The complete operating system for a one-person studio working at the intersection of industrial craft and digital growth. Built to be used — by me, by collaborators, by the people who'll write copy and design ads when I can't.
Industrial designer turned digital marketer. Bologna-based. The brand sits where the drawing board meets the dashboard — confident, considered, and built to convert. Every page of this book exists to keep that voice consistent across everything I make.
Two operating modes, one voice. "Made to last" — the design side. Considered, structured, materials-aware. "Built to grow" — the marketing side. Sharper, more energetic, performance-aware. Everything in this book serves one of those two modes, and most things serve both.
The system is intentionally small. Two tones (ink + paper). One accent (ultramarine). Three typefaces. A handful of components. Everything else is patience, hierarchy, and restraint.
The ideas the whole system answers to. Whenever the brand needs to decide between two options, the more aligned with these wins. Print this page; tape it above the desk.
Every artifact has a job — to convert, to convince, to communicate. Beauty is a means, never the brief.
Industrial craft + digital strategy. Always lead with one and back it with the other. Never abandon either.
Editorial structure, generous whitespace, real grids. Decisions you'd defend in five years.
Performance > perfection. If a tweak earns better CTR, ship it. Measure everything.
Ultramarine carries every signal. Used sparingly, it punches; sprinkled around, it whispers.
Newsreader carries every italic moment. Always one true italic per surface — the system's smile. Never both feet on the design floor.
A geometric mark — a square split diagonally, half ink, half ultramarine. Two halves of one whole: industrial craft and digital growth, both sides of the brief. It works alone (favicon, avatar, watermark) and locks up with the wordmark for the full signature.
Six container shapes — square, circle, outline, and three color treatments. The mark itself never changes proportion or rotates (other than the rotated diamond variant below).
A cool paper, a deep ink, and a single electric ultramarine. The ultramarine is the brand's signature — used like a single confident gesture. If it appears more than once per visible region, the layout is wrong.
System colors (positive / negative / warning) are reserved for function: dashboards, form errors, campaign performance. Never let them creep into brand surfaces or marketing collateral.
Body text in ink, surfaces in paper. Neutrals fill the in-between for rules, hints, dividers, disabled states.
Paper-on-ink is for hero moments — covers, callouts, banners. Not a default state.
Primary CTA, focused state, the emphasized word, the single italic moment. Never decoration.
If a thing needs another color, the layout is wrong. Solve hierarchy with size, weight, and space.
A contemporary grotesque does the heavy lifting — display, headlines, body, UI. A warm editorial serif appears only for the italic moment, the one place each surface earns a smile. A workhorse mono carries the labels, dates, page numbers and metadata. That's it. Three families, no exceptions.
One italic moment per surface. The serif earns its weight by being rare. Everything else is the grotesque.
Display goes to −0.04. Body sits at 0. Mono labels open to +0.16 with UPPERCASE.
Headlines, navigation, and mono labels are uppercase. Body, lede, and captions are sentence-case.
A 4-pixel base. Ten steps. Big jumps for big rhythm — section gaps live at 96 px. Avoid in-between values; the system gets ugly fast when you start fudging.
Defaults: r-3 for cards & inputs · r-4 for surfaces & modals · r-full for buttons & pills · r-0 for tables, print, ads (display ad networks render them sharp anyway).
Five steps from flat to floating. Warm-cool cast — never pure black. Use the lowest step that does the job.
All shadows are cast cool — . Pure black breaks the temperature of the paper.
A 24-pixel square, 1.4 px stroke, round caps. Single-color only. No two-toned icons, no decorative glyphs. Icons are quiet — the type and accent do the work.
Two photographic modes. Object & material for the design side — natural light, deep shadows, no overlays. Editorial portrait for the marketing side — single subject, off-center, room to crop for stories. Color comes from the subject, never the filter.
A single soft source from window-left. Long, defined shadows. Mixed lighting reads as stock.
Fill the frame with one subject, or give it five times the room. No in-betweens, no awkward thirds.
When type needs a place, give it the page next to the image. The image stays an image. Exception: social captions on full-bleed visuals.
The pieces every product needs, and nothing else. If you find yourself overriding a value, fix the token, not the component.
A 1 px rule, 12 px radius. The majority of content.
No border, warm-cool shadow. For "this matters" surfaces.
For callouts & quiet hero moments.
One per page, max. The big confident gesture.
The brand voice is the same voice in every room — but the volume changes. Quietly confident in long-form. Sharp in a paid ad. Warm in an email. Always plain. Never marketing-speak. Italian-design-school precision, with a digital-marketer's energy.
Editorial. Long sentences, considered pauses. Italic moments. Numbers, but only the ones that mattered.
Punchy, then human. One headline. One thought. Soft CTA.
Fast, opinionated. Hook in 1.5s. One claim per beat. End with a question.
One benefit. One verb. Italic accent on the word that matters.
Warm and direct. Lowercase greeting. Three short paragraphs. Always sign personally.
Precise, plain. Mono labels, sentence-case sums. No jargon, no surprises.
craft · system · signal · shape · build · ship · compose · quietly · opinionated · fluent · fluent in both · made by hand · both sides
solutions · holistic · curated · journey · elevate · unlock · game-changing · passionate · cutting-edge · seamless · world-class
Em-dashes — sparingly, for a beat. One italic per surface. Lowercase greetings. Periods at the end of taglines (it's a full sentence). No emoji, unless 🍝 in a Bologna joke.
Where the brand has to earn attention in a fraction of a second. One italic moment per ad. One CTA per ad. Everything else is signal-clearing. Templates below cover Meta, Google Display, and Google Search.
Headline rotation (use any three): · · · ·
Where the brand earns trust over time — newsletters, transactional emails, landing pages. Slower, longer, but the same voice and the same italic moment.
I shipped the v2.0 brand book this week. Wordmark, palette, type, components, social formats, ad templates, an invoice, a CV — all in one file. Took fourteen days.
Three things I learned, and one tool you can steal.
The v2.0 files are ready. Brand book, social kit, ad templates, and the first three deliverables — all in the shared folder.
One small ask: skim the voice & tone section before Friday's call. That's where most of the decisions live.
— sai
The rare intersection of industrial craft and digital growth strategy. Brand systems that ship, campaigns that compound.
Business cards, CV, invoice, slide deck. The day-to-day artifacts of a one-person studio. Each draws only from the tokens above.
Industrial designer turned digital marketer. I help brands build products worth talking about — and then build the campaigns that make people talk.
Industrial & product design
Visual merchandising
Spatial brand experience
CMF & materials research
3D rendering · prototyping
Brand strategy
Social & content
Paid (Meta · Google)
SEO · organic growth
Email & CRM
Figma · Webflow
InDesign · Affinity
After Effects · Blender
GA4 · Meta Ads
BFA · Industrial Design
2018 — 2022
| DESCRIPTION | QTY | RATE | AMOUNT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand identity — wordmark, palette, type system | 1 | € 4,800 | € 4,800 |
| Website — 6 pages, design & build | 1 | € 6,200 | € 6,200 |
| Launch campaign — social kit + 4 emails | 1 | € 1,600 | € 1,600 |
| Monthly retainer — design & marketing | 2 mo | € 1,400 | € 2,800 |
A short index of places the system lives outside the screen. Use these as a checklist when planning a launch — if one of them is unbranded, the system is leaking.
Built for the feed.
The visual system, applied to every surface where the brand earns its keep. Each platform gets its own grid, its own pacing, its own register — but the wordmark, the accent and the italic moment are non-negotiable.
NORTHWIND CO.
Mine has ad templates."
SHIP THE
BOOK.
ROLES · ITALY
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Cap at 8 per post. Mix two specific (#brandsystem, #bologna) with two generic (#design, #marketing). The rest is noise.