The brand board · Vivian Robelo

What goes on the one page

[ 01 ]

Your name, set in your headline font. That’s your logo for now, and it stays your logo until a real one earns its place, because a wordmark in a good font is doing the same job and it isn’t costing you a month.

yours:

[ 02 ]

Five colors with their hex codes, so background, surface, soft, accent and text. Write the actual codes down somewhere you can find them, because the board exists so that you stop eyedropping your own Instagram to work out what blue you used.

yours:

[ 03 ]

The 60-30-10 rule, filled in: 60% ‹background›, 30% ‹surface›, 10% ‹accent›. That one line does more for how your pages look than anything else on the board, because most of what reads as ugly is really just five colors used in equal amounts, and once the ratio is written down you stop guessing at it.

yours:

[ 04 ]

Two fonts, named: headlines in ‹font› and everything else in ‹font›, and it’s two fonts, not three, because the third font is always the one that makes the page look homemade.

yours:

[ 05 ]

Three words for the vibe, something like “warm, direct, a little loud.” When you aren’t sure whether something is on brand you check it against those three words, and that’s usually enough to settle it, because the words are a decision you already made and you don’t have to make it twice.

yours:

[ 06 ]

One “never”, which is the thing you always end up regretting, so “never center-align paragraphs” or “never neon” or whatever yours turns out to be, and a board with a rule on it gets followed in a way that a board without one doesn’t.

yours:

[ your six answers, as one block of text · saved on this device ]

What one looks like when it’s filled in

Here is a whole board for a made-up pottery studio, so you can see the six things sitting together on one page instead of reading about them one at a time. Fernbrook Clay does not exist, and the point is the shape rather than the studio.

[ brand board · fernbrook clay ][ an example, not a template ]

Fernbrook Clay

[ 01 · the name, set in the headline font, and that is the logo for now ]

[ 02 · five colors, with the codes written down ]

#EFF1E8

background

#DCE3D0

surface

#9FB08A

soft

#B0532E

accent

#20261B

text

[ 03 · the ratio, filled in ]

60% background 30% surface 10%

[ 04 · two fonts, named, and shown doing their jobs ]

Mugs that survive the dishwasher

Everything else sits in the body font, so the headline is the only place the serif shows up, and that contrast is what makes a page look decided rather than busy.

headlines in Fraunces · everything else in Karla

[ 05 · three words for the vibe ]

warm, unfussy, a little earthy

[ 06 · one never ]

Never a pure white background on a product photo.

[ what to borrow here is the shape, so six things on one page, every color with its code written down, and the ratio said out loud, because that is what makes a board you can actually use at eleven at night ]

How to make it in an hour

Open anything you like, so Canva or a doc or a napkin, and put those six things on one page, and screenshot it and make the screenshot your desktop wallpaper for a month. That last part is the difference between a board you made once and a brand you actually use, because you can’t reference a file you never open.

The test

Next time you make anything, so a post or a slide or an invoice, you shouldn’t have to make a single decision, because the colors are on the board and the fonts are on the board and the ratio is on the board. If you find yourself choosing, then the board is incomplete rather than wrong, so add the rule that was missing and keep going.

do this nowType your name into item 01 above, because the board starts existing the moment one line of it is real, and this page keeps what you type so you can finish the other five whenever you come back.

Yours to keep. If the palette is the part you can’t settle, forty of them, each color already given a job, is in the library.

All 40 palettes