brand-and-identity

Brand and Identity

Overview

Pin down brand essence, logo rules, color identity, typography identity, voice and tone, icon system, illustration style, and multi-product consistency before design tokens get chosen. Output is .forge/brand-identity.md. Upstream of design-system — brand colors map to UI semantic tokens; voice rules shape every microcopy decision; the icon system is inherited by component-library.

When to Use

• A new company or product is being designed and no brand foundation exists
• A second product is being added to a shared brand and the relationship needs defining
• Microcopy is drifting (different voice in onboarding vs errors vs empty states)
• A logo is being used in slides, marketing, and product UI with no documented rules
• Icons in the product mix three styles (outlined, filled, custom) and the team can't agree

When NOT to Use

• A single internal admin tool with no external surface — skip to design-system
• A backend-only service
• A trivial visual tweak inside one screen — that's incremental-implementation

Common Rationalizations

Thought	Reality
"We'll figure out the brand later"	Every screen you ship without brand rules is brand debt. Later means inconsistency baked into 50 screens.
"Just pick a color and go"	A color without a system becomes 15 slightly different blues across two products.
"Microcopy doesn't matter"	Users read microcopy more than marketing copy. Every button label is a brand moment.
"We don't need logo rules, it's just us"	The moment someone else makes a slide deck, they'll stretch the logo. Rules prevent this.
"One product, no need for multi-product rules"	Products multiply. Define what's shared on day one, not day 365.

Red Flags

• Logo used without clear space (text or graphics touching the mark)
• Brand colors used as UI colors directly with no semantic mapping
• Different voice in different parts of the product (formal in errors, casual in onboarding)
• Icon styles mixed in the same view (outline + filled + custom)
• No empty-state copy guideline — engineers write "No data found" by default
• Typography mixing brand and UI faces with no documented role split

Core Process

Step 1: Brand essence

One sentence that captures what the company feels like. Not what it does — what it feels like. "Calm in chaos." "Receipts, not opinions." "The clipboard that thinks." If the sentence could describe three other companies, it's too generic.

Step 2: Logo usage

• Clear space: minimum padding around the mark, expressed in units of the mark's own height (e.g., 0.5x).
• Minimum size: smallest legible size in print (24px digital, 0.5in print).
• Color variants: full color, single-color (mono dark + mono light), reversed (for dark backgrounds).
• Never do: stretch, recolor (outside the variant set), rotate, add effects (shadow, gradient, outline), place on a busy photo without a scrim.

Step 3: Color system — brand vs UI

Brand colors and UI colors are different layers.

• Brand colors drive marketing, identity, logo, OG cards, slide decks. A small palette (1 primary + 1 accent + 1–2 supporting).
• UI colors drive product surfaces and live in design-system as semantic tokens (accent, surface, danger, etc.).

Document the mapping explicitly:

brand.primary  → UI.accent
brand.accent   → UI.accent-emphasis (or product-specific)
brand.neutral  → UI.surface scale (light + dark variants derived here)

A brand color may never appear in product code as a raw hex — it always enters through a semantic token.

Step 4: Typography identity

• Brand typeface: for marketing/headings/identity. Often display-oriented, often paid.
• UI typeface: for product. Often a system font or open-source for performance and legibility at small sizes. May be the same face as brand or different.
• Weight roles: which weights are used for what (e.g., regular body, medium UI emphasis, semibold headings, bold reserved for hero only).

If brand and UI faces differ, document the visual relationship — they must look intentional together, not accidental.

Step 5: Voice and tone

How the product speaks. Examples, not just adjectives:

• Button labels: action verbs. "Save report" not "OK". "Send invitation" not "Submit".
• Empty states: helpful + brief + actionable. "No calls yet. Record your first one." not "No data found".
• Error messages: what happened + what to do. "Couldn't save. Check your connection and try again." not "Error 500".
• Onboarding: warm, encouraging, no jargon. "Let's set up your first team." not "Initialize workspace configuration."
• Confirmation: confident, not apologetic. "Report saved." not "Your report has been successfully saved."

Pick a voice axis pair (e.g., "friendly but not casual", "expert but not technical") and stress-test every category against it.

Step 6: Iconography and illustration

• Icon system: one library (Lucide, Phosphor, Heroicons, or custom). Pick one style (outline OR filled, not both). Document size scale: 16 / 20 / 24 / 32. Icons larger than 32px usually want illustration territory instead.
• Icons vs text: use icons with text labels for primary actions; icon-only is fine for universally-understood affordances (search, close, settings) — never for ambiguous ones.
• Illustration style: line art, flat, isometric, 3D, photographic, or none. Choose one. Empty states and onboarding use this style consistently.
• When NOT to illustrate: dense data screens, settings forms, error states for technical users — illustrations there feel patronizing.

Step 7: Multi-product consistency

If two or more products share a brand:

• Shared: logo, brand color palette, voice, icon system, typography identity.
• Distinct per product: UI accent (a hue shift inside the brand palette), domain-specific icons, product name + favicon, OG art.

State the design promise: "Someone using Product A and Product B should feel they're from the same company but know they're different products."

Step 8: Write .forge/brand-identity.md

Sections in this order: Essence, Logo, Color, Typography, Voice, Iconography & Illustration, Multi-product. Prepend a forge:meta header (generated_by: brand-and-identity, generated_at: <ISO 8601 UTC with Z>, depends_on: [] — independent, no upstream, generated_from: {}, content_hash: <sha256 first 8 of THIS file's body>). See forge-dependency-graph.

Verification

• Brand essence is one sentence, specific enough to exclude three other companies
• Logo section lists clear space, minimum size, color variants, AND a "never do" list
• Brand colors map to UI semantic tokens — no brand hex appears in component code
• Typography identity names a brand face, a UI face, and weight roles per face
• Voice guidelines include concrete examples for buttons, errors, empty states, AND onboarding
• Icon system is one library with one style (outline OR filled, not both); size scale documented
• Illustration style decided (or explicitly "none")
• Multi-product section defines shared vs distinct elements (or notes "single product")
• .forge/brand-identity.md written with forge:meta header