Brand guide · v3.2 · 2026-07-15

Ink. Paper. One gold.

Three colors, chosen by math. The accent is the heritage gold carried down to the only luminance where a single color holds body-grade contrast on white AND black.

Skalers Gold

$100K

on white · 4.5:1

$100K

on black · 4.7:1

Skalers Gold#BE5A07

Why this exact gold: a color’s contrast against white and against black trade off against each other; they balance (about 4.6:1) at exactly one luminance. #BE5A07 sits on it: 4.5:1 on white, 4.7:1 on black, both WCAG body-text grade. The original pale gold #be5a07 measured 1.4:1 on white, which is why the old system had to ban light backgrounds. Same warmth, same family, now visible everywhere.

The neutrals

Ink#0A0A0A

Text on paper. The dark ground for reels, thumbnails, and the side vignettes.

Paper#FFFFFF

The funnel ground. Cards on paper: #FAFAFA with #E5E5E5 borders.

Type

Archivo Black, display

Titles. ALWAYS UPPERCASE.

Poppins 700, subheads

Section labels, buttons, stat labels.

Inter, body. Readable, quiet, never decorated.

Geist Mono for numbers in tables and code.

The rules

Three colors total: ink, paper, gold. Nothing else, ever.
Body text is never the accent. Ink-on-paper or paper-on-ink only.
The accent marks what matters: the CTA, THE number, active states, links. If everything is gold, nothing is.
One accent moment per section.
The funnel is light-first (paper ground) with dark side vignettes framing the content column. Dashboards, reels, and thumbnails may run dark; gold holds there without a variant.
Titles are Archivo Black, ALWAYS UPPERCASE. Subheads Poppins 700. Body Inter. Numbers tabular.
No em dashes in copy. Ever.
Real urgency only: live dates, true capacity. No countdown theater.

Tokens

--paper:  #ffffff;
--ink:    #0a0a0a;
--accent: #be5a07;  /* Skalers Gold, the only accent */

Source of truth: skalers/shared/src/brand-tokens.css. Retired: the dark-only six-surface system and the pale gold #be5a07; legacy aliases map to Skalers Gold so old surfaces keep working.