Do not squash
Never scale X and Y independently. The ellipse ratio is the bloom.
Identity system / 2026
The bloom is the mark.
Eight elongated petals. A terracotta-deep center. This book is how Margarita Creative looks, moves, and stays itself in the wild.
01 / The mark
An eight-petal margarita, not a cocktail.
The primary brand mark is the footer bloom: terracotta fading to alabaster along each petal, a terracotta-deep disc at the center, eight ellipses on a 45 degree grid.
- Construction Eight ellipses, rx 7.5 / ry 23 in a 128 unit square. Rotations 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, 315. Center circle radius 12.5, fill #A44A23.
- Gradient Petals run terracotta #BF5A2E at the tip to alabaster-dim #E2DAC7 at the base. Never reverse it. Never rainbow it.
- One mark The bloom is the only mark, from the tab icon to a cover. No simplified stand-in for small sizes.
02 / Lockups
Bloom plus the wordmark, never a free-floating serif.
"Margarita" in Fraunces 500. "Creative" in Fraunces italic. Olive on light, cream on dark. Tracking stays tight. Sentence case only.
Horizontal, light
Default for decks, proposals, email headers, and the top of a printed page.
Horizontal, dark
Olive and olive-deep bands, footers, night slides, inverse covers.
Stacked, light
Square spaces: avatars at large size, stickers, the close of a case study.
Stacked, dark
When the field is square and the ground is olive-deep.
03 / Clear space and size
Give the bloom a petal of air.
Clear space equals one petal length on every side (the major radius of a single ellipse). Nothing, including the wordmark tracking, may enter that box.
x
x
x
x
Minimum size
- Screen lockup No narrower than 160px. Below that, use the bloom alone.
- Print bloom No smaller than 12mm across. Lockup no smaller than 40mm wide.
- Favicon The bloom is the favicon at every size, 16px included. There is no separate glyph.
04 / Don'ts
Protect the count, the gradient, and the air.
If a treatment needs explaining, it is already wrong. These six are the failures we see first.
Do not drop a shadow
No outline, glow, or cast. The mark sits flat on the ground.
Do not free-rotate
Petals live on 45 degree stops. A 17 degree tilt is decoration, not the mark.
Do not sit on noise
Patterned grounds need a solid plate or the photo overlay. Never raw clash.
Do not simplify to four circles
This was a placeholder that leaked into production. The bloom is petals, at every size, favicon included.
Do not recolor petals
No mint, no gold, no one-petal highlight. Olive, cream, terracotta. That is the set.
05 / Color
Olive holds. Alabaster breathes. Terracotta acts.
Sixty / thirty / ten. If more than one terracotta element competes in a viewport, the accent is already overused. CTAs win.
Olive on alabaster, and cream on olive, both clear WCAG AA for body text. Do not set terracotta type on olive at small sizes. Cream for text, terracotta for the fill or the underline.
06 / Type
A high-contrast serif for the thought. A humanist sans for the work.
Fraunces carries the editorial signal. Plus Jakarta Sans carries UI, body, and forms. Headlines stay sentence case. Uppercase is reserved for the eyebrow.
Considered, warm, exact.
We do not just make things look good. We align design with the number that pays: revenue from the list you already have, with the site and brand that make those campaigns convert.
Display
Margarita Creative
Italic
Creative
Body
Plus Jakarta Sans 400 / 17px / 1.7. Line length 60 to 75 characters. Never set long UI in the serif.
Eyebrow
For Heads of Growth
07 / Patterns
Petals as rhythm, olive as geometry.
Repeating tiles for email headers, slide backs, proposal covers, and quiet website bands. Keep terracotta under 10% of the field unless the pattern is the only content.
Petal field
Small blooms on alabaster. Email headers, end slides.
Petal field, olive
Inverse of the field. Covers, dark footers, waitlist pages.
Petal axis
Elongated ellipses on the 45 degree grid. Stationery backs.
Olive lattice
Diamonds, hairline crosses, terracotta centers. Slide grids.
Geo blocks
Olive, alabaster, terracotta-wash squares. Poster quarters.
Olive stripes
Sharp vertical bands. Binders, spine tape, wayfinding.
08 / Backgrounds
Six grounds. Pick one. Do not mix them in a single band.
A band is olive, or alabaster, or a wash, or a pattern, or a photographic overlay, or olive-deep. The bloom and type then take the contrast that ground allows.
Olive
Default dark. Heroes, proof, close.
Alabaster
Default light. Body, forms, this book.
Terracotta wash
Soft radial heat. Quotes, one-sheet backs.
Patterned
A tile from section 07, drifting slowly.
Image at full bleed, then olive at 55 to 80% plus grain. Type in cream. Never raw photo under the bloom.
Dark olive
Footer, overlays, night mode of the book.
09 / Icons
Sharp chrome. Petal as the hot point.
Studio icons share the bloom language: elongated ellipses where the accent lives, square corners on every UI frame. Terracotta fill, olive stroke. Real SVG files, not a font.
Hover rotates the glyph eight degrees in 180ms. Press scales the tile to 0.98. Both respect prefers-reduced-motion. Files live in brand/icons/ and website/assets/brand/icons/.
10 / Motion
The bloom sways. Everything else stays calm.
Petal sway is the only ambient loop. Logo reveal, pattern drift, and icon micro-motion are supporting acts. User-initiated motion finishes under 300ms. No linear easing for motion. Reduced motion turns every loop off.
Petal sway
6.5s ease-in-out, plus or minus 4 degrees, staggered delays. The live footer already runs this. Do not add a second focal loop on the same view.
Pattern drift
42s ease-in-out, 72px of travel. Backgrounds only. Never on type, never on the mark.
- Logo reveal The cover bloom scales and un-blurs in 280ms, cubic-bezier(0.23, 1, 0.32, 1). Then sway takes over.
- Icon micro-motion Hover 180ms ease-out. Active scale 0.98 in 160ms. No bounce.
- Reduced motion All of the above become static. Scroll-reveal also snaps in.
11 / Voice
A senior partner who respects the time, not a vendor pitching features.
Three words at every touchpoint: considered, warm, exact. Lead with the client's outcome, then the craft. Short declarative sentences. Concrete nouns.
We are
- Outcome first, then the making.
- Specific proof. Only real numbers.
- Fluent, synchronous, accountable to one inbox.
We are not
- Cocktail tropes, beach bars, lime wedges.
- Hype words, fake urgency, invented testimonials.
- Em dashes, en dashes, emoji, curly quotes.
12 / How to use this book
Source files, then the live site.
The book is the public face of the system. The SVGs are the files you actually place. UI on the marketing site may stay pill-shaped; this book and every new artifact keep sharp chrome around organic petals.
- Marks
margarita-creative/brand/marks/andwebsite/assets/brand/marks/ - Patterns
margarita-creative/brand/patterns/andwebsite/assets/brand/patterns/ - Icons
margarita-creative/brand/icons/andwebsite/assets/brand/icons/ - Tokens Locked in
brand/brand-system.mdandwebsite/assets/css/site.css - Contact yender@margaritacreative.com