Brand
One device, used consistently.
The identity is typographic, because the argument is. There is one device — a rule with a notch cut out of it — and it means the thing IIDA exists to say: that a white space is left in the middle of India's research economy. Everything else is type, hairlines and restraint.
BFSI & cybersecurity, PDF + .pptx
LogosSVG + PNG, both directions
SocialCovers, avatar, post templates
ColourRead from the stylesheet
TypeThree faces, all free
The bundle is assembled from the files on this page every time the site
deploys, so it cannot describe a state the site is not in. Every colour
below is read out of src/styles/global.css when this page
builds. It cannot say one thing while the site does another.
Partner decks
BFSI & cybersecurity
Two decks, built for a specific conversation.
BFSI/fintech and cybersecurity, three pages each, in both shapes: A4 portrait for a leave-behind document, 16:9 landscape for a stage presentation. Both carry a status line on their target metric (illustrative target — not yet a shipped result) because neither application has shipped.
BFSI / fintech
Cybersecurity
The device
The notched rule
The logo carries the white space.
A rule under the wordmark, with a notch cut out at the same 1:4 asymmetry as the divider running between every section of this site. The gap is not decoration and is not centred — an even gap reads as a dash.
Above is the live divider, not a picture of one. If it ever stops
matching the logo, the logo is wrong — regenerate with
npm run logo.
Marks
Rules
- Clear space on all sides is the height of the wordmark's cap.
- Minimum width 88px for the lockup; below that use the icon.
- Never re-set the wordmark in another face. The SVGs carry outlined glyphs and no font dependency, which is why they are the source.
- Never stretch, rotate, add a shadow, or place the lockup on a busy photograph — use the reversed icon instead.
- Never recolour the mark. Ink on paper, or paper on ink.
Colour
Two warm sources
Book cloth carries the brand. Orange means live.
The single rule worth memorising: accent is for brand, links and CTAs; signal is only ever live state — an open slot, an active status, a number that moved. Signal used decoratively stops meaning anything, and the scoreboard depends on it meaning something.
Paper
Backgrounds. Warm ivory, never white — white reads as a template.
--paper
#F5F2EA
--paper-2
#EFEADF
--paper-3
#E5DED0
--paper-4
#DAD1BE
Ink
Text. Warm near-black, never #000.
--ink
#1A1815
--ink-2
#3B372F
--ink-mute
#7C7466
Line
Rules and borders. The site is built from hairlines.
--hairline
#DCD5C6
--rule
#C7BDA9
Accent — book cloth
Brand, links and calls to action. The default warm mark.
--accent
#CC785C
--accent-dp
#A85B41
--accent-mute
#F2E2D9
Signal — live state only
Open slots, active status, scoreboard deltas. Never decorative, never a CTA.
--signal
#FF4000
--signal-mute
#FFE4DA
Ink surface
Dark sections. Every hairline must be restated here or it vanishes.
--ink-bg
#17150F
--ink-bg-2
#241F17
--go
#2E6A4A
Type
Display
Headings and the wordmark. Weight 800–900, tight tracking.
Fifteen people, and no more.
Bricolage Grotesque
Body
Running text, and the one italic accent line per section.
A white space is left in the middle.
Newsreader
Data
Eyebrows, labels, numbers, buttons. Uppercase, wide tracking.
PUBLIC SCOREBOARD · LIVE
JetBrains Mono
Voice
How it reads
Say the number, including when it is zero.
- Publish the count before there is anything to count. A dated zero is more credible than an undated claim.
- Name what would make us stop. Every research track carries written kill criteria; so should any claim.
- British spelling. Sentence case in prose, uppercase only in mono labels.
- No superlatives, no "revolutionary", no stock photography, no gradients. If a sentence would survive being read back by a sceptic, it can stay.
- Never publish a person's name without their consent, or imply consent that was not given.
Deck
Slides
A template, so nobody starts from a stock deck.
Six 16:9 slides: cover, section divider, statement, scoreboard, closing, and one that tells you to install the fonts and then delete itself.
One honest limitation. A .pptx references fonts by name and
cannot embed them the way the images and PDFs here do, so the cover is a
rendered image with the real type baked in and the inner slides are
editable text. Install the three faces or PowerPoint will substitute them
and the deck will stop looking like this site. All three are free.
Using this
Practicalities
The assets above are the whole set. The bundle at the top is not a separate brand pack — it is zipped from these same files on every deploy, which is the only reason it is allowed to exist: it cannot go stale while this page cannot.
Regenerate the marks with npm run logo, the link-preview
image with npm run og, member cards with
npm run cards, the course briefs with
npm run course-pdfs, social assets with
npm run social, and the deck template with
npm run deck. The BFSI/cybersecurity partner decks are
four commands, one per format and shape:
npm run deck:partners,
npm run deck:partners:pdf,
npm run deck:partners:landscape, and
npm run deck:partners:landscape:pdf. All of them read
the same tokens as this page.
For anything not covered here, write to
research@iidalabs.org rather than
guessing — the gap in the rule is the one thing worth getting right.
Social
Ready to post
The post templates take a line, not a designer.
The three post sizes are generated from whatever line you give them, so a post is one command rather than a design job. Run
npm run social -- "All fifteen seats are spoken for."and the square, landscape and story versions are rewritten together.The LinkedIn covers keep their lower-left quarter empty on purpose — that is where LinkedIn lays the profile photo or the company logo, and anything put there is covered. The personal and company covers are different shapes rather than one crop of the other.
Avatar
400×400. Profile pictures, anywhere square.
Download →
LinkedIn cover, personal
1584×396. Profile backgrounds.
Download →
LinkedIn cover, ink
1584×396. The reversed variant.
Download →
LinkedIn cover, company
1128×191. Company pages — a different shape, not a crop.
Download →
Company cover, ink
1128×191, reversed.
Download →
X header
1500×500.
Download →
Post, square
1080×1080. LinkedIn and Instagram feed.
Download →
Post, landscape
1200×675. X, and link cards.
Download →
Story
1080×1920. Instagram and LinkedIn stories.
Download →