Brand book
The Faxart brand
A small kit: the mark and the fax techniques behind it, the logo, the colours, the type, and the way we write. Enough to use the brand well and keep it consistent.
The mark, drawn for a fax
The icon is a letter F drawn the way the fax medium forced David Hockney to draw when he sent art down a phone line. Every constraint of the machine became a technique, and each one is in the mark.
Tone without grey
A fax is one bit per dot: black or white, no grey. Shade had to be faked with hatching, lines packed closer for darker tone. The F is filled that way, not with a flat colour.
Colour past the line
Hockney let a flat block of colour sit slightly off the drawn line, never quite inside it. The teal behind the F is shifted up and left, so it peeks out along one edge.
The scan line
A fax paints a page one horizontal line at a time as the paper rolls through. Faint scan lines cross the chip, the trace of the machine the page came off.
The dither
Where a real grey was wanted, the machine scattered dots, denser for darker. The amber halftone cluster on the mark is that dither, and a nod to a page going out.
Depth by cross-hatch
Hockney drew chunky block letters on his fax cover sheets, giving them a third dimension with cross-hatched shading rather than solid fill. The F has the same hatched extruded edge.
Many pieces, one picture
In 1989 Hockney faxed an artwork as many separate sheets the receiver taped into a grid, seams and all. That is Faxart itself: fragments from every channel, joined into one record.
Logo
The mark stands alone, or pairs with the wordmark. The chip is always dark, so the mark needs no special treatment on a light or dark background.
Clear space and size
Keep clear space around the mark equal to the chip's corner radius. The mark stays legible down to about 16 pixels; below that the hatching closes up, which is fine, it reads as a teal F. Use the favicon at small sizes and the wobble version larger.
Misuse
- Do not recolour the chip or the F. The dark chip is what lets the mark sit on any background.
- Do not stretch, squash, or rotate the mark. Scale it as a square.
- Do not drop the off-register colour or the hatching. They are the mark, not decoration.
- Do not place the bare F on a busy photo without its chip.
- Do not add a drop shadow or a glow. The cross-hatched edge is the only depth it needs.
Colour
Teal carries the brand, ink and paper do the work, and three signals (amber, green, coral) carry meaning. There is no purple here on purpose.
Brand teal
oklch(0.72 0.13 180) · ~#2dd4bf Primary actions, links, the highlight under a word.
Ink
var(--foreground) Body text and line work. Flips with the theme.
Paper
var(--background) / --card Page and card surfaces. The quiet ground.
Chip navy
#0f172a The field behind the mark, and nowhere else. Not a UI surface.
Amber
#f59e0b · --warn One pop: the dither, a caution, a single accent. Used sparingly.
Signal green
#34d399 · --ok Healthy, delivered, success.
Signal coral
#fb7185 · --bad Errors, failures, urgent.
Purple in quantity reads like ruined blue. Reach for teal, or for one of the signals when it carries meaning, before anything else.
Type
One family, Inter. Headings are bold with tight tracking; body is comfortable and a touch muted; numbers and addresses are set in mono so a fax number reads cleanly.
Faxart
Display · Inter, 700, tight tracking
Every channel, one path to the chart
Heading · Inter, 700
A fax lands on the trunk. A voicemail. A scan from the copier down the hall. Faxart reads each one on hardware you own and suggests where it goes.
Body · Inter, 400
5412084321@fax
Mono · numbers, addresses, code
Voice
We write to a smart, technical clinical reader. Precise, concrete, no fluff, no condescension. Let the meaning land rather than hammering it home.
Name the mechanism
Say what it does, not "AI". On-prem OCR, transcription, plain-English rules. The reader knows the stack; sell the outcome and the on-prem guarantee.
Paint a picture
Avoid umbrella words like multi-channel. Name the moment: a fax on the trunk, a voicemail, a scan from the copier down the hall, an email with a PDF.
It assists, you decide
Faxart suggests the chart and the people to notify. A person confirms. Never "it files automatically". This is the honest frame for a clinical reader.
Be honest about what is coming
Link a claim to the page that proves it. Where something is still on the way, say "coming" plainly rather than implying it ships today.
Icons and illustration
Interface icons are Lucide, one consistent line weight, never emoji. For warmth, the medium of each feature is drawn by hand: a confident line over an off-register colour blob, with a slight wobble, the same spirit as the mark.
Interface icons (Lucide)
Hand-drawn mediums
Downloads
The mark as an SVG.
Artworks and techniques referenced here are David Hockney's, shown in tribute. Faxart is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by David Hockney.