Let’s step out of traditional brand guidelines.
Most guidelines are written to be admired, then never opened again. This one is built to settle arguments. What is fixed is marked fixed, what is still open is marked open, and the files are one click from every page.
Three things worth knowing before you go looking for a rule.
What this covers
Anything that carries the Haux name. The studio, contractors, and clients producing Haux-branded material. If you are about to make something and you are guessing, the answer is here.
Fixed and flexible
The mark, the three primary colours, the typefaces and the word lists are fixed. Changing them is a conversation with the studio, not a decision made in a file. Layout, imagery and motion are guidance, and judgement inside them is expected.
When it is wrong
A guideline that cannot answer your case is a gap in the guideline, not a licence to improvise. Governance names who to ask and how the answer gets written back in.
01 · Start here
What this guideline is for, who it binds, and the four things that are fixed rather than guidance.
02 · Strategy
The positioning the identity is built to express: audience, promise, and the tension the brand resolves.
03 · Brand architecture
How Haux, its products and its ventures relate: naming, endorsement, and what is allowed its own mark.
04 · Logo
The griffin and the wordmark: construction on the 12° angle, clearspace, minimum sizes and permitted lockups.
05 · Colour
Three primary ramps, eight structural neutrals, three gradients, and the 60/30/10 ratio that governs all of them.
06 · Typography
Accia Flare for display, CC Timeline for text, JetBrains Mono for meta, and the tracking rules that follow case.
07 · Voice and tone
How Haux sounds in writing, how the register shifts by context, and the words the brand does not use.
08 · Graphic elements
The 12° diagonal, the rule system, framing devices and the pattern library built from the griffin geometry.
09 · Motion
Easing curves, duration bands, entrance and exit behaviour, and how the system responds to reduced motion.
10 · Art direction
Photography, crop, light and subject: what a Haux image looks like and what it never looks like.
11 · Layout
The 8% margin, the right-hand alignment axis, and how composition scales from a business card to a billboard.