Workhorse Digital

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Strategy & Voice

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Brand Strategy

#brand-strategySpring 2016 to September 2017

Positioned a new civic-technology practice as knowledge architects for organizations driving systemic change. Six values, four pillars, one tagline. The strategy poster carried the founding bet that a thriving knowledge ecosystem combines people, process, and technology.

feature · Change is the new status quo. Carried the practice's posture: working on social change as the default condition, not the exception.Tagline
feature · Strategy. Community and Collaboration. Content. Data. The ecosystem the practice diagnosed for clients was the same one the brand ran on.Four-pillar ecosystem
feature · Experience matters. Build a better world. Work with you, not for you. Work hard with heart. Think holistically. People first.Six brand values

Voice & Messaging

#voice-messaging2017 (serialized to platform 2026)

Plainspoken. Ambitious. Warm. Six character traits (Holistic, Practical, Empowering, Ambitious, Heartfelt, Human-centered) and a manifesto rule that the practice does the work with clients, not for them. Voice now serialized as tokens in the platform so the AI writes in-brand.

system · Tone (Plainspoken, Ambitious, Warm), values, character traits, and the studio pull-quote. Lives at tokens/brands/ideal-state/voice.json.voice.json ↗
feature · Plainspoken. Ambitious. Warm. The compression test for every piece of copy the brand shipped.Three-word character

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Brand & Identity

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Logo & Marks

#logo-marksDesigned 2017. Locked September 2017.

Pronunciation-key logotype. The brand name set inside phonetic brackets with a macron over the I and a slash before /State. The mark reads as the IPA spelling of the practice's name and as a filepath from current state to ideal state.

system · Primary mark. Two-line stack inside the bracket device.Stacked logotype
system · Secondary mark. One-line wordmark for narrow headers and business-card chips.Horizontal logotype
system · Small-format mark. A bracketed Id for favicons and any spot under 50px.ID monogram
system · Alternate badge. Stacked logotype inside the bracket-box wrapper. Substitutes for the stacked lockup on darker collateral.Bracketed mark

Typography Systems

#typography-systems2017

One family. Two registers. Cartograph Sans CF (Connary Fagen) as the workhorse face. Cartograph Mono CF carrying captions, labels, and the path-notation logotype itself. A humanist family with a shared mono skeleton.

system · Primary face. Headlines, body, eyebrows, navigation.Cartograph Sans CF
system · Secondary face. Captions, kickers, label type, and the path-notation logotype itself.Cartograph Mono CF

Brand Guidelines

#brand-guidelinesDelivered September 21, 2017

A web-format styleguide spec that documented the full system. Strategy, character, color, type, logo, sub-brands, imagery, applications. Built so the practice could onboard a new designer or vendor against a single source.

document · Full 30-page web-format styleguide. Source of the spec now mirrored at /brand/ideal-state.2017 Web Styleguide
system · Modern web rebuild of the 2017 styleguide as a versioned spec. Serves /brand/ideal-state/spec.json to AI tools.Live brand book ↗

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Content & Editorial

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Publication Design

#publication-design2017

A white-paper template the practice ran its long-form research on. Topographic royal-blue cover with the sub-brand mark on the cover. Modular interior grid for stories and sidebars. Tangerine accents on numbered process steps and pull-quotes.

production · Modular template the practice extended across the research series. Topographic cover, modular interior, tangerine accents on the process steps.White paper template

Editorial Design

#editorial-design2017

A PowerPoint master template with topographic chapter dividers and the secondary illustration set for section openers. A one-sheet handout summarizing the practice. An internal Design Process Map for engagement kickoffs.

production · PowerPoint master with topographic chapter dividers and the secondary illustration set anchoring section openers.Presentation template
production · Tri-fold summarizing the practice. Topographic cover, four-pillar ecosystem diagram on the interior, contact panel.One-sheet handout
production · Internal-facing process diagram. Build, Human-Centered Design, Workspace. Used inside the studio and on engagement kickoff decks.Design Process Map

Print Design

#print-design2017

Business identity set. Cards with the tangerine block and horizontal logotype on the face, square ID monogram on the back. Letterhead anchored by the stacked logotype.

production · Cards (tangerine block face, ID monogram back) plus letterhead in the same system.Business identity

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Photography & Film

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Art Direction

#art-direction2017

Two illustration registers and a signature topographic ground. Primary illustrations as monoweight outline arrangements of small icons (charts, brains, lightbulbs, documents) read as a knowledge landscape. Secondary illustrations as figurative posters on the topographic ground. The texture was the brand's ambient.

system · Monoweight outline, tangerine on white. Ambient line work composed of small icons arranged as a knowledge landscape. Used on section openers and white-paper interiors.Primary illustrations
system · Figurative posters on the topographic ground. Solid color blocking, narrative scenes. Used for posters, social posts, and presentation chapter dividers.Secondary illustrations
system · Contour-line texture in two colorways: royal blue for institutional moments, tangerine for warm moments. The brand's ambient.Topographic ground
system · Themify open-source set plus a custom outline-icon extension for moments the open set could not cover.Iconography