Brand guide · v4.0 · 2026-08-09

Ink. Paper. One gold.

Three colors. The accent is a warm, burnished gold. It is unmistakable on ink and it is a fill, never text, on paper. One color, two jobs.

Skalers Gold

$100K

on white · a fill with ink on top · 8.32:1

gold as text here would be 2.38:1, which fails

$100K

on black · 8.32:1 · body grade

Skalers Gold#CFA05A

Why this exact gold: it was chosen for how it reads, not for a contrast score, and the numbers are stated here rather than hidden. Against ink it measures 8.32:1, comfortably body grade, and it is the richest the brand has ever looked on a dark ground. Against white it measures 2.38:1, which fails every text threshold including display sizes. That is not a flaw to work around, it is the rule: on paper the gold is a fill, a rule, or a dot, and the thing sitting on it is ink. Gold buttons carry ink labels. Small links on white stay ink. Everywhere the brand runs dark, which is the members area, reels, and thumbnails, the gold is used freely as text.

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.
Gold buttons carry INK labels, never white. White on gold is 2.4:1 and unreadable.
On paper the gold is a FILL, a rule, or a dot, with ink on top. It is never text on white, at any size.
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 run dark; the gold is at its strongest there.
Green (#16A34A) and red (#DC2626) are semantic only: good and bad. They are never decoration, and they are never the accent.
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-brand:     #cfa05a;       /* Skalers Gold, the only accent */
--accent-brand-rgb: 207, 160, 90;  /* rgba(var(--accent-brand-rgb), a) */

/* utilities: text-accent-brand, bg-accent-brand, border-accent-brand */

Source of truth: products/site/src/app/globals.css. The token name is color-neutral on purpose, so the next re-rule is one line, and every shadcn token that used to carry its own teal-derived oklch() now points straight at it. History: a pale gold #F8D380 measured 1.4:1 on white and forced dark backgrounds everywhere; a burnt orange replaced it on 2026-07-15; Skalers Teal replaced that on 2026-07-31; Skalers Gold replaced the teal on 2026-08-09. The legacy alias --accent-gold points at --accent-brand and is finally accurate again.