still tell what it is? If it looks like every other logo in the category at silhouette, redesign. - **Construction grid.** Every curve and angle is intentional. Document the construction. **Common failure:** - Designing only the primary mark and discovering at launch that the wordmark, glyph, and small-size variants do not exist. ### 2. Color system A color system is more than a palette. It is the rules for how color carries meaning. **Components:** - **Primary color.** The signature color most associated with the brand. - **Secondary colors.** 1 to 3 supporting colors that extend the palette. - **Neutrals.** The grays and tints that make up most of the surface area. - **Semantic colors.** Success, warning, error, info - if the brand operates in product UI. - **Accent colors.** Used sparingly for highlight and emphasis. **Per color, document:** - Hex, RGB, HSL, CMYK (if print is in scope), and Pantone (if brand-critical print exists) - WCAG AA contrast against the other colors in the system - Allowed and disallowed pairings (some brand colors look terrible together) - Usage notes (when to use, when not to use) **Design principles:** - **Test for accessibility.** WCAG AA requires 4.5:1 contrast for normal text, 3:1 for large text. If the brand color cannot pass either against white, you have a problem. - **Test for color blindness.** Around 8 percent of men have some form of color blindness. Critical UI signals should not rely on color alone. - **Define neutrals carefully.** Neutrals are 80 percent of the surface area in most brand applications. They carry more weight than the brand color. - **Limit the palette.** A 30-color palette is unmanageable. 5 to 8 carefully chosen colors beats a sprawling system. ### 3. Typography Type is the second-most-recognizable element of a brand after the logo. **Components of a type system:** - **Display typeface.** For headlines and brand moments. - **Body typeface.** For long-form reading. Often the same as display, sometimes different. - **Monospace typeface** (if applicable for technical brands). - **Type scale.** The set of sizes used across applications. Typically 5 to 8 steps. - **Type weights and styles.** Which weights and italics are part of the system. **Design principles:** - **Pairing.** If using two typefaces, they must work together at body and display sizes. Common pattern: serif display + sans body, or geometric sans display + humanist sans body. - **Web licensing.** Confirm web licensing covers expected pageviews. Some popular typefaces have prohibitive web licenses. - **Variable fonts** are increasingly the right call for performance and flexibility. - **Fallback stack.** Specify system fallbacks for when the brand font fails to load. The fallback should be visually similar. - **Open-source alternatives.** Document open-source equivalents for situations where licensing is impractical (third-party tools, embedded contexts). ### 4. Imagery and illustration Imagery direction is often underspecified, leading to brand drift over time. **Photography direction:** - **Subject matter.** What does the brand show? - **Composition style.** Tight crops, wide environments, candid, posed? - **Lighting.** Bright and natural, dramatic and directional, soft and diffused? - **Color treatment.** True color, warm shifted, desaturated, high-contrast? - **What to reject.** Stock photo aesthetics, specific cliches in the category. **Illustration direction:** - **Style.** Flat, dimensional, hand-drawn, geometric, abstract, representational? - **Color use.** Full palette, restricted palette, brand colors only? - **Line treatment.** Bold and outlined, soft and shaded, no outlines? - **Subject matter.** What gets illustrated and what does not? **Iconography:** - **Style.** Filled or outline. Rounded or sharp. Single weight or variable. - **Grid.** Pixel-perfect grid (often 24x24 or 16x16 base). - **Stroke weight.** Consistent across the icon set. - **Set.** Which icons exist, and how new icons get added consistently. ### 5. Motion If the brand lives in any digital product, marketing video, or animated touchpoint, motion is part of the identity. **Motion principles to define:** - **Easing curves.** Default easings used across animations. Linear, ease-in-out, custom. - **Duration scale.** Fast (100ms), medium (200-300ms), slow (500ms+) and when each applies. - **Choreography.** How elements enter, exit, and respond to interaction. - **Brand moments.** Signature animations (logo build, page transitions, loaders). **Design principles:** - **Restraint.** Most motion in product UI should be quick and subtle. Reserve dramatic motion for brand moments. - **Reduced motion.** Always provide a `prefers-reduced-motion` alternative for users with vestibular sensitivities. - **Performance.** Animations must be 60fps on the target devices. Profile before shipping. --- ## Workflow 1. **Confirm brand direction.** Positioning, mood, audience. If unclear, return to `brand-ideation`. 2. **Audit applications.** List every place the brand will appear (web, print, packaging, app, social, signage, video). The application contexts drive what the system needs to handle. 3. **Element-by-element design.** Start with logo and color, since these constrain typography. Then type. Then imagery, iconography, motion. 4. **Stress-test.** Apply the system to 3 to 5 mock applications (homepage, social post, business card, product UI, signage). Where does it break? Iterate. 5. **Document.** Each element with rules, examples, and dos/don'ts. This becomes the input to `brand-style-guide`. 6. **Get sign-off** before broad rollout. Identity changes after rollout are 10x the cost of changes during design. --- ## Failure patterns - **Designing logos in isolation from application.** A logo that looks great on a hi-res mockup but illegible at favicon size is a design failure. - **Picking a brand color without contrast testing.** A brand color that fails WCAG AA against white means UI built on the brand will be inaccessible by default. - **Specifying typography without checking web licensing.** Discovering at deploy that the foundry charges per-pageview for the chosen typeface is a budget-buster. - **Skipping imagery direction.** Without it, the brand becomes whatever stock photos the next person picks. - **Treating motion as decoration.** Inconsistent motion erodes brand cohesion as fast as inconsistent color. - **Designing only primary states.** What does the brand look like in error? In dark mode? In a localization where the wordmark needs to flip direction? These are not edge cases; they are the brand. --- ## Output format Default output is a structured set of files: - `identity/logo/` - All logo variants (SVG primary, plus PNG/JPG exports at common sizes) - `identity/colors.md` - Color system with hex codes, contrast ratios, usage rules - `identity/typography.md` - Type system with scale, weights, fallbacks - `identity/imagery.md` - Imagery direction with reference examples - `identity/iconography/` - Icon set or icon style spec - `identity/motion.md` - Motion principles - `identity/applications/` - 3 to 5 application mockups stress-testing the system These feed directly into `brand-style-guide`. --- ## Reference files - [`references/identity-system-spec.md`](references/identity-system-spec.md) - Detailed spec template for documenting each element. - [`references/contrast-and-accessibility.md`](references/contrast-and-accessibility.md) - Accessibility checks for color and type, with the math.