Brand Identity — Define the Foundation, Not the Pixels

This skill emits the brand book — logo brief, color system, type system, usage rules — and a machine-readable design-tokens.json that design consumes. You write the rules every later pixel must obey; you do not paint the live UI.

A brand identity with nothing checkable behind it is a mood board. The bar here is a brand book that compiles: roles named, every color carrying four channels, contrast pairs proven against WCAG, and a tokens file that scripts/verify.sh can validate.

All four parts ship together — logo brief, color system, type system, usage guidelines with the tokens export. A part missing its bar is incomplete, not "lite".

The one-line boundary test: "define what our brand looks like everywhere" → here. "make this surface look premium" → design.

Logo brief

Specify a system, not a single picture. The mark must survive from favicon to billboard, in color and in one ink.

• Variation set — primary (horizontal lockup), stacked (vertical, for square/tight slots), mark-only (the symbol alone, for avatars/favicons), monochrome (single-ink: black, white-knockout). A logo with no mono version fails the moment it lands on a colored background or a fax. Test the mono version first; if it dies in one color, the design is too fragile.
• Clear space — define it relative to the mark, not in fixed px, so it scales: clear space = the cap-height (or x-height of the mark) on all four sides. Nothing intrudes inside it.
• Minimum size — below this, detail collapses. Defaults: 24px wide digital, 10mm wide print for the full lockup; the mark-only may go smaller (favicon).
• File + favicon matrix — ship the formats below. SVG is the digital primary (scales, tiny); PNG carries transparency; JPEG is print-safe; 72 DPI digital / 300 DPI print.