Brand guidelines
The identity reads instrumentation, not spy-thriller. Near-black ground, one teal signal colour, oxblood reserved for handling markings, and density that looks like a working system rather than a brochure about one. The report is the brand — it should look like something that came out of an assessment unit.
The mark
Four graduated bars inside a bounded square. It is the probability yardstick — the doctrinal device the whole product enforces, where a judgement is expressed against defined bands rather than left to the reader’s interpretation. The frame is the boundary of what is assessed; the bars are the graduation.
It is four rectangles and a frame, so it survives being rendered at 16px in a browser tab, embossed on a report cover, or faxed. That was the constraint.
- Clear space of at least the mark’s height on every side.
- Minimum mark size 16px on screen, 6mm in print.
- Never stretch, rotate, outline, add a gradient, or add a shadow.
- Never place the accent mark on a mid-tone that drops contrast below 3:1.
Palette
One palette, two elevations. Document is the public site. Operations is the console, set a step darker because it is a workstation that gets stared at all day. Every foreground and signal value is shared, so moving from the site into the product does not feel like changing product. Both are explicit modes, not a system preference: the mode is a property of the surface.
Colour carries meaning and nothing else. Stamp is reserved for handling markings and blocking states; caution and good only ever encode grade, confidence or risk. If a colour is being used decoratively, it is being used wrongly.
| Token | Role | Document | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground | Page ground | #08090C | #06080A |
| Surface | Raised surfaces, cards, tables | #0F1216 | #0D1014 |
| Sunk | Recessed wells, hover states | #0B0D11 | #090B0E |
| Foreground | Primary text, headings | #E9EEF3 | #E9EEF3 |
| Secondary | Body copy, supporting text | #94A0AD | #94A0AD |
| Tertiary | Labels, metadata, references | #636E7B | #636E7B |
| Rule | Hairlines and borders | #20262E | #1E242C |
| Accent | Links, actions, live signals | #5EC7CD | #5EC7CD |
| Stamp | Handling markings, blocking states, high risk | #E06C5C | #E06C5C |
| Caution | Medium confidence, weak grades, deltas | #D8A04A | #D8A04A |
| Good | Corroborated, cleared, on target | #5AC394 | #5AC394 |
Typography
Investigative intelligence, run as a system
Headings and figures. Semibold at −0.03em tracking, balanced wrapping. A serif here would read law firm; the product is software, and it should say so.
Sources and information are graded separately, because they are different questions. A reliable source can pass on something wrong, and an unreliable source can be right. Collapsing the two into a single confidence score loses the distinction that matters most.
Running text at a 68-character measure. Never justified, never below 15px.
Labels, reference codes, grades, figures. Uppercase with 0.11em tracking for labels; tabular numerals wherever digits align.
Inter and DM Mono are bundled at build time, not fetched from a font CDN at run time. There is no third-party request on page load, nothing to fail, no layout shift, and no silent fallback that quietly changes how a client-facing surface looks. A system stack stands behind both in case a font file is ever blocked.
Tone of voice
- Lead with the answer. Bottom line up front, every time.
- Be specific. A number, a threshold, a named requirement.
- Say what you do not know, and what would change the assessment.
- Write for a competent professional who is not a security specialist.
- Use plain English. Explain any term you cannot avoid.
- Imply access to police, government or classified material. Ever.
- Use “military-grade”, “elite”, or spy vocabulary.
- Sell on fear. State the duty and the risk plainly instead.
- Hedge into uselessness, or over-claim into liability.
- Use stock imagery of hooded figures, padlocks, or binary rain.
Every public word must survive being read by his employer, a regulator, and an opposing solicitor. If a sentence would be awkward in front of any of those three, it does not ship.
Applications
Reports carry the mark top-left, the handling marking top-right in stamp, a reference code in mono, and a sign-off block with assessor name, accreditation, date, version and distribution list. Dense, ruled, and legible in monochrome.
The console uses operations mode with a persistent handling marking. The public site uses document mode. Email is plain text with a mono signature block — no HTML templates, no images.
Naming: “CM Intel” is the platform name. The trading name is still to be decided, and the recommendation is something neutral and institutional rather than initials — see the proposal.