Example brief: Brand identity
A real brief: the brand behind Yumi itself, written in the How to brief Yumi format.
Goal: We’re launching YUMI, a design subscription for founders & small teams, and it needs an identity. It has to read senior, but with a bit of irreverence in it. The test I keep coming back to: drop it in a feed of beige agency sites and you should spot it instantly. And I don’t want a logo, I want a system. Color, type, components that hold up everywhere we show up (website, Trello board, client decks) without a designer babysitting them.
Copy / naming: The name is YUMI, uppercase. Two readings, both intentional: yumi (弓) is Japanese for the bow (precision, mastery, one clean shot), and it’s also “you & me”, because the whole subscription is a direct 1:1, no outsourcing. Voice: short and confident, no adjective soup. The tagline territory we keep circling: “The design subscription for founders & small teams.”
References: koto.studio for how bold, playful and systematic it is. teenage.engineering for the playful-technical energy. nothing.tech for the terminal/pixel typography they turned into a signature. What the three share is exactly what I’m after: one loud signature, and total commitment to it.
Assets: None. We start from scratch.
Brand: One acid accent (#EAEB00) on black & white. Pixel/terminal display font for the headlines, a clean grotesque for the body. Flat cards, no gradients.
Format: Logo (SVG), color + type tokens set up in Framer, OG images, favicon.
Delivered in ~48h. Live at yumidesign.co.
Why this brief worked
Steal the structure
Goal: We’re launching YUMI, a design subscription for founders & small teams, and it needs an identity. It has to read senior, but with a bit of irreverence in it. The test I keep coming back to: drop it in a feed of beige agency sites and you should spot it instantly. And I don’t want a logo, I want a system. Color, type, components that hold up everywhere we show up (website, Trello board, client decks) without a designer babysitting them. Copy / naming: The name is YUMI, uppercase. Two readings, both intentional: yumi (弓) is Japanese for the bow (precision, mastery, one clean shot), and it’s also “you & me”, because the whole subscription is a direct 1:1, no outsourcing. Voice: short and confident, no adjective soup. The tagline territory we keep circling: “The design subscription for founders & small teams.” References: koto.studio for how bold, playful and systematic it is. teenage.engineering for the playful-technical energy. nothing.tech for the terminal/pixel typography they turned into a signature. What the three share is exactly what I’m after: one loud signature, and total commitment to it. Assets: None. We start from scratch. Brand: One acid accent (#EAEB00) on black & white. Pixel/terminal display font for the headlines, a clean grotesque for the body. Flat cards, no gradients. Format: Logo (SVG), color + type tokens set up in Framer, OG images, favicon.