WorkhorseWorkhorse
WorkNotesAbout
ContentsMobile edition
IWorkIINotesIIIAbout
RSVP for launch
Workhorse · MMXXVI
OverviewVoiceAudienceAppliedDecisionsChangelogDemoAPI
00Top01Foundation02Heritage03Color04Typography05Logo06Voice07Sub-brands08Applications09Spec
Live brand bookv1.0.0Updated 2017-09-21Est. 2016Plainspoken · Ambitious · Warm
Ideal StateBrand book

Ideal State helped organizations working toward social change design and build the knowledge ecosystems that connected their people, process, and technology. Practice and theory delivered together

Knowledge architecture for organizations driving systemic change.

Practice

Change is the new status quo.

Platform register

Change is the new status quo.

Read the engagement→
Machine-readablespec.jsonspec.mdtokens.css

Brand Identity Guidelines / Color

A warm signal in a cool field.

Tangerine over royal blue. Practice over theory.

The palette runs on two registers. Tangerine carries the energy. Royal blue carries the institutional weight. The two halves talk to each other across every surface, which is how a knowledge architecture is supposed to behave.

01 / Color

Color tokens

Click a swatch to copy its hex value.

Brand Identity Guidelines / Typography

One family. Two registers.

Cartograph Sans and Mono CF.

Cartograph is a humanist family with a shared mono skeleton. The sans cut runs as the workhorse face. The mono cut handles captions, kickers, code, and any moment where the type should feel like a printed label. Pairing them keeps the brand on a single typographic key without going monotone.

02 / Typography

Type system

Cartograph Sans CF · primary

Federal service is the highest form of work.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

0123456789

Usage

Cartograph Sans CF (Connary Fagen). The brand's workhorse face. Headlines, body, labels.

Stack

'Cartograph Sans CF', 'JetBrains Mono', ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, sans-serif

Cartograph Mono CF · mono

ECQ · SES · CFJST · v1.1.0 · 2024 / 09 / 26

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789

Usage

Cartograph Mono CF. Captions, kickers, version stamps, and the path-notation logotype itself.

Stack

'Cartograph Mono CF', 'JetBrains Mono', ui-monospace, SFMono-Regular, Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, monospace

Brand Identity Guidelines / Logo

A pronunciation key. A filepath. A pivot.

The marks of a system architecture.

The primary logotype is the brand name set inside the brackets of phonetic notation. The macron over the I marks the long 'ī'. The slash before /State both separates syllables and behaves as a filepath. Read together they form the visual pronunciation: /īdē[ə]l/stāt/. The marks all extend from the same device.

03 / Marks

Logo system

Stacked Logotype

The primary logo. Two-line stack: Ideal / State. Use for the largest and most recognizable applications. Reads as the visual pronunciation key.

4 / 7
01Default
Pending design
Default#F0EEE9
02On dark
Pending design
On dark#F0EEE9
03On light
Pending design
On light#F0EEE9
04On brand
Pending design
On brand#F0EEE9
05Reversed
Pending design
Reversed#F0EEE9
06Mono black
Pending design
Mono black#F0EEE9
07Mono white
Pending design
Mono white#F0EEE9

Horizontal Logotype

The secondary lockup. One-line wordmark for narrow headers, business-card chips, and any application where the stacked mark would crowd the layout.

4 / 7
01Default
Pending design
Default#F0EEE9
02On dark
Pending design
On dark#F0EEE9
03On light
Pending design
On light#F0EEE9
04On brand
Pending design
On brand#F0EEE9
05Reversed
Pending design
Reversed#F0EEE9
06Mono black
Pending design
Mono black#F0EEE9
07Mono white
Pending design
Mono white#F0EEE9

ID Monogram

The small-format mark. A bracketed 'Id' for favicons, app icons, business-card backs, and any spot under 50px where the wordmark would lose detail.

4 / 7
01Default
Pending design
Default#F0EEE9
02On dark
Pending design
On dark#F0EEE9
03On light
Pending design
On light#F0EEE9
04On brand
Pending design
On brand#F0EEE9
05Reversed
Pending design
Reversed#F0EEE9
06Mono black
Pending design
Mono black#F0EEE9
07Mono white
Pending design
Mono white#F0EEE9

Bracketed Mark

The alternate badge. Stacked logotype inside the bracket-box used for the monogram. Substitutes for the stacked lockup on darker collateral, posters, and merchandise stamps.

4 / 7
01Default
Pending design
Default#F0EEE9
02On dark
Pending design
On dark#F0EEE9
03On light
Pending design
On light#F0EEE9
04On brand
Pending design
On brand#F0EEE9
05Reversed
Pending design
Reversed#F0EEE9
06Mono black
Pending design
Mono black#F0EEE9
07Mono white
Pending design
Mono white#F0EEE9

04 / Voice

Voice and values

Personality

Plainspoken · Ambitious · Warm

Tone

Plainspoken, Ambitious, Warm

Photography

Imagery direction

Principles

  • Linework before color. The grammar is set in monoweight outline. Color enters when the surface needs more energy.
  • The topographic ground does the talking. Resist adding more pattern on top of it.
  • Illustration is part of the system, not decoration. Use it to describe an architecture, not to fill a page.

00 / Foundation

What we stand on

Position
Knowledge architects for social-change organizations.
Tagline
Change is the new status quo.
Homepage line
Change is the new status quo.
Descriptor
Knowledge architecture for organizations driving systemic change.
Value proposition
Ideal State helped organizations working toward social change design and build the knowledge ecosystems that connected their people, process, and technology. Practice and theory delivered together.
Origin
Founded in 2016 as a civic-technology consultancy. The name reads as a literal pronunciation key. /īdē[ə]l/stāt/. The slash before /State is both a filepath separator and a transition mark from current state to ideal state. The brand carries the discipline of a system reference and the warmth of a stamp on letterhead.

01 / Heritage

Where we came from

“Change is the new status quo.”

Knowledge architecture for organizations driving systemic change.

Ideal State designed knowledge ecosystems for organizations working on social change. Practice and theory delivered together.

Brand Identity Guidelines

An ideal state is a destination.

/īdē[ə]l/stāt/.

The brand begins as a pronunciation key. A slash. A bar over the I. A bracket holding the syllables together. Read literally it is the phonetic spelling of the practice's name. Read as a system reference it is a filepath from the current state to the ideal one. Read as a stamp on a white-paper cover it is the practice's signature.

Founded in 2016.

The practice opened to design knowledge architectures for organizations working on systemic change. The starting bet: a thriving knowledge ecosystem is one that combines people, process, and technology to redefine how people work together and achieve maximum impact.

The 2017 brand system carried that bet through. A pronunciation-key logotype. A Cartograph type pairing. A topographic ground. Four sub-brands written as filepaths. Templates for the documents the practice actually shipped.

Background

Ideal State worked with mission-driven organizations on the harder half of digital transformation: turning a stack of tools, files, and teams into a single working knowledge system. The brand carried that practice through identity, sub-brands, and the document templates the work actually shipped on.

Brand character

Plainspoken. Ambitious. Warm.

  • Holistic
  • Practical
  • Empowering
  • Ambitious
  • Heartfelt
  • Human-centered

Brand pillars

  1. 01

  2. 02

  3. 03

  4. 04

Brand Identity Guidelines / Imagery

Two illustration registers. One signature texture.

Linear schematics, figurative posters, topographic ground.

The primary illustrations read as schematics of an organization. Monoweight outline, tangerine on white, ambient line work. The secondary illustrations are figurative posters on the topographic ground. Bolder color blocking, narrative scenes. The texture itself is a contour pattern that nods to the Cartograph type family. Together they form the visual grammar of a system reference.

Principles

  • Linework before color. The grammar is set in monoweight outline. Color enters when the surface needs more energy.
  • The topographic ground does the talking. Resist adding more pattern on top of it.
  • Illustration is part of the system, not decoration. Use it to describe an architecture, not to fill a page.

06 / Sub-brands

The portfolio

Service area

Ideal/Knowledge

The knowledge-architecture practice. Information design, taxonomy work, content systems.

Service area

Ideal/Community

The community + collaboration practice. Stakeholder engagement, focus groups, user stories.

Service area

Ideal/Events

The convening practice. Workshops, training sessions, strategy sprints.

Service area

Ideal/Systems

The technology practice. Intranet, extranet, and digital tools that hold the knowledge architecture together.

Program

Ideal/Process

ID_COURSE.01. The process program. How the practice is run.

Program

Ideal/Research

ID_COURSE.02. The research program. How the studio listens before designing.

Program

Ideal/Mindset

ID_COURSE.03. The mindset program. How the studio teaches the orientation that makes the rest possible.

07 / Applications

Applied work

The brand in production. Campaigns, books, certificates, web surfaces, agency materials. The applied work is the proof the system holds together.

  • Business Identity Set

    print

    Business cards with the tangerine block + horizontal logotype on the face, square ID monogram on the back. Letterhead in the same system with the stacked logotype anchored top-left.

  • White Paper Template

    print

    Full white-paper series template. Topographic royal-blue cover, sub-brand mark on the cover (Ideal/Community, Ideal/Knowledge, etc.), tangerine accents on numbered process steps and pull-quotes, modular interior grid for stories + sidebars.

  • Presentation Template

    digital

    PowerPoint master template with topographic chapter dividers, the brand's tangerine accent rules, and the secondary illustration set for section openers.

  • One-sheet Handout

    print

    Tri-fold handout summarizing the practice. Front cover: topographic ground + 'Change is the new status quo'. Interior: the four-pillar ecosystem diagram, services list, contact panel.

  • Design Process Map

    internal

    Internal-facing process diagram (Build / Human-Centered Design / Workspace). Used inside the studio and on engagement kickoff decks to set expectations for the way the practice works.

08 / Spec

This is the canon

Brand book version 1.0.0, last updated 2017-09-21. Machine-readable spec for agents and developers:

  • spec.json · structured, full
  • spec.md · prose-fluent, agent-optimized
Brand book v1.0.0 · Last updated 2017-09-21 · spec.json · spec.md · tokens.css · API