Say the number
Five times faster at a fifth of the cost, not significantly faster and more cost-effective. If we cannot put a figure on it we should not be claiming it.
Corporate identity
One accent colour, three typefaces, and a rule about adjectives.
An identity is not a logo. It is the set of decisions that make everything we publish recognisably ours, including the ones about how we write. This page is the whole system, taken from the running site rather than a presentation about it.
The position
What the identity has to carry.
We sell engineering to people who have been disappointed by engineering firms before. The identity has one job: to look like the work rather than like the marketing around it.
Who is it for?
A technical buyer who will read the detail, and the executive they have to convince. Both are sceptical, and neither is impressed by decoration.
What should it feel like?
Industrial rather than corporate. Heavy type, hard edges, no rounded cards, no gradients, and one accent used sparingly enough that it still means something.
What do we never do?
Stock photography of people pointing at screens, abstract claims without a number attached, and a second accent colour. The restraint is the point.
Colour
Six values, and only one of them is allowed to shout.
Carbon
#0B0B0C
The ground. Almost everything sits on it, and it is not pure black because pure black flattens photography.
Bone
#F2EEE9
The light surface. Warm rather than white, so the two grounds belong to the same family.
Copper
#E4703A
The only accent. Used for one thing at a time: the action you should take, or the number that matters.
Copper deep
#B4491A
Copper under pressure. Hover states, and the darker half of a two-tone figure.
Ash
#6E6A66
Body text on light. Deliberately not black, so the headline keeps its authority.
Smoke
#A8A29B
Body text on dark, and every secondary label.
Type
Three faces, each with one job.
Built 5x faster
The mechanism, not the adjective.
AI-FIRST ENGINEERING
Voice
Four rules that decide every sentence we publish.
Name the mechanism
A claim without a mechanism reads as spin. Every commitment on this site is paired with how it is actually true.
Write against ourselves
We publish the cases where we would decline the work, and the limits of what we will automate. It is the only thing that makes the rest credible.
No em-dashes, no filler
Plain sentences, ordinary punctuation, and no adjective doing the work a fact should do.
The mark
How to use it, and how not to.
Correct
- Copper mark on carbon or bone, at any size down to 24 pixels.
- Clear space of at least the mark’s own width on every side.
- Wordmark set in Archivo Bold, with the mono descriptor beneath it.
- Single colour reproduction in carbon or bone where copper is unavailable.
Never
- Placed on a photograph without a solid plate behind it.
- Recoloured, outlined, rotated, or given a shadow.
- Set with the wordmark in any face other than Archivo.
- Stretched to fit a space it does not fit.
Next step
Talk to the engineer who would run your build.
No discovery call with a salesperson, no deck. A senior engineer reads what you send and replies with a real assessment, including when we think you shouldn’t build it.
