Brand Guidelines

How to read this document

This is the Maxxim brand book, the canonical record of the brand. It is produced in the Design phase against Master Briefing v2.1, the Gate 1 decisions in the Discovery Addendum, the Brand Strategy, and the Logo Brief, refreshed on 1 July to fold in the 29 June product mechanics and the live Jewell partner. It writes the brand down once: the strategy foundation, the logo system, the exact colour values, the type scale, the imagery direction, and how all of it is applied in practice. Everything downstream is measured against this book: the website, the copy deck, campaigns, the partner hub, and the 3 July showcase.

This is design Edition 03. What is locked is stated plainly. Signal Blue is the single locked brand colour and the lead. Poppins is the locked typeface. The Blue Frog motif has been removed and must never be reintroduced. The supporting neutrals are recommended so the system is usable, not locked, and are labelled as such. Where a strategic choice is still Clent's, this book holds the structure and does not invent the answer. Maxxim's own one-word category lead stays open. Jewell's external lead word is locked as growth. Iconography and graphic elements are deferred for this edition and noted as to follow rather than faked.

What changed since the 27 June edition. A reversed logo variant now exists and is documented and embedded here. The product mechanics are now known and named, so Max, Sal, and Pip appear where voice and application make the engine concrete. Jewell is now a live partner running the whole model in market, which sharpens the proof language without changing a locked or open item. Proof clearance is unchanged: Pottsville Acupuncture is the only cleared public Maxxim proof.

1. Brand philosophy

Maxxim is the commercialisation engine that lets trusted operators run Jewell's proven, gated 3D Process at AI speed, with an accountable human at every gate. The brand idea the whole system serves is the proven method, run by a human, at AI speed, held together by a community rather than a lone operator.

The method is 3D plus Deepen: Discover, then Design, then Deploy, then Deepen, the compounding loop once the engine is live. The engine is carried by three named specialists, each a process. Max does the words in Claude Cowork, strategy, plans, copy, briefs, and summaries. Sal does the pixels in the Design Studio, logos, brand imagery, collateral, and video. Pip runs the Social Studio, drafting and, on approval, publishing posts. They are the branded expression of the method, and they are always subordinate to Maxxim and to the accountable human, who is the partner. Human in the loop is the point, not a limitation: AI carries the repeatable volume and the human holds trust, taste, and judgement, which is where quality is decided.

The guidelines exist so that the brand reads as one calm, credible standard everywhere it appears, from a favicon in a browser tab to a proposal cover to the partner hub. The brand sells finished, owned outcomes, not spectacle, so the visual system is disciplined and high-contrast: it earns trust through legibility and restraint, not decoration. A Sage brand looks like a standard you would trust to sign off your work, not a startup shouting for attention.

Use this book as the reference, not a suggestion. The colour, the type, the logo rules, and the imagery direction are settled here on purpose. When a new surface is built, it should be built from these values rather than re-derived, so that the brand compounds in consistency the way the method compounds in trust.

2. Strategy foundation

Pulled from the Brand Strategy, so the visual system has the strategic frame it is built to fit.

Who we are

Maxxim is the commercialisation engine and growth platform that runs Jewell's proven, gated 3D Process at AI speed, with an accountable human at every gate. Max runs the words, Sal runs the pixels, and Pip runs social, and together they run the repeatable 80 percent at speed. A human partner owns the 20 percent that clients actually pay for: trust, taste, judgement, and the relationship. The brand is owned by Clent and Raef, two owners, no board.

Who we serve

The primary customer is the Capacity-Capped Operator, the Client Partner who can win the work and own the relationship but cannot deliver agency-grade growth repeatably. Secondary partner audiences are the Networked Referrer and the Scoped Specialist. The end client served through the partner is any organisation type: personal brand, solo operator, SME, corporate, not for profit, and all levels of government. Jewell itself, a 35-year operator now running the full model in market, is the live proof that this operator can become a scaled partner rather than a stuck one.

The seam the brand makes legible

The human 20 percent and machine 80 percent split is the core of the whole business, and it is now embodied by a live partner. Jewell enters and owns the client. The Discover phase is always human. Design and Deploy hand off to the Maxxim engine at scale once the judgement work is set, and every stage is human-checked. Jewell is the name on the door. Maxxim is the engine behind it. The visual system exists to make that split obvious, credible, and ownable, and to keep the human the hero rather than the machine.

Archetype

A weighted blend. Primary is the Sage, whose authority comes from a method proven over years and a refusal to dress plumbing up as the product. Supporting is the Creator, expressed as the builder of an engine, which ties the brand to tangible, launched outcomes. The brand is deliberately not the Magician promising AI transformation, nor the Hero promising to slay the agency, because over-claiming is exactly what the trust gap punishes.

Values

• A human stands behind it. Every output carries a named person's accountability. If no one will put their name on it, it does not ship.
• Finished, not busy. We sell launched outcomes and owned assets, not hours, dashboards, or activity.
• The client owns it. The end client owns their assets outright, hosted on their own domain and unlockable to hand-editable HTML. We do not hold the keys.
• Keep the gate. The gated process is the quality bar, and the product enforces it: creative unlocks only as its briefs exist and a logo is locked. No phase proceeds until the prior one is signed off.
• Stronger together. Trust, taste, and judgement held by a community beat the same held by a lone operator.

Positioning

For trusted operators who can win the work and own the relationship but cannot deliver agency-grade growth repeatably, Maxxim is the commercialisation engine that runs Jewell's proven, gated 3D Process at AI speed with an accountable human at every gate. It is the only model in the competitive set that is fast and accountable and method-backed at the same time, delivering finished, owned outcomes. Agencies have the human without the speed. AI tools have the speed without the human. Enablement platforms have reach without a method. No category combines all three. The engine behind the partner, not the name on the door.

Essence

Fast and accountable and method-backed, delivering finished outcomes the client owns. The proven method, run by a human, at AI speed.

Tagline

The tagline is set in Poppins, the brand typeface, alongside the wordmark. The leading candidate carried into the visual system is The human at the wheel, which owns the trust position in four words and closes the central objection directly. A close partner-facing alternative is The engine behind the partner, which captures the seam the live Jewell partner now proves. Maxxim's own one-word category lead remains open and is not invented here. Jewell's external lead word is locked: growth.

3. Logos

The Maxxim logo is a typographic combination mark: the word Maxxim set in Poppins as the wordmark, paired with a compact, geometric gated-M monogram that can stand alone as the icon. With the Blue Frog removed, the system leans typographic, so the wordmark carries most of the identity and the monogram is restrained and abstract, never a character. The mark reads as a platform and a standard, not a mascot.

The final logo files are being produced by Brand Identity from the Logo Brief and will be supplied as SVG: a horizontal lockup, a stacked lockup, and an icon, each in positive, reverse, and single-colour mono. Until those land, render the wordmark typographically in Poppins, set in Signal Blue on white or white on Signal Blue. The reversed variant is available now and is documented below. The final SVG set slots into the same positions described here without changing any of these rules.

The variant set

Each of the three variants exists in three colour treatments: Signal Blue on white (positive), white on Signal Blue or a dark field (reverse or inverse), and single-colour mono in the near-black Ink value for print fallback where blue is unavailable.

Logo variants: primary and reversed

Two forms of the mark carry the identity across light and dark grounds. The primary mark is the default and covers the majority of surfaces. The reversed, or inverse, variant exists so the brand stays legible where the primary mark would lose contrast.

Primary mark

The Maxxim wordmark, with the gated-M monogram, rendered in Signal Blue #2D5BFF on white or a light field. This is the default for light backgrounds: white pages, Mist surface panels, proposal covers on white, and any light end-client context. Use it wherever the ground is light enough for Signal Blue to hold clear contrast.

Reversed (inverse) variant

A white maxxim wordmark on transparent, for dark grounds and Signal Blue fields. This is the reversed, or inverse, mark: the Edition 03 logotype knocked out in white, held within the locked identity. It is a variant, not a new identity, and the identity is not re-opened by it.

When to use the reversed variant

• Use it on Signal Blue fields, where the primary Signal Blue mark would disappear into the ground. The white knockout is the correct treatment on any solid Signal Blue panel, band, or cover.
• Use it on dark grounds, Ink or any near-black or deep surface, and on dark photographic fields where a light mark reads and a Signal Blue mark does not.
• Do not use it on white or light fields. There the white wordmark loses contrast. Switch back to the primary Signal Blue mark, or to the single-colour mono Ink mark where colour is unavailable.
• On a busy or photographic field, whether light or dark, place either mark on a solid Signal Blue or white holding shape rather than directly over busy detail. On a Signal Blue holding shape, use the reversed white variant. On a white holding shape, use the primary Signal Blue mark.

Clear space and minimum size for the reversed variant

The reversed variant follows the same rules as the primary mark. Protect it with clear space equal to x, where x is the cap-height of the wordmark, and hold the same minimum sizes below. When it sits on a Signal Blue or dark panel, the clear-space zone must stay clear of edges, other type, and any competing element, so the ground colour reads as an unbroken field around the mark. Give the reversed mark a little extra breathing room on a dark ground so the white knockout does not crowd a panel edge.

Contrast and accessibility for the reversed variant

White on Signal Blue #2D5BFF is a high-contrast, legible pairing and is the intended reverse treatment. White on Ink or a near-black ground is the strongest contrast in the system. Keep the mark flat: no gradient, no glow, no drop shadow, because effects reduce legibility and break the Sage restraint. On a dark photographic field, do not trust the photo to carry the contrast. If any part of the mark's clear-space zone would fall over a lighter passage of the image, use a solid Signal Blue or Ink holding shape behind it so the white knockout holds against the whole footprint, not just the darkest part. Where a favicon or a very small mark is placed on a dark UI, prefer the icon-only monogram in white over a shrunk wordmark, so the mark stays crisp at the 16px floor.

Misuse of the reversed variant

• Do not place the reversed white mark on white or a light field, or on a light passage of a photo without a holding shape. It will lose contrast.
• Do not recolour the reversed mark. It is white, full stop. Do not tint it, do not set it in Signal Blue on a dark ground, and do not introduce a second colour.
• Do not add effects. No gradient, glow, bevel, drop shadow, outline, or photographic treatment on the reversed mark.
• Do not stretch, skew, rotate, or crowd it, and do not let type, image, or an edge enter its clear-space zone.
• Do not reintroduce the Blue Frog or any animal, creature, or mascot alongside or in place of the reversed mark. It is a platform mark, not a character.

Clear space

Protect the mark with clear space equal to x, where x is the cap-height of the Maxxim wordmark. No type, image, or edge may enter that x border on any side. Clear space scales with the mark, so the rule holds at every size. This applies to the primary mark and the reversed variant alike.

Minimum size

Below 120px wide, drop the wordmark and use the icon alone rather than letting the wordmark go illegible. The 16px favicon is the hard floor and is designed for directly, not derived by shrinking the full lockup. The reversed variant holds these same floors.

Backgrounds and inverse rules

• On white or a light field, use the primary positive mark in Signal Blue.
• On Signal Blue or a dark field, use the reversed (inverse) mark knocked out in white.
• On a busy or photographic end-client field, place the mark on a solid Signal Blue or white holding shape so the wordmark stays legible, never directly over busy detail. Reversed white mark on the Signal Blue holding shape, primary Signal Blue mark on the white holding shape.
• Where colour is unavailable, use the single-colour mono mark in the near-black Ink value, kept flat with no gradient or glow.
• Never stretch, skew, rotate, recolour outside the locked palette, crowd, or apply gradients, bevels, drop shadows, glows, or photographic effects to the mark, in either variant.
• Never reintroduce the Blue Frog in any form, literal or stylised, and never replace it with any other animal, creature, or mascot. The mark is a platform, not a character.

4. Colour

Signal Blue is the one locked brand colour and the lead. It occupies the right emotional territory for the brand: blue is the colour of trust, reliability, and competence, which is exactly the ground the trust gap is fought on, and a bright, saturated, electric blue adds the speed and modernity that signal AI capability. Together they encode the core promise, trust plus speed, in a single colour. The Signal name reinforces clarity over noise.

The neutrals below are recommended supporting colours, not locked. They exist so the book is immediately usable for type, surfaces, lines, and quiet UI states. Signal Blue remains the single locked brand colour. The CMYK and PMS values for Signal Blue are an approximation to confirm on press; the hex and RGB are exact.