01
Brand Concept
The Idea
The gold thread. Consultancies sell slide decks; Aurea sells the thread that holds up a decision. Every piece of the system carries one continuous line — the monogram's crossbar, the rule under the logotype, the thread running across a slide.
The line always runs past what it divides. That overrun is the whole argument: the reasoning outlives the document it arrived in.
Personality
Closer to a private bank or an auction house than a startup consultancy. Calm, reserved, ceremonial. Confidence expressed as restraint.
Hierarchy is built with space and line-height, never with weight. Nothing gets bolded to be noticed.
Rules That Hold the System Together
One gold element per piece. The moment a second one appears, gold stops being an accent and becomes decoration.
Obsidian and ivory carry the work; gold only marks the thread. No gradients in the typography, no shadows, no second display face.
02
Monogram
A didone A — thin stroke on one side, thick on the other — with the crossbar extended past both strokes. The counterform is never drawn: it's what's left between the strokes and the bar.
Construction 12 × 12 grid · bar at 69%
Clear Space = 16% of the symbol's height, on every side
Positive obsidian on ivory · min. 18px
03
Lockups
The vertical lockup is primary. The horizontal one exists for nav bars, footers, and email — where height is the scarce resource. A vertical hairline separates the mark from the logotype: without it the two read as one word.
AUREA
Strategy · Design · Growth
Vertical Lockup primary lockup · assets/lockup-vertical.svg
Horizontal Lockup nav / footer / email · assets/lockup-horizontal.svg
04
Palette
Black, ivory, and gold — with the proportion fixed, not just the hues. Obsidian and ivory cover roughly 95% of any surface; gold is measured in millimeters.
05
Type System
Two families, four roles. Bodoni Moda carries the voice; Cabinet Grotesk carries the information. The tracking values are the system — they're what makes the logotype a logotype and not just a serif word set wide.
Display Bodoni Moda · 400 · 0.01em tracking
Clarity is a competitive advantage
Logotype Bodoni Moda · 400 · 0.22em tracking
AUREA
Descriptor Cabinet Grotesk · 500 · 0.42em tracking · uppercase
Strategy · Design · Growth
Body Cabinet Grotesk · 400 · 16/1.72 · max 46ch
Every project produces one page before it produces a hundred. The system is built so that page feels like the most important object in the room.
06
Stationery
Business card at true scale, 85 × 55 mm; A4 proposal cover. Both are HTML components — edit the markup, not an image.
AUREA
Card — Front 85 × 55 mm
Card — Back sample contact, .example domain
AUREA
Strategy · Design · Growth
Proposal Cover A4 · 210 × 297 mm
07
Presentation
Three slide masters cover a whole deck: cover, section divider, and content. Anything asking for a fourth master is a sign the content should be split up.
Master 01 — Cover 16:9
Master 02 — Divider 16:9
Master 03 — Content 16:9 · two columns
08
Digital Pieces
Email signature, social post, and avatar. It's in the avatar that the extended crossbar earns its keep: cropped to a circle at 32px, it's the overrun that keeps the letter from reading as just another triangle.
Aurea
Strategy · Design · Growth
hello@aurea.example
aurea.example
Email Signature ivory background · dark gold for contrast
Social Post 1:1
avatar · dark
avatar · light
favicon 32px
favicon 16px
09
Portfolio Card Composition
The 4:3 composition that fills .work-case__media in Selected Work. Built entirely
in vector — the reference mockup is a photographic still life, and no licensed photography
exists for this project, so the light, the contact shadow, the grooved surface, and the
raw stone are all geometry.
card.svg 1200 × 900 · 4:3 · self-contained
10
Case Summary
Brief
A strategy consultancy whose value is invisible until it's explained. The brief: look established on first contact, without borrowing the visual language of the corporations it advises.
Approach
One idea, expressed structurally rather than decoratively. The extended crossbar becomes the rule under the logotype, the divider on a slide, the thread on a card — the same gesture at every scale.
What the System Delivers
Three slide masters, two lockups, six colors, and four type roles cover the whole production. A proposal can be assembled without a designer and still look like Aurea.
.example domain.