Seconds Co
Brand Book.
Everything that makes us look and sound like us, in one place. The logo, typeface, colour, and expressions.
One book. That's the whole system.
The icon sets the tone, Blue Aura gives it a place to live, four colour rules keep it quiet enough to read. Manrope says it loud. Inter says it clearly.
Palette · Blue Aura
Identity and accents
Neutrals
Type · two faces, no exceptions
Manrope
700 for titles, 800 for statements. Display and headlines. Never paragraphs.
Inter
400 to 500 for reading, 600 to 700 for labels and buttons. Never headlines.
The rules
60 / 30 / 10.
Indigo points.
Cyan informs.
Mint confirms.
Photography warms.
The brand board. The icon, the palette, both typefaces, and the four colour rules.
Start anywhere.
Read it cover to cover, or grab the one thing you came for. Every part stands alone, so you can't get lost. The book grows only as fast as the brand does, and not one page faster.
One blue. Everything else earns its place.
One blue, worn in. Denim carries the identity. Indigo points at what matters, cyan informs, mint confirms. Neutrals do the work. Text is always Ink.
The palette
Denim
The identity. Logo, primary actions.
Denim Dark
Hover states, depth.
Indigo
Attention. Dashes, CTAs, links.
Cyan
Quiet information. Text uses #0B6DA0.
Mint
Fresh, success. Text uses #12A594.
Ink
All text starts here.
Muted
Secondary text, captions.
Ring
Rings, back plates, keylines.
Tint
Soft denim backgrounds.
Surface
The page itself.
Hairline
Borders and dividers.
The rules
1
60 / 30 / 10.
Neutrals do 60% of any page, denim 30%, all accents together 10%. If a page feels colourful, it is wrong.
2
One accent per block.
Never two accents in the same card, slide, or paragraph. If two things both need attention, one of them does not.
3
Bright colours never carry text.
Cyan and mint fail contrast on white. Words use the deep versions, #0B6DA0 and #12A594. Brights are for chips, stripes, dashes and washes.
4
Photography carries the warmth.
The palette is cool on purpose. Never fix a cold page with orange. Fix it with a better photo.
Two faces. No exceptions.
Big sizes, tight letter-spacing, short lines. Manrope carries the cover, the chapter title, the one line on a wall. That is the whole ambition for a headline: you should notice it before you read a word.
700 for titles, 800 for statements. Never for paragraphs.
Modest size, easy leading, a comfortable measure. Inter reads the same in a runbook, a menu insert, and a job post. That is the whole ambition for body copy: you should never notice it doing its job.
400–500 for reading, 600–700 for labels and buttons. Never for headlines.
Type in use
Typeface Scale
Five heading steps, one eyebrow label, three text steps, two measures. Every heading in this book snaps to a step and nothing carries a size of its own. Three heading levels do all the work, and you never skip one.
| Step | Size | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
--fs-display | 140px, fluid from 36px | The hero headline. Once per document, never twice. |
--fs-h2 | 88px, fluid from 38px | Section titles, and full bleed statements. |
--fs-h3 | 60px, fluid from 30px | Headings inside a colour field. |
--fs-h4 | 36px, fluid from 24px | Subsection titles on the page surface, and statements inside a panel. |
--fs-h5 | 22px | Chapter card titles and typeface names. |
--fs-eyebrow | 12px uppercase, .14em tracked | The label that sits above a heading. |
--fs-body | 17px | Every paragraph in the book. There is no second body size. |
--fs-small | 13px | Captions, meta lines, download labels. |
--fs-micro | 11px | Chips, badges, numerals, icon labels. |
How the type is set
1
The levelsThree heading levels do all the work, and you never skip one. h1 is the hero. h2 is a chapter title. h3 is a subsection title, set at --fs-h3 on a colour field and --fs-h4 on the page surface.
2
How it scalesHeading steps run fluid with clamp(). The ceiling is the step itself, so the scale holds from a 320px phone to a 1920px display. Leading is 0.94 on the display step, 1.04 on every other heading step, 1.62 on every text step. Nothing else.
3
The measure: 72chBody copy runs to --measure. A ch is the width of a zero, so 72ch lands in the 66 to 75 character band that reads easiest. Set it in ch and it tracks the font instead of drifting when a size changes.
4
The narrow measure: 44chCopy inside a card runs to --measure-narrow, 44ch. In most grids the card is narrower than that, and the card wins. That's the point. Two prose measures, three heading caps. Never a third measure, never a fourth cap.
Two plates. One asking for more.
A full plate, and a second one arriving. The whole idea, drawn plain: someone asked for more.
Three words, three things. The icon is the two plates on the tile. The wordmark is the name, set in Manrope. The lockup is the two together, and it's our signature.
The lockup: the first plate, the second arriving, the name. Manrope 700 and 800. Never smaller than 120px wide.
Not a shape. A sentence.
Three things from every good meal, added up. The plate you finished. The plate you asked for. The table you sat at. Read it left to right, and the name explains itself.
A finished plate, a second one on the way, and the table that holds them both. Nobody asks for seconds to be polite, and the icon says that before a word does.
The story · PNGRoom, ratio, minimums.
The meaning is above. This is the mechanics: how much air the lockup needs, how the two parts relate to each other, and the smallest it is ever allowed to go.
Nothing enters the zone. × equals the width of the small plate. It is the minimum; give the logo more room whenever you can.
The space between icon and wordmark equals the plate hole (o). Icon and wordmark never move, resize, or recolour relative to each other.
Expressions. Which one, when.
Twenty-nine expressions, one geometry under every one. Eight make up the core set: six everyday files, and two for campaigns. The other twenty-one are the extended set, for campaigns and big moments. One expression per piece, never as the app icon.
Misuse. Never these.
The icon travels everywhere: profiles, decks, print, partner lockups, guest photos. Check before you ship.
- Recolour it.
- Stretch, squash, or distort it.
- Rotate any part.
- Add shadows, bevels, or effects.
- Rebuild the wordmark in another font.
- Put it on a photo without a wash behind it.
- Shrink it below 24px on screen, or 8mm in print.
- Reuse an old single-plate file. There is one current icon.
- Profile pictures: centre the icon with room to spare, so the crop never clips the second plate.
- Blue Aura gradients: use Reversed on a flat colour. The denim icon on the gradient fights itself.
- Slides: paste as a locked image so the theme can't recolour it.
- Partner lockups: equal weight, equal space, and the exclusion zone still applies.
- Over food photos: use the Tint expression, low opacity, in a corner. Never centred over the plate.
- Lockup on white, Surface, or Tint backgrounds.
- Icon alone for avatars, favicons, and stamps. Minimum 24px.
- Logo and type share a left edge, aligned flush.
The plates do the talking.
One plate down, a second on its way. Six elements, drawn from the icon and the palette.
The plate pair: a dash, then a number or letter. For steps and ranked sets. If the order doesn't matter, use plain text.
Asking for Seconds: a full plate, a second sliding in, a rule that fades out. Use it anywhere you'd draw a line.
Ripples from a plate, the buzz around a good table. Moves on screen, holds still in print.
Every eyebrow opens with it: the pause before you say the thing. Indigo by default.
Denim, mint, indigo in one thin band. Footers and cover edges. Never thicker than 10px.
Indigo for attention, cyan for quiet info. Two only. Nothing orange.
Drawn from the plates.
Fifteen pieces for the site, decks, and campaigns. We draw when a photo is too literal and words are too slow: circles and arcs from the icon, one accent, lots of air.
Brand art. Large canvases.
Six canvases for deck covers, video, and site heroes: the plate as atmosphere across denim, indigo, mint, and gulf cyan. Quiet, big, ours.
Small marks, same recipe.
Twenty-four marks, one recipe: a 24px grid, a 2px rounded stroke, Ink on white, and one dot of colour at most. That is how a set this size still looks like one hand drew it.
Seconds
Cutlery
Chef
Coffee
Breakfast
Burger
Pizza
Bowl
Dessert
Wine
Beer
Ice cream
Takeout
Delivery
Hours
Reservations
Location
Phone
Wi-Fi
Payment
Receipt
Reviews
Favourites
Gift card- Draw on the 24px grid, 2px stroke, rounded caps and joins.
- Ink on white or Surface. Denim when active or selected.
- Keep shapes open and simple; one idea per icon.
- No filled icons, no two-tone, no gradients inside icons.
- No mixing stroke weights or borrowed icon sets.
- No more than one accent dot, ever.
Icons in the real world.
The warmth lives here.
Photography has two jobs: make the food glow, and pull everything else into our world. Four tints, three libraries, and a shot list that covers every kind of post we make.
Every frame is shot in our own rooms. Nothing here is ever stock.
The tints
Four overlays that pull any photo into the brand. Each is a PNG you layer on top in Apple Photos, Canva, or Adobe Express. Download, drop on, done. The tool does not matter. Default filters and sticker effects do, so leave them off.
The shot list
Twelve frames we shoot ourselves, grouped by tint. The specimens below are placeholders until the shoot.
What every shot needs
The compositional rule. Every frame earns its place with these four.
Overhead and 45°, tight enough to feel the texture.
Serving, passing, tearing bread. People eat with people.
Half-finished plates, crossed forks. The ask-for-Seconds moment.
The counter, the regulars, the crew. Real faces, no posing.
- Minimum 1200×800, JPEG, natural light first.
- Uber Eats cover: 2880×2304 (5:4), food only, no people, no logos.
- Every dish in landscape and square crops. Keep originals.
- Stock photography. One stock burger kills the whole promise.
- Cold, blue-tinted food. If it looks refrigerated, reshoot it.
- Heavy filters, fake steam, cluttered prop flat lays.
Say it like you mean it.
Write like you talk to a regular at the counter. Someone who comes in twice a week. You do not pitch them. You do not perform for them. You tell them what is good today, you say it once, and you mean it. Every caption, menu line, email, and job post gets held to that.
The four principles
Short sentences. Concrete words. “Breakfast until 2.” needs no follow-up. It already said the thing.
Verb first, no wind-up, no throat-clearing. If you would not say it to a regular's face, do not type it either.
We, not “the company.” Contractions are fine. Warmth is fine. The only thing that is not fine is distance.
“70 years between them” beats “legendary” every time. Back the claim with the fact, or leave the claim out.
Say this, not that
Writing the name
It is “Seconds Co” everywhere, capital S, capital C. Never “Seconds” on its own, never possessive, never a verb. One name covers both arms of the company, the restaurants and the software. The restaurants keep their own names: Joe's Naples Park Diner and The Sauce Lady Market are separate businesses, and both get written out in full.
Words we don't use
If it would sound ridiculous said across a counter, it does not get written down.
One brand, three voices
One brand, three voices. Seconds Co is the operator, calm and direct. Joe's Naples Park Diner and The Sauce Lady Market each get their own guide. Never blend the three.
The brand, out in the world.
Signs, print, screens, the everyday email. When you are building something new and you are not sure, match this page.
Start from the template.
One document, one sheet, one slide deck, each built on the brand already. Start here instead of a blank page. Upload any of the three to Google Drive and it converts to Docs, Sheets or Slides with the branding intact.
How we use this internally
Same rules on the inside. Every document, deck, board and workspace we touch starts from this book, not from a blank page.
Every doc starts from the Seconds Co Word template in Templates. Runbooks, memos, offers, all the same skeleton.
Statement covers on denim or brand art. One accent per slide. Numbered plates for agendas and steps. If a slide needs three colours, it needs two slides.
Numbered prefix, underscore, lowercase: 01_security_cleanup, 06_seconds_brand. Priorities use words, not colour soup.
Everyone runs the avatar, the Meet background and the email signature from the Social kit. Day one of onboarding, before the first meeting.
Take the real files.
The files people ask for most often, all source-of-truth. The whole kit ZIP holds every asset in this book. Never screenshot the logo. It always looks worse and someone will notice.
ZIPThe whole kitEvery asset in this book, in one download. Download
Look like us everywhere.
Every profile we run, already on brand. Avatars, covers, and post templates for LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and Facebook. Upload one as it comes, or hand it to a designer as the base layer.
The identity set
The files people grab first: the avatar and the lockup, each on three grounds. Transparent drops onto anything. Black is the Reversed rule, plates only, no tile. The email signature ships transparent so it sits on the message itself.
LinkedIn
Instagram
X (formerly Twitter)
Facebook
Everyday posts
LinkedIn posts run the denim tint with a statement overlay. Restaurant pictures run golden hour, untouched food warmth. Naples pictures run gulf cyan with the stripe. Take the matching overlay from part 08 and drop it on.
Campaign posts
The expression system in the feed: statements, the dotted plate, mint moments, the ring pattern. Use for launches and campaigns; the covers above stay constant.
Google Workspace