Brand Guide
01 · Identity
Logos & Icons
The Storystak AI mark is a layered stack — three planes representing the layers of expertise we encode. Always use one of the locked variants below. Never recreate.
Full Logo
Icon
Use the icon for favicons, app tiles, social avatars, watermarks, and anywhere the full lockup is too wide to read. Use the full logo everywhere else — headers, decks, business cards, signatures, proposals.
02 · Color
Color Palette
A warm, grounded palette. Bronze Spice is the only accent — use it intentionally for emphasis, not as wallpaper. Coffee Bean does most of the typographic heavy lifting.
Primary Accent
Click to copy
Bronze Spice
#C45D2C
RGB 196 · 93 · 44
CTAs, highlights, italic accents, brand "AI" mark. Use sparingly for maximum impact.
Primary Dark
Click to copy
Coffee Bean
#210F07
RGB 33 · 15 · 7
All body text, headlines, dark backgrounds. Warmer than pure black.
Surface
Click to copy
Powder Petal
#F7E3DA
RGB 247 · 227 · 218
Section backgrounds, cards, callouts, hover states. Adds warmth without competing.
Base / Background
Click to copy
Snow
#FCF7F5
RGB 252 · 247 · 245
Default page background. Off-white with warm undertone — never use pure #FFFFFF.
Pure Dark
Click to copy
Onyx
#0F0F0F
RGB 15 · 15 · 15
Logo black, hard edges, technical contexts. Use Coffee Bean for text instead.
The 70/20/10 rule: 70% Snow + Powder Petal (surfaces), 20% Coffee Bean (text + structure), 10% Bronze Spice (accent). If Bronze Spice is doing more than 10% of the work, pull it back.
03 · Typography
Type System
Three families, three jobs. Never substitute. EB Garamond is locked to the logo only — never use it for body or headlines.
We turn your best people's expertise into AI systems your whole team can use.
Display 56
H2 — 40
H3 — 28
Light — Captions and fine print
Regular — Body copy default
Medium — Subheads and labels
Semibold — Buttons and emphasis
Bold — Stat callouts
Clone the expertise. Standardize the quality. Unlock the capacity. Three pillars, one system. Body copy in DM Sans Regular at 15–16px sets the default voice — practical, direct, no marketing polish.
Pairing rule: Instrument Serif headline + DM Sans body. Italic Instrument Serif inside a headline replaces the role of color emphasis — don't combine both at once or it competes. Bronze Spice accent + italic = brand signature, not a default.
04 · Iconography
Icon System
Phosphor Icons is the locked icon library — never emojis, never mixed sets. Use the Thin weight by default to match the editorial feel of Instrument Serif. Bronze Spice for active states, CTAs, and key actions. Coffee Bean for navigation, UI chrome, and supporting metadata.
Bronze Spice — Action & Emphasis
Sparkle
Rocket Launch
Target
Lightning
Trend Up
Arrow Right
Check Circle
Star
Fire
Flag
Medal
Trophy
Coffee Bean — UI & Navigation
Stack
Users
Brain
Gear
Chart Line
File Text
Folder
Search
Clock
Chat
Book Open
Puzzle
In Context — The Three Pillars
Clone the Expertise
Extract senior team frameworks into AI systems juniors can use.
Standardize the Quality
Prompt libraries and templates enforce consistency regardless of who produces the work.
Unlock the Capacity
Shift senior people from 60/40 execution/strategy to 30/70. 4x production without hiring.
Rules: Always Phosphor — never emojis, never Material/Lucide/Heroicons. Use Thin weight by default (
ph-thin) to match the editorial register. Step up to Regular only when icons get small (under 16px) and Thin reads too delicate. Bronze Spice signals action — if Bronze appears, the user can or should do something. Coffee Bean is the workhorse for everything else. Browse the full set at phosphoricons.com.
05 · Imagery
Hero Imagery
The hero library is intentionally small — one treated road photograph that carries the brand's sense of forward motion. Use it full-bleed in hero sections, social previews, and ad creative. Reach for WEBP first; JPG fallback for older platforms.
06 · Voice & Messaging
How We Sound
Operator language, not consultant language. We sound like someone who has built things — not someone who advises on them. The voice is conversational, practical, and confident. No marketing polish.
The Single Truth
Your best people carry frameworks, standards, and judgment in their heads that the rest of your team can't access. We encode that thinking into AI systems. Suddenly your whole team produces at the level of your best person — and your best people stop babysitting and start building.
The idea every headline, ad, slide, and email derives from
The One-Liner
We turn your best people's expertise into AI systems your whole team can use.
Locked · Do not deviate
The Liberation Statement
Your senior team stops being the bottleneck. They start being the architect.
The Simplifier
We build the system. Your team just does the work.
"Just" is intentional — it collapses the distance between problem and solution
Voice Principles
01
Operator language, not consultant language.
"We build" not "we enable." "Running systems" not "strategic frameworks." Sound like someone who's shipped things.
02
Benefit-first, proof-second.
Open with where the buyer ends up, not where they are now. Pain is context. Benefit is the lead.
03
Specific over vague.
"9 hours back per person per week" beats "save significant time." Numbers earn trust. Adjectives don't.
04
Short sentences. No hedging.
This isn't a category we explain carefully. It's one we own confidently. Cut qualifiers. Say the thing.
05
The buyer is smart and frustrated.
Don't explain what AI is or why it matters. They know. They've tried it. Meet them past the education phase.
06
AI is the vehicle, not the product.
The product is encoded human expertise. AI is how it scales. "AI without human expertise is just a super calculator. We supply the expertise."
Vocabulary — Retire & Replace
| Retire This | Use This Instead |
|---|---|
| AI enablement | AI systems built for your team |
| AI readiness assessment | Find out what your team's AI opportunity is worth |
| AI transformation | Your team, actually using AI |
| Enterprise AI adoption | Getting your whole team to use AI every day |
| Custom Claude Projects | AI workspaces built around how your team works |
| Prompt library | 30 prompts that carry your best people's thinking |
| Enable (as a verb) | Build · make work · run on |
| Strategy (as a deliverable) | Working systems · running systems · live systems |
Buyer Mirror Phrases
Phrases pulled directly from how real buyers describe their situation. Use them back at the buyer in ad copy, landing pages, and discovery call openers — they signal you understand the problem from the inside.
We bought the tool but nobody uses it
Scratching the surface
Drowning in tools
Babysitting the output
Missing the magic
We tried it and it didn't stick
What We Are · What We Are Not
We Are
- An operator's operator — we build and install the system, then stay close while your team owns it
- A partner, not a project — the engagement is the entry point, not the deliverable
- The team that encodes expertise into systems that run without the expert in the room
- Builders who train alongside the build so adoption is part of the install, not a separate phase
We Are Not
- A training company. (We build systems, not curricula.)
- A strategy consultant. (We ship working systems, not slide decks.)
- A software vendor. (We're not selling a platform.)
- A generalist AI agency. (We specialize in encoding expertise, not just automating tasks.)
The contrast line: Most AI consultants teach. We build, install, and stay until your team owns it.
The Post-Pilot Reframe
74% of companies are stuck in pilot purgatory. They believe in AI personally — they just couldn't transfer that experience to their team. This is the line that names the real problem.
The tools didn't fail you. The system around them did. You bought the car. Nobody built the roads.
Tagline: Open. The four candidates we explored didn't land — none of them answered the post-pilot buyer's real question (mechanism, not destination). Holding the slot until the right line emerges. Until then, the one-liner does the work the tagline would do.
07 · Supporting Data
The Numbers That Earn Trust
Every stat below is sourced. Use them in copy, decks, ads, and discovery calls — but use them in service of a story, not as a wall of numbers. Lead with the arc, support with the stat.
The Hero Stat — Lead With This Most Often
51 days
lost per person per year to technology friction — nearly two full months
9 hours
back per person per week once the system is running. Across a team of 10 → 90 hours every week.
Four Narrative Arcs
Stats are clustered by the story they tell — not by where they came from. Match the arc to where the buyer is in their thinking. Lead with the arc, then drop the supporting number.
Arc 01
The Adoption Gap
Use when the buyer doesn't yet believe there's a real problem to solve. This is the "you have a bigger problem than you realize" arc.
91% / 1%
of mid-market companies use AI. Only 1% describe their deployment as mature.
Market research
80%
of workers actively avoid or reject the AI tools their employer bought them.
WalkMe/SAP · 3,750 workers · 14 countries
67-point disconnect
88% of executives think their teams have adequate AI tools. Only 21% of workers agree.
WalkMe/SAP
Arc 02
The Pilot Failure
Use when the buyer has already tried AI and is gun-shy. Disarms shame. Tells them their experience is the rule, not the exception.
95%
of generative AI pilots fail to deliver ROI.
MIT NANDA Institute
74%
of companies are stuck in pilot purgatory. 42% scrapped AI initiatives entirely in 2025.
BCG · S&P Global
56%
of CEOs report no financial impact from their AI investment.
PwC 2026
Arc 03
The Cost of Standing Still
Use when the buyer needs to feel urgency without being pushed. The math creates the pressure — you don't have to.
$17M
per enterprise goes to unused software licenses annually.
WalkMe/SAP
68%
of workers using AI tools received zero formal training. Untrained workers are 6x more likely to say AI makes them less productive.
Salesforce · BCG
40%
of digital transformation spend underperforms due to adoption failures. Average budget: $54.2M.
Industry research
Arc 04
The Upside When It Works
Use when the buyer needs to see the destination. Pair with the financial case below to close the loop.
5x more productive
AI super-users save 9 hours per week vs. 2 for laggards. Across a team of 10 → 90 hours per week.
BCG
3.8x higher ROI
Organizations with mature AI enablement see 3.8x higher ROI on AI technology investments.
BCG
10-20-70
AI success is 10% algorithms, 20% technology, 70% people, process, and organizational readiness. Most consultants chase the 30%. We build the 70%.
BCG · Use the rule by name
The Financial Case — Recite From Memory
$20K
One-Time Engagement
$138K–$414K
Annual Value Recovered
7x–21x
ROI Depending on Team Size
How to use ROI in a conversation: Don't lead with hours saved — leaders know reclaimed hours don't automatically hit the P&L. Lead with one of three frames: (1) capacity is the constraint, not effort — "you're leaving revenue on the table because your team is the bottleneck"; (2) the next hire you won't have to make — "a fully-loaded mid-size hire is $70K–$120K. Payroll is permanent. The engagement is one-time"; (3) revenue per employee — "same team, same salaries, more output, better margin."
Honesty rule: Every number above is sourced. Never round up. Never combine stats from incompatible studies. If a stat doesn't have a citation in this guide, it doesn't go in a deck or ad. Numbers are credibility currency — once spent on a bad stat, they're hard to earn back.