Brand book

The colour was always in the photographs.

Vintage Vibe already has an identity. It is sitting in the product photography: coloured seamless paper, one hard key light, a chrome-legged instrument and its own cast shadow. This book writes that down so a printer, an embroiderer or an agency can apply it without guessing.

Jump to the palette The owners app

The embossed chrome V on the lid of a silver sparkle Marquis 73

01 · The mark

One mark, two lockups.

Clearspace equals the height of the V, on every side. The dashed rule is the minimum; more is always fine.

Minimum size, screen24 px circle diameter
Minimum size, print9 mm circle diameter
Stroke weightLocked at 7.75% of diameter. Never re-drawn thinner.
Clearspace1 × V-height on all four sides
Wordmark lockupMark, then 0.6 × V-height gap, then "Vintage Vibe" in Bodoni Moda 600
Stacked lockupMark above wordmark, centred, for square formats and the piano name rail

The circle-V is the whole identity at small sizes. It already appears embossed on the lid front of every instrument and on the cabinet grille, which means it is the one asset with real physical authority. Use it there, and let the wordmark carry the long-form work.

Do

Reverse it to paper white on any sweep colour.
Emboss, deboss or foil it. The mark is built from two shapes and survives both.
Let it sit alone, unaccompanied, when the format is under 40 mm.

Do not

Add a gradient, a bevel or a drop shadow. The instrument casts the shadow, not the logo.
Re-colour the V independently of the circle.
Set the wordmark in anything other than Bodoni Moda.
Place it over the busy half of a photograph. It goes on the empty sweep.

02 · Colour

Five grounds, sampled from Vintage Vibe's own photographs.

None of these were invented. Each hex value is the modal colour of the backdrop paper in a photograph already on vintagevibepiano.com, measured across 49 hero images. Using them means the website, the print work and the photography are literally the same surface.

Periwinkle#8B88F1

The primary. Sampled from the Marquis 73 and Stereo Console sweeps. This is the colour that makes Vintage Vibe unmistakable in a feed of black gear photography.

Ink on periwinkle 8.2:1 · AAA

Cobalt#013D85

Deluxe 73 sweeps. The link colour on paper grounds, and the ground for anything technical: specifications, patents, the service pages.

Paper on cobalt 9.6:1 · AAA

Oxblood#661825

Marquis 73 and Classic 64 sweeps. Reserved for the emotional sections: owners, artists, the story.

Paper on oxblood 9.9:1 · AAA

Amber#C58142

The warm sweep behind the gold-sparkle instruments. Ink type only, never paper type. Use it for the parts catalogue, where the mood should be workshop rather than stage.

Ink on amber 6.9:1 · AA

Ink#211F20

Vintage Vibe's own --color-dark, kept unchanged. Body copy, the footer, the tolex on every instrument. Never pure black.

Paper on ink 15.1:1 · AAA

Paper#F3EEE6

The default page. Warm, so the coloured sweeps read as paper rather than as UI. Never pure white, which makes the amber and periwinkle look synthetic.

Ink on paper 15.1:1 · AAA

Rules

One sweep colour per section. Two sweeps touching is the whole system.
The sweep is always a full-bleed ground, never a card fill or a button.
Amber and periwinkle take ink type. Cobalt, oxblood and ink take paper type.
Chrome #C6CBD1 exists for hairlines and rules only. It is never a text colour.

Retired

#2479ED, #FF0080 and #00CAAA, currently live on vintagevibepiano.com. They are the Otumate WordPress theme defaults, not brand colours, and none of the three appears in a single product photograph.
Pure white page grounds, currently on the Shopify store.

03 · Type

A Didone for the instrument, a grotesque for the bench.

Vintage Vibe already sets its piano pages in Gastromond, a high-contrast Didone. That instinct is right: a $10,199 hand-built instrument deserves the register of an album cover, not of a hardware catalogue. Bodoni Moda is the open-licence face that keeps the instinct and adds an optical-size axis, so the same family works at 96 px and at 14 px.

Display
Bodoni Moda 500

Marquis 73

Headlines only, 40 px and up. Optical size axis set to match the rendered size. Letter-spacing −0.012em. Never all-caps, never below 40 px, never for a button.

Body
Archivo 400 / 600

Seventy-three notes, sixty pounds, and the tine action rebuilt from first principles.

Everything a person reads in sentences. 16–20 px, line-height 1.6, measure capped at 62 characters. Archivo is a nineteenth-century American grotesque, which puts it in the same century as the instruments.

Data and labels
Archivo Narrow 600

60 lbs · 44.5″ W × 21.5″ D × 7.75″ H · $10,199

Specifications, prices, part numbers, category labels, section kickers. Always font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums so specification columns line up. Tracked to 0.14em when used as an uppercase label, and only then.

Scale

Display 1clamp(2.6rem, 7.5vw, 6rem) / 1.05
Display 2clamp(1.9rem, 4.2vw, 3.4rem) / 1.05
Display 3clamp(1.25rem, 2.1vw, 1.75rem) / 1.15
Ledeclamp(1.05rem, 1.7vw, 1.3rem) / 1.5
Body1.0625rem / 1.6
Label0.75rem / 1.4, tracked 0.16em, uppercase

04 · Photography

Nothing here needs replacing. It needs a written rule.

Vintage Vibe's existing product photography is the strongest asset the company owns, and it is being used at 400 px on a white page. These are the rules it already follows, so the next shoot and the next photographer follow them too.

GroundColoured seamless paper, floor to wall, no visible horizon
LightOne hard key, high and slightly camera-left, no fill
ShadowKept. The cast shadow is the second subject
PoolAn elliptical hot spot behind the instrument, upper third of frame
AngleThree-quarter, lens at keyboard height, legs fully in frame
CropInstrument occupies 55–70% of frame width, always room to breathe
Resolution2048 px minimum on the long edge, delivered unsharpened

A black sparkle Marquis 73 on chrome hairpin legs, photographed on crimson seamless with a hard key light and its own cast shadow — The reference frame. Elliptical light pool, hard shadow, legs complete.

Macro detail of a metal-flake sparkle lid and the embossed chrome V — The detail frame. One material, raking light, no context.

An opened piano harp on the bench with the preamplifier board and wiring exposed — The bench frame. Available light, mess left in, nothing staged.

Three frames, that is all

Reference sells the instrument. Seamless, hard light, whole object.
Detail sells the craft. Sparkle, chrome, tine, hammer tip.
Bench sells the years since 1997. Real workshop, real hands, no styling.

Never

Cut the instrument out onto white. The paper is half the picture.
Remove the cast shadow.
Stock photography of a studio, a musician or a pair of headphones.
Ship an image under 1200 px. The current site caps hero images far below the size of the originals.

05 · Voice

Say the specific thing. The company has earned it.

Vintage Vibe's best writing is already on its timeline page, where it says things like "we were naively optimistic" and "Vintage Vibe's history has been earned, not bought." The marketing pages lose that voice. Every rewrite below uses only facts already published on vintagevibe.com or vintagevibepiano.com.

Now

"The Deluxe 73 isn't just our most advanced piano, it's the culmination of everything Vintage Vibe stands for."

Better

"The Deluxe 73 has the stereo preamplifier and the patented action fitted as standard. Sixty pounds. From $10,199."

Rule: a claim about being the best is a claim the reader has to take on trust. A weight and a price are checkable, and they do more work.

Now

"Twenty five years of learning, tweaking, and perfecting our craft."

Better

"We reverse-engineered the Wurlitzer reed in 2002 because nobody was making one. The Rhodes tine took until 2010."

Rule: replace the adjective with the year. The same page also says "20 + Years in Business" two paragraphs later, and the piano site says 28. Pick one: founded 1997, so 28.

Now

"Our ragtag team of renegade experts include master technicians, fabricators, and assemblers."

Better

"Master technicians, fabricators and assemblers, with nearly 100 years of combined experience in electric piano work."

Rule: "ragtag" and "renegade" describe the team to itself. The combined-experience figure is already on the timeline page, in Vintage Vibe's own words, and it lands harder.

Now

"Hear the Sound. Feel the Craft. Witness the Icons."

Better

"Stevie Wonder owns four. Here is what the other four hundred sound like."

Rule: three imperative verbs in a row is a slogan. One name and one number is an argument.

Voice, in four lines

Lead with the year, the weight, the price or the name.
Write the way the timeline page is written: first person, plain, occasionally funny.
Explain the mechanism. The audience includes people who will open the lid.
Let the photograph carry the adjectives.

Retire these

"Culmination", "unmatched", "world-class", "sonic excellence", "not just X, it's Y".
Trademark symbols in running copy. Keep them in the legal footer.
Three-word imperative slogans.
Any number that contradicts another number on the same site.

06 · Applied

Where the system goes first.

One domainvintagevibepiano.com folds into vintagevibe.com. Instruments and parts on one site, one nav, one identity.
Product photography at full size2048 px originals already exist. Show them.
Name rail and lid badgeCircle-V only, embossed. The wordmark stays off the instrument.
Shipping cartons and parts bagsInk ground, paper circle-V, Archivo Narrow part number.
NAMM standOne sweep colour per wall, chosen to match the instruments on it.
Shirts and totesCircle-V, single-colour print, no gradient version.

The owners app Back to the site