Brand guide
How notacompany looks and sounds: the mark, the name, color, type, shape, photography, motion, and how we write. For us, and for anyone making something with our name on it.
01 — Logo
A sun, drawn in pixels.
The mark is a sun on a seven-by-seven grid: a three-by-three disc with eight rays run straight into it, so every pixel touches another and the sun reads as one chunky glyph, even at favicon size. It is black and white: ink pixels on a light neutral tile with rounded corners. Every cell is square, and nothing in it is curved except the tile.
Mark
The ink sun on its neutral tile. The default wherever the name is shown as a single symbol: the header, the favicon, the avatar.
Sun
The sun alone, in ink on paper, where the name is already on the page.
Lockup
The tile beside the name. The name is set a little smaller than the tile (19 to 22), a third of a tile away from it.
Clear space and size
Keep a third of the tile clear on every side — the same distance that separates the tile from the name in the lockup. On screen the tile is never smaller than 16px, and the bare sun never smaller than 14px, where each cell is two pixels.
What the mark never does
- Round its cells. The sun is square pixels, drawn with crisp edges.
- Change color. Ink on its neutral tile or on paper, and nothing else. The mark is never orange, never set large on a colour block, and never sits on a dark ground.
- Stretch, skew, or rotate. The grid is square and the rays are fixed.
- NACSit beside a capitalized name, or one set in the mono.
02 — Wordmark
Lowercase, always.
The name is “notacompany”: one word, lowercase, set in Inclusive Sans semibold and tracked tight, beside the tile and a little smaller than it. “notacompany.com” is the web address. The legal line is “notacompany.com — a trademark of Gravity Holdings.”
03 — Color
Warm paper, dark ink, and the colors of the ground.
Paper and ink
The page and the type. Everything readable is ink over paper.
Paper
#FBFAF4
Page
Paper sunken
#F2F1EA
Cards
Paper inset
#E9E8E0
Wells & fields
Ink
#0E1113
Type, tile, buttons
Ink soft
#2C3134
Button hover
Earth tones
Used sparingly, and never for body text or behind the mark.
Terracotta
#DB704C
The accent
Sand
#D6D0C3
Photo ground
Dark teal
#1C525D
Deep accent
Categories
One color for each of the four categories in Tiago’s Bookmarks, dark enough to read on paper.
Cool company raises
#5B7A4F
Category mark
Dev tools
#C0552F
Category mark
Finance
#9A7420
Category mark
Interesting
#1C525D
Category mark
How the colors are used
- 01Paper is the ground and ink is the type. Headlines are full ink; body copy is ink at roughly two-thirds strength.
- 02Nothing on the site is a block of color. Sections sit on paper, divided by hairlines; sand only shows while a photograph loads.
- 03Terracotta is the single accent: the live dot, the text selection, the focus ring, and a link title under the pointer. It never fills a panel, and the logo mark stays black and white.
- 04A category color appears only on the label, dot, or rule that names its category.
- 05Surfaces are separated by hairlines of ink at 9–16%, never by shadows or gradients. An outlined card that fills with ink under the pointer is a link, so nothing static wears an outline and a fill together; a band of figures is drawn with rules alone.
04 — Typography
A warm display face over a plain-spoken mono.
Inclusive Sans
Display · headlines, the name
Variable, 300–700
We help craft unique human experiences.
JetBrains Mono
Text · body, interface
400 and 500
Body copy is set in a monospace, in ink at about two-thirds strength. Sentences are complete. Claims are specific.
Scale
Page title
Inclusive Sans 400 · clamp(44px, 6.4vw, 96px) · line-height 0.94 · tracking −0.055em
Human first.
Section heading
Inclusive Sans 500 · clamp(28px, 3.2vw, 40px) · line-height 1.12 · tracking −0.035em
Lowercase, always.
Card title
Inclusive Sans 500 · clamp(20px, 1.8vw, 24px) · line-height 1.2 · tracking −0.02em
Tiago’s Bookmarks
Body
JetBrains Mono 400 · 15px · line-height 1.7 · 17px for the paragraph under a page title, 14px for captions
We work with a few founders at a time on product and technology.
Label
JetBrains Mono 500 · 12px · uppercase · tracking 0.06em · ink at 50%
Section label
05 — Shape
Soft corners on flat color.
Corners grow with the size of the surface. Nothing casts a shadow and nothing carries a gradient. A card is outlined in a hairline; a photograph sits in a larger panel.
Buttons are pills in Inclusive Sans: ink fill with paper type, or an ink hairline outline. Hover and the current page lift the fill to ink soft. Nothing is drawn along one edge of a pill.
06 — Photography
Warm ground, and people small in it.
The site carries one photograph, on the home page: a street mural of a face, from Unsplash, shown whole.
Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash
- 01One photograph, shown whole at its own proportions. Never cropped to fit a slot.
- 02Warm, human, and made by someone: colour that sits with the palette rather than against it.
- 03The photograph is credited to its photographer, beneath it.
- 04Photographs sit in 24px panels and never behind body text. Anything laid over one sits on a paper chip.
- 05Every other page, share card and cover is plain paper and type. Portraits of the team are the only other pictures of people.
07 — Motion
Arrives once, then keeps still.
Content rises into place as a page loads, and long pages reveal each section as it is scrolled to. After that nothing moves without the reader’s intent. The heartbeat that once ran through the live dot has been retired; the dot now holds still.
rise: 0.9s · cubic-bezier(0.2, 0.7, 0.2, 1) · 12px · staggered by --rise-delay
With reduced motion requested, every page arrives finished.
08 — Voice
Plain, friendly, and true.
- 01Say it like it is. Plain words, complete sentences, and no jargon: no “engagements”, “mandates”, “practices”, or “operators”.
- 02Do not sell. Describe what we do and let people decide. No pitches, no urgency, no “ready to…”, and no exclamation marks.
- 03Write as “we”. Tiago’s Bookmarks is the one place written in Tiago’s own voice.
- 04Numbers over adjectives. “Sixteen companies, five exits” — not “extensive experience”.
09 — Assets
The tile, and the files that carry it.
The icon is the mark on its own: the sun on its pale tile, with nothing around it to crop. Covers and share cards are plain paper with the lockup, small: the name, and nothing trying to sell it.
Icon · sun on its tile
Lockup
Cover · all sizes below
10 — Copy
How to describe us.
Approved descriptions for media, directories, and partner material, at the lengths those placements actually ask for. The numbers come from the live portfolio, so copy taken from this page is current on the day it is taken.
One line
54 characters
A small team that helps, backs, and builds companies. Human first.
Short bio
Under 160 characters — X, directories, conference programmes
A small team that helps, backs, and builds companies. Since 2013: 22 companies. Human first.
LinkedIn tagline
Under 120 characters
We help founders, invest early, and build a few products of our own. Human first.
LinkedIn about
Medium — profile and company About sections
notacompany is a small team that likes building things. Since 2013 we have worked with 22 companies, and 7 of them have exited. We do three things. We work with a few founders at a time on product and technology. We invest in companies at pre-seed and seed. And we build and run a few products of our own, which keeps us close to the actual work. Human first.
Press boilerplate
Long — the paragraph that closes a release
notacompany is a small team, started in 2013, that helps founders, invests early, and builds its own products. It has worked with 22 companies, 7 of which have exited. notacompany.com is a trademark of Gravity Holdings. More at notacompany.com.
Naming
How we refer to ourselves in copy
The name is “notacompany”: one word, lowercase, even at the start of a sentence. “notacompany.com” is the web address. “not a company” is fine where a spelled-out or legal name is needed. The legal line is “notacompany.com — a trademark of Gravity Holdings.”
Where to next
These are the companies we have worked with.