Brand

Brand assets & guidelines.

The mark, colours, typography, voice and usage rules for accurate Kihon Labs representation. Free to use, as supplied, following the guidelines below.

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Logos

One mark, two lockups.

The ensō: a single brush stroke, painted, closed at the bottom left with a vermilion rule beneath it. It is an image, never a construction. The wordmark is typeset beside it, never part of the image.

Horizontal · primary

The default lockup. The mark, then Kihon at full ink and Labs at the secondary level, set in Instrument Sans medium. Use it everywhere unless space is constrained.

For light backgroundsMark, PNG →
The Kihon Labs mark

Sign mark · tight spaces

The mark alone: favicon, avatar, slide corner, watermark. Never below 24px, where the dry-brush edge closes up.

For light backgroundsPNG →

What does not exist yet: a vector master, a vertical lockup, a single-colour version for print and a reversed version for dark grounds. A colour-inverted PNG is not a reversed logo — inversion turns the vermilion rule cyan. Until those files are produced from the original artwork, the mark ships on white only.

Colours

The proportion is the rule.

Canvas and ink carry the page. Indigo appears only inside figures. Vermilion appears where something breaks. Roughly 92% canvas and ink · 6% indigo, in figures only · 2% vermilion. If two vermilion things compete on one screen, one of them is decoration and comes out.

Brand & canvas

CanvasThe ground · 92% of the brand#F7F6F2 · 247, 246, 242
ElevatedCards and panels that lift off the ground#FFFFFF · 255, 255, 255
InkType, rules, the primary button fill#0F131A · 15, 19, 26
SumiThe dark ground for documents and slides#13171E · 19, 23, 30
VermilionMarks the break · large text, marks, figure accents#C1341F · 193, 52, 31
Vermilion, smallThe same accent under 24px, where the lighter one fails contrast#9E2A16 · 158, 42, 22
IndigoStructure: figure strokes, the cause node. Never type.#1B3A5C · 27, 58, 92
Indigo 2The second stroke weight in a figure#274D78 · 39, 77, 120

Neutral ramp & status

Ink 94Headings, body, anything load-bearing · 17:1rgba(15,19,26,.94) · #1D2128
Ink 66Secondary text, captions, labels · 6.8:1rgba(15,19,26,.66) · #616368
Ink 52Large text only, 24px and above · 3.4:1rgba(15,19,26,.52) · #828488
Ink 24Non-text only. Never carries a word.rgba(15,19,26,.24) · #C5C6C8
LineHairlines, dividers, field edgesrgba(15,19,26,.10) · #E6E6E7
BreakWhere something breaks#9E2A16
CautionStrain Check, low band#B8663F
ClearStrain Check, high band#2F7D86

Text is one ink at five alphas, not a set of greys, so nothing drifts warm or cool. No traffic light: a finding is not green or amber; the evidence either supports the claim, or the limit is published beside it.

Typography

Two faces, two lanes. They never swap.

No third face for display. No italic except attribution. Headings are set at weight 500, not 700: the page is quiet, the argument carries it.

Aa Bb Cc 123Instrument Sans

Everything a reader reads: display, headings, body. Weights 400 / 500 / 600.

AA BB CC 123JetBrains Mono

Everything the system labels: eyebrows, ordinals, prices, figure captions. Uppercase and letter-spaced. Never running text.

Aa Bb Cc 123The serif lane

A system stack (Iowan Old Style, Charter, Palatino, Georgia). Research notes only: the one place the site is read rather than scanned.

RoleFaceSpec
Display / H1Instrument Sans34 – 62px · 500 · -0.03em
H2Instrument Sans28 – 44px · 500
H3Instrument Sans20 – 24px · 500
LeadInstrument Sans19 – 20px · 400
BodyInstrument Sans17px · 400 · emphasis at 600 for the line that carries the claim
EyebrowJetBrains Mono12px · uppercase · 0.14em · preceded by a §NN counter in vermilion
System labelJetBrains Mono11px · uppercase · 0.10em
Buttons & components

One primary per view. Everything else stays quiet.

Ink fill, pill. The second action is a bordered pill or a quiet link with an arrow, never a second dark button. Surfaces lift; they do not rule. A card that carries the lift drops its border.

Discuss the operating problemCompare servicesRead the framework →
Usual entry pointYou are hereWorking noteStage 1

Surface

White on the warm canvas, 14px radius, the lift, no border. Chips 6px, panels 22px, pills 999px. Nothing invents a fourth value.

The header

A capsule, inset from the top edge, aligned to the page's own column, hairlined and lifted. An object from the first frame; scrolling only deepens the lift.

No featured card

There is no "most popular" badge. The site does not rank its own services by a popularity it cannot evidence. The only badge on the ladder says where you are.

Voice & messaging

A practitioner reporting a finding, not a firm selling a service.

A sentence that cannot be defended is cut, not softened. A limit is published beside the claim it limits.

Always say

  • The operating condition, not the symptom
  • What the evidence carries, and how much of it there is
  • "Not yet", when the evidence is not ready
  • Where the method comes from: ISEOR/SEAM, Savall and Zardet
  • The limit, beside the finding

Never say

  • A guaranteed result, or a number without its provenance
  • "Transform", "unlock", "supercharge", "game-changing", "leverage"
  • A client's name, or anything that identifies one, in a note or a case
  • A conclusion before the fieldwork that establishes it
  • Urgency written as pressure rather than as consequence

Key messages

  • Find where the commercial system is breaking.
  • The methodology is inherited. The framework is how Kihon works.
  • Start with the condition, not the service.
  • From a felt problem to a decision leadership can defend.
  • Outputs that travel without us.
  • Working notes: current inquiry, not client evidence.

Signature lines

Everyone feels the drag. No one can price it yet.
You cannot fund a fix you cannot price.
A sales problem responds to coaching. A system problem returns after each local fix.
Bio & boilerplate

Copy-ready descriptions for press, directories and partner pages.

Use as written. Where a shorter version is needed, cut from the end rather than paraphrasing, so nothing is claimed that the practice has not established.

Company · one line

Kihon Labs diagnoses and designs the commercial systems behind B2B growth: where the system is breaking, what that is costing, and what to change first.

Company · about 60 words

Kihon Labs is a research-led advisory practice in Barcelona, working with B2B companies internationally. It applies the socio-economic approach to management — the ISEOR/SEAM lineage created by Henri Savall and developed with Véronique Zardet — to commercial systems, establishing the structural cause behind forecast drift, slow cycles and weak handoffs, the financial consequence of that cause, and the order in which to address it.

Cem Gorer · about 45 words

Cem Gorer is the founder of Kihon Labs. He spent years inside B2B sales and GTM teams before turning to why the same patterns repeated, lectures on sales and customer experience as an adjunct, and is an Executive DBA candidate applying intervention research to commercial systems.

Not in the boilerplate, and not to be added until it is true: a client count, a trained-people count, an ROI figure, a named client. The ISEOR field record is the lineage's, and is never written as Kihon's own.

Do's & don'ts

Keep the brand consistent wherever it shows up.

Do

  • Use the mark file exactly as provided, no modification
  • Keep clear space of one mark-height on all four sides
  • Lead with the horizontal lockup; use the sign alone only when space is tight
  • Keep the balance: canvas and ink carry the page, indigo in figures, vermilion where something breaks
  • Set the wordmark in Instrument Sans medium, Kihon at full ink and Labs at the secondary level

Don't

  • Stretch, skew, rotate, recolour or redraw the mark
  • Approximate it with a CSS circle, a border-radius, an emoji or a traced outline
  • Add a shadow, outline, glow or gradient
  • Place it over a photograph or a busy field
  • Use it below 24px, or invert the PNG for a dark ground

By using these assets you agree to our Terms & Conditions. For non-standard use or questions, contact us.

Questions

Need the mark in another format?

The vector master, the vertical lockup and the reversed version are produced from the original artwork on request.

Contact us