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# System prepended metadata

title: The Raft Brand and Identity

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# The Raft Brand and Identity 


This living toolkit was developed internally by our Raft Employees and continues to be an evolving resource. We hope it's a useful resource for anyone. 

Our visual identity is a flexible system that helps you communicate clearly while building visual consistency across internal and external facing projects. It features a growing set of templates and guides you can use to meet common design needs — and save time in the process.*

### Brand Promise
At Raft, we promise to solve the most complex problems with the highest quality and reliability in coding, programming, software and platform development and machine intelligence; to push our country forward - and provide greater safety to our fellow Americans - through efficiency and innovation. We vow to always be human in our approach and to never fear starting from scratch on even the most complex task. And finally, to never give up until the job is complete - tested, deployed, and operational.

### Ubuntu (oo·boon·too) · Raft's Core philosphy
In English: **“I Am, Because We Are”** 
We support our “nadi” by elevating our fellow Rafters. We work as a hyper collaborative team where each person brings a unique perspective, adding value that did not exist before. 
The people make Raft special. We celebrate each other and our cognitive and cultural diversity. We are devoted to our practice of innovation and collaboration.

# 🖥️ Digital Best Practices + Guidelines

## The Logo
![four instances of the Raft logo where two are filled with dark and light and the two are outlined on dark and light backgrounds with a row of just the R in the same instances](https://i.imgur.com/72QZRUB.jpg)

### Guidelines 
Raft is spelt with a capital 'R'. Always.
* **Do** use the smoke version of the logo over a white and light background as your default. Use outlined versions as secondary instances where the logo is not the main focus and on solid backgrounds  solid. You can see an example of this in our presentation templates.
* **Do** keep adequate white space around the logo. At any size, there should be an x indicator of white space between the logo and any other object or border.
* **Do** use the SVG logo whenever possible. It has a small file size and renders well at any scale. PNG is an acceptable fallback if the format of your document doesn’t support SVG.
* **Do** ask the Raft Design Team when you have any questions or need logo approval for edge cases below
* **Do** use a subtle dropshadow for the dark outlined logos as appropriate
* **Do not** change the color of the logo
* **Do not**  place the logo over photo images
* **Do not**  stretch or skew the logo. FYI, this will never be approved


![the x-height is defined the width of the R and height is from the bottom half of the R in Raft.](https://i.imgur.com/bAXrg9j.png =550x)


## 🎨 Color Palette
![](https://i.imgur.com/iAV4M51.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/6AKc4Vi.png)


Steeped Black is used as the base and background for almost all of our products. Sofisticated, tech forward, assertive. To offset that, are the accent colors. These vibrant selections reflect the character, fun, inclusive, corky side of our company culture. 

* **Do** use the Steeped Black as the base color and invert with Off White for print products or light versions of a digital product. 
* **Do** use the Pinks, Purples, Blues and Greens as **accent colors**. 
*Accent colors are supplementary colors that typically contrast or complement a space. They are used for emphasis, to enhance, or to liven up or add drama to an otherwise monochromatic space**
* **Do** not use the accent colors as solid backgrounds. You’ll burn your retinas. 
* **Do not** combine pink/purples with green in an graphic object, section, or component. For example, a graphic wave or button  should never fade from pink to green or vise versa. All other combinations are okay.

### Primary vs Secondary Color Palette
Raft's primary color palette is the Pink and Purples
Secondary color palete is the Greens and Blues

### A note on gradients and accessibility
Color contrast and accessibility are essential in design. Text contrast and legibility against background should always be priority to aesthetics.

## Typography
The primary font is **Ubuntu**, in medium and regular weights. The Secondary and accent font is Space Mono in regular and bold. We use different font sizes and weights to create hierarchy. Both are **Google Fonts** and will require installing and downloading. On Windows devices, if **Ubuntu** and **Space Mono** are not available, use Arial as a replacement.
### Copy, Tone & Voice
Raft is spelt with a capital 'R'. Always.
We are professional, yet approachable. Smart and whitty with subtle nods to puns and dad jokes. We love our LFG modes and songs and reference them **internally**. See our bi-weekly presentations as examples. 

#### Common phrases we use
* Together, we'll make waves
* We think difficult is fun
* Consensus of Doers + Believers + Innovators

## 🌊 Icons and Extractable Components

These extractables are **purely decorative.**
These compontents are subtle knod to Raft’s character, corkiness + weirdness. Polished and clean, yet human. You can see an example of the usage in our presentation templates.

* Do use as accents across digital and print products as secondary objects to compliment white space and slightly overlay on imagery or video

### Layering
This feature offers debth to our deliverables, nodding to the complexity and fuilidy in our approaches.

* **Do not** hide the "A" in Raft when using the logo beneath the wave layers. 
* Grid patterns can be used subtly over text or print products

### Iconography
Utilize [Material UI iconography in **rounded**](https://fonts.google.com/icons?icon.style=Rounded)



## Templates + Resources
### The Raft Employee Portal: Raft Graphics
The Raft Employee Portal has a tab called "[Raft Graphics](https://gorafttech.sharepoint.com/Raft%20Graphics/Forms/AllItems.aspx)" You should only be given viewing access. Please save the templates locally to your machine/desktop and work off of there, keeping the master files unedited. We reccommend working within the Word/PowerPoint Desktop Apps respectively as working off of SharePoint can alter the appearance of the design. There, you will find:
* Letterhead templates
* LinkedIn Banners
* Logos both in .svg and .png format
* PowerPoint Templates



### ![figma logo](https://i.imgur.com/uOaN9c1.png =12x) Figma Files
<iframe style="border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.figma.com/embed?embed_host=share&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.figma.com%2Ffile%2FdO1F6dW0VPacAIo8RdP4Dd%2FRaft-Branding%3Fnode-id%3D799%253A10311" allowfullscreen></iframe>
## Images
## Principles

# 🛍️ SWAG + Print Deliverables
All SWAG and external facing deliverables that represents and/or incorporates the Raft logo and brand is required inquire with operations at <a href="mailto:info@goraft.tech">operations@teamraft.com</a>

## ❓Questions or Feedback
This is not a complete brand style guide, and it’s still an early draft. We’ll continue adding to this as we can, but there is no dedicated team at the moment.

We welcome your feedback so that we can continue to chip away at the highest priority needs for the Raft team. If you have any suggestions, questions or specific needs in regards to the brand, please email us at <a href="mailto:info@goraft.tech">operations@teamraft.com</a> or chat us in the [Mattermost #GeneralChat](https://mattermost.goraft.tech/goraft/channels/town-square)


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###### * Sources
* [F18](https://brand.18f.gov/)
