# Stele brand guidelines

These rules keep the Stele logo and imagery consistent wherever they appear. They cover the logo files in this kit, the colors, the typefaces and the imagery. For a use these pages do not cover, write to [serkan@stele-ai.dev](mailto:serkan@stele-ai.dev).

## The logo

The mark is a small piece of a project graph seen through a frame. One node is selected and ringed in knowledge blue. Two neighbours are highlighted because they are linked to it. Behind them, faint nodes and dashed links stand for the rest of the record. The frame cuts them off because the record continues past it.

That is what Stele does for an agent. Out of everything a project knows, it brings forward the few things that matter for the work in front of it.

### Files

| File | Use |
| --- | --- |
| `stele-lockup-light` | The default logo: mark and wordmark, for light backgrounds. |
| `stele-lockup-dark` | The same logo for dark backgrounds. |
| `stele-mark-light`, `stele-mark-dark` | The mark alone, for square spaces where the lockup does not fit. |
| `stele-icon-light`, `stele-icon-dark` | The mark on its own tile, for avatars and app icons. The tile carries its own ground, so it reads on any color. |
| `stele-mark-small-light`, `stele-mark-small-dark` | A simplified mark for sizes below 24 px. |

Every file comes as SVG and PNG. The PNGs have transparent backgrounds. The SVGs need no fonts installed.

### Lockup proportions

Let x be the height of the mark.

- The wordmark is "Stele" in Instrument Serif Regular at 0.86x, tracked +2%. It is centered on the mark, so its capitals sit inside the mark's height.
- The gap between the mark and the S is 0.34x.
- There is no stacked lockup. Where the horizontal lockup does not fit, use the mark alone.

### Clear space

Keep an empty margin of 0.5x on every side of the logo. No text, image edge or other logo enters that margin.

### Minimum sizes

- Use the full mark at 24 px or larger on screen, and 8 mm or larger in print.
- Below 24 px, use the small mark. The full mark's faint field turns to noise at that size.
- Keep the lockup at least 96 px wide.

### Misuse

- Don't enlarge the wordmark. Its capitals stay shorter than the mark.
- Don't stretch, squash, rotate or set the logo on a curve.
- Don't recolor it. Ink, blue and ochre are fixed.
- Don't add shadows, outlines, glows or gradients.
- Don't place it over photos, illustrations or busy screenshots.
- Don't use a light file on a dark ground, or a dark file on a light ground.
- Don't retype the name in another font, in capitals or with extra words.

## Color

Stele is mostly paper and ink. Blue always means knowledge and ochre always means tasks, in the logo and in the product. Use them sparingly and never swap them.

| Color | Hex | RGB | Role |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Paper | `#FEFDFC` | 254 253 252 | Ground |
| Ink | `#1E212B` | 30 33 43 | Text and linework |
| Knowledge blue | `#2B6DC8` | 43 109 200 | Knowledge; the selected node |
| Task ochre | `#C08838` | 192 136 56 | Tasks and work |

On dark grounds the logo lifts both accents a step:

| Color | Hex |
| --- | --- |
| Night | `#14171F` |
| Light ink | `#E8E9EF` |
| Blue on dark | `#5B9BE8` |
| Ochre on dark | `#D4A060` |

For small colored text on paper, use Blue ink `#005EA8` (6.5:1) or Ochre ink `#955816` (5.6:1). Task ochre reaches only 3:1 on paper, so keep it for marks, rules and large type. As a guide, a layout is about 68% paper, 22% ink, 6% blue and 4% ochre.

## Typefaces

All three are free under the SIL Open Font License and available from Google Fonts.

| Typeface | Role |
| --- | --- |
| Instrument Serif | Headlines, the wordmark and pull quotes. Sentence case. Italic, in ochre, marks the one word that matters. |
| Inter | Body text and interface. |
| JetBrains Mono | Labels, ids, code and other metadata. Uppercase only for short labels, with wide letter spacing. |

## The name

Write **Stele**, with a capital S and the rest lowercase, in the same typeface as the surrounding text. Say STEE-lee. Avoid STELE in running text, "Stele AI" and "the Stele".

## Imagery

### Screenshots

- Show real data, from a public project or a demo account. Never mock up records or numbers.
- Frame screenshots on paper with 12 px corners, a hairline border and one soft shadow. Don't use device mockups or perspective tilts.
- Crop to one idea. A cropped panel is better than a full screen shrunk until it cannot be read.
- Caption with the capture date, because the interface changes.

### Illustrations

- The illustrations use a loose ink line and flat washes on paper. They follow one recurring developer through warm, everyday rooms.
- Scenes fade out at the edges, so they look printed on the page.
- Keep words and logos out of the drawing. Set headlines and the logo beside it.
- The screens in the drawings are suggestions. Don't caption an illustration as a screenshot of the product.
- Credit them as "Illustration: Stele".