Arturo Martin Ceres Brand Guidelines v1.6.1 · May 2026

The Ceres
brand book.

A field guide to the Ceres identity: how we name things, draw the mark, set type, choose colour, and show up in the world. Calm, technical, dark-first. Built for a tool people keep open all day.

Parent
Arturo Martin
Product
Ceres dashboard
Edition
v1.6.1
Owner
Brand & Design
Last review
May 2026
Cadence
Twice a year
01. Brand story

A tool, not a pitch.

Ceres is a SaaS dashboard for engineers, ops, and analysts; the kind of product people leave open in a background tab all day. Our job is to disappear into the work, then surface clarity at exactly the moment it's needed.

Mission

M

Make complex operational data legible at a glance, and trustworthy under scrutiny. Ceres replaces five tabs of dashboards with one room you can actually live in.

Vision

V

Every team running production systems deserves the kind of cool, focused, data-dense surface that pilots and traders take for granted. We're building it for everyone else.

Audience

A

Engineers, SREs, ops teams, analysts, and the PMs who sit between them. People who measure success in mean-time-to-resolution, not seats sold.

Brand pillars

01 — Calm

Long-session comfort. No dopamine loops, no celebratory overlays. The product earns trust by being predictable.

02 — Precise

Tabular numerals, exact values, sentence-case labels. Every pixel is in service of legibility under pressure.

03 — Technical

Built by people who've been on-call. The interface respects the user's expertise; jargon is welcome where it's accurate.

04 — Quietly warm

Cold tools fail their humans at 3am. The teal warmth in our brand says: we are with you in this.

The promise, in one sentence.

Built for the people
keeping the lights on.

USE: Tagline · primary SET: Inter Medium · -0.03em COLOR: --text-primary
02. Voice & tone

How Ceres sounds.

Precise, calm, low-theatrics. We use British spellings in product chrome (Colours, not Colors), sentence case for labels and buttons, and full stops in descriptions. We never use exclamation marks or emoji in product surfaces.

Conventions at a glance

Person
Neutral or third-person in docs. Second-person is welcome in empty states and helper text. "You can adjust these in Settings."
Casing
Sentence case for labels, headings, buttons. Uppercase only for eyebrow / metadata. "Save changes", not "Save Changes".
Spelling
British in chrome, navigation, marketing. Colours · behaviour · catalogue.
Numbers
Tabular figures everywhere. Abbreviate at scale in cards (1.2k, 3.4M); show exact values in tables.
Verbs
Direct, actionable, single word where possible. Save · Export · Archive · Retry. Avoid Please, Kindly, and the exclamation mark.
Emoji
Never in product chrome. The one exception is user-generated content (chat, comments).

Examples by surface

DO · Empty state
No alerts yet. Configure thresholds in Settings to start receiving them.
A reason there's nothing to see, plus the next action.
DON'T · Empty state
Looks like there's nothing here yet! 🎉 Get started by clicking the button below to create your first alert!
Hype, emoji, exclamation, vague CTA. None of it earns trust.
DO · Confirmation
Archive this workspace? Members lose access immediately.
Names the consequence. No filler. No "are you sure".
DON'T · Confirmation
Are you sure you want to archive? This action cannot be undone.
"Are you sure" is theatre. Tell people what changes.
DO · Error
Couldn't reach the server. Check your connection and try again.
Plain English. A specific next step.
DON'T · Error
Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later.
Apologetic, vague, useless. Errors should help, not soothe.
DO · Marketing
One screen for the systems your business runs on. Built for engineers and ops, by engineers and ops.
Concrete. Names the audience. Earns its claim.
DON'T · Marketing
Unlock your team's potential and supercharge productivity with the next-gen AI-powered observability platform!
Five buzzwords, zero specifics. We don't talk like this.
04. Color

Dark canvas, one brand colour, four accents.

The product lives on near-black. Teal #30B0C7 is the only brand colour. Camomile, magenta, aquamarine, and rose appear sparingly: in charts, tags, and marketing; never at full saturation on chrome.

Surface hierarchy

Canvas
#0A0A0A · --slate-950
Root background. Where everything lives.
Sidebar
#141414 · --slate-900
Navigation, drawers, inputs. One step up.
Card
#1C1C1E · --slate-800
Cards, sheets, modals. Two steps up.

Brand · Teal

Teal #30B0C7 is the one brand colour. It carries the logo, the active nav state, focused inputs, primary CTAs, links, and chart series 1. Use it where attention should land, and only there.

050
#DAF9FF
100
#9EF0FF
200
#61D8EE
main
#30B0C7
400
#0D98B1
500
#0588A0
600
#0C7487
700
#155C69
800
#0A414B
900
#042930
950
#022029

Accent palette

Used in charts and marketing; not in product chrome at full saturation. Pair the main tint with the 900/950 tint for tag pills (light text on a dark tinted background).

CamomileAa
Camomile · yellow
Warmth, attention, second chart series. Pair with --camomile-900 background.
#D5D14D · --camomile-main
MagentaAa
Magenta · purple
Editorial, third chart series, premium / "annotated" states.
#B05EC6 · --magenta-main
AquamarineAa
Aquamarine · mint
Fresh, optimistic, fourth chart series. Pairs naturally with teal.
#00D5BE · --aquamarine-main
RoseAa
Rose · pink
Editorial pairs with magenta. Distinct from --destructive.
#FF758C · --rose-main

Semantic

Positive
#30D158 · --positive
Healthy state, success confirmation, MTTR improvements.
Destructive
#FF453A · --destructive
Errors, deletes, alerts. Used sparingly to preserve weight.
Info
#0A84FF · --info
Informational toasts, neutral notices. Distinct from brand teal.

Pairing & accessibility

A1
Body text on canvas (#F6F6F6 on #0A0A0A) clears WCAG AAA at 18.5:1. Don't push body text below #8E8E93 (--text-secondary).
A2
Teal on canvas clears AA Large (4.6:1). For body-text usage, lift to --teal-200 (#61D8EE) which clears AAA.
A3
Accent main tints fail body-text contrast on canvas. Use them on tinted backgrounds (-900/-950) or as fills behind dark type.
A4
Never communicate state with colour alone. Pair with an icon, label, or shape, for the 8% of users with colour-vision deficiency.
05. Typography

IBM Plex Sans & Plex Mono.

A precise, technical pairing with engineering heritage. The Plex superfamily was drawn for IBM as a system typeface; it reads as serious, considered, and quietly elegant. Body type is set tight at 13px; headings rarely exceed 22px in product. We never ship bold (700).

Compare alternatives in Tweaks → Type pairing.

Calm, technical, legible
under pressure.

IBM Plex Sans · 88 / 84 Tracking -0.03em Weight 500 Color --text-primary on --surface-canvas

IBM Plex Sans

SIL OFL · IBM
ABCDEFGHIJKLM
abcdefghijklm
400 Regular 500 Medium 600 Semibold

IBM Plex Mono

SIL OFL · matched mono companion
0123456789
{ status: "ok" }
400 Regular 500 Medium

Type scale

11 / xs
META · TAGS · MICRO LABELS
12 / sm
Captions, table cells, descriptive helper text.
13 / base
Body. Buttons. Form labels. The default. The whole product is set here.
14 / md
Slightly larger body for marketing prose where density isn't a virtue.
16 / lg
H3: section subheads inside dense surfaces.
18 / xl
H2: page-level headings inside the product.
22 / 2xl
H1: top of page. Rarely larger inside the app.
36–88 / Display
Marketing & covers only.

Pairings in use

Metric tile

Tabular nums
P95 LATENCY · 24H
186ms
down 12% vs. last week

Code & chrome

Geist Mono · 12 / 13
$ ceres workspace status
Workspace arturo-prod · 28 services · healthy
Last sync · 2026-05-06T09:14:22Z · 186ms
06. Iconography

Lucide, only.

Icons come from Lucide: outline only, default 2px stroke. Icon colour follows text colour. We never substitute unicode glyphs (no → for an arrow icon) and we never tint them outside the active-state teal.

Sizes

14 px · inline · dense
16 px · sidebar · default
18 px · buttons
20 px · section heads

Common set

DO
Use Lucide outline icons at 2px stroke. Inherit color from currentColor. Lift to teal on active states only.
DON'T
Use filled variants, custom illustrated icons, or emoji as icons. Don't apply gradient fills, drop shadows, or coloured backgrounds.
07. Imagery

Cool, considered, never sunny.

No photography in product chrome. In marketing and docs, photography is dark, cool-shifted, slightly cyan. We don't use 3D renders, hand-drawn illustrations, or generative textures. The Cerebrum mark is the only illustrative motif.

Server / dark / coolYES
Long exposure, cool blacks, cyan in the highlights.
Studio / dark / coolYES
Single light source, deep shadows, blue-cyan cast.
Editorial portraitYES
Practitioner-led. The hands of the work, not stock smiles.
DO
Cool colour grade, deep blacks, restrained highlight. Compositions with negative space and clear subject hierarchy.
DON'T
Sunny stock photography, warm skin tones, posed "team in a meeting" shots, AI-generated 3D, generative textures, or anything with explicit hero lens flare.

Brand pattern

When marketing surfaces need texture, use the Circuit pattern: 22-unit grid of teal lines and tiny nodes, derived from the construction grid of the mark itself. Never use it under body type; only as a backdrop or end-cap.

08. Marketing

In market.

Marketing surfaces have more visual latitude than the product. The accent palette can carry surfaces here. Big type. Sentence-case. Earn the claim.

Social — square (LinkedIn, Twitter / X)

Banner ads — leaderboard 4:1

10. Environmental

Office & event signage.

In physical spaces, type does the heavy lifting. Treat walls like marketing surfaces with more lateral room: stick to canvas, sidebar, and one accent surface per installation.

A tool, not
a pitch.
Ceres · London HQ
FLOOR 04 · DESIGN
Built for the people keeping the lights on.
Ceres · Booth 312
From five tabs
to one room.
Ceres
WELCOME
186 ms
p95.
Status board · live
UPDATED 09:14 BST
11. Stationery

Email & cards.

Email signatures and business cards are tiny brand surfaces. They have to land the lockup at small size, hold to the colour system, and present contact info in monospace for legibility and a quiet receipt-like feel.

Email signature

Business cards

Ceres
Ana Reyes
Staff Designer
ana.reyes@ceres.com
+44 20 7946 0000 · UTC+1
ceres.com
Ceres
A tool,
not a
pitch.
By Arturo Martin

Print spec: 350gsm uncoated stock, 85 × 55mm, single colour offset for fronts (slate), spot teal Pantone 2389C for the back. Soft round-corner crop (3mm radius) to echo the 8px UI radius.

12. Pitch deck

Cover system.

Three official cover layouts. Pick by audience: Quiet for engineering hires, Editorial for press, Bold for investors. Body slides inherit the canvas + Inter system; titles never larger than 64px on internal slides.

Ceres
01 · Quiet · Eng pitch
A dashboard you can live in.
Speaker
Ana Reyes · Staff Designer
Audience
Engineering hires · 2026
Date
May 6 · London HQ
Ceres
02 · Editorial · Press
From five tabs to one room you can live in.
Issue
Year One · 2026
Words by
The Ceres team
Read time
12 minutes
Ceres
03 · Bold · Investor
186 ms.
−12%.
Round
Series A · 2026
Audience
Lead investor reading
From
Arturo Martin
Ceres
04 of 16
The problem
Ops teams are
drowning in tabs.
The median operator we interviewed had eleven dashboards open during an incident. Eleven. None of them spoke to each other.
P50
Tabs open during incident
7
P95
Tabs open during incident
11
CERES
Tabs open during incident
1
13. Don'ts gallery

Things that aren't Ceres.

Each of these violates the system in a specific, named way. When in doubt, the rule is restraint: strip something away rather than add.

Save Now!
Don't ship rainbow gradients on chrome.
Save Changes 🚀✨
Don't use emoji in product chrome.
Save changes
Don't substitute fonts. Inter or Geist Mono only.
UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL!
Don't shout. No all-caps headlines, no hype verbs.
Tip: try this feature
Don't invent radii or coloured left-borders.
→ Continue
Don't use unicode glyphs as icons. Use Lucide.
14. Colophon

How this book was made.

Set in Inter and Geist Mono on the Ceres canvas. Tokens drawn from colors_and_type.css. The Cerebrum mark is rendered as flat SVG; no rasters were used. Last reviewed May 2026.

FILE
Ceres Brand Guidelines.html
Long-form scrollable. Print-ready (Cmd+P).
CONTACT
brand@ceres.com
Questions, requests, additions: open a ticket in the Brand & Design space.
REVIEW
Twice yearly · May & November
Open the Tweaks panel (top-right toolbar) to preview light-mode and accent-intensity.