Identity.

Evidence, not verdicts.

The brand promise. Every external surface stays beneath this ceiling.

Episodic evaluators.

Professionals who do evaluation work a few times a year, not as a main job. The first pilot is academic because the pain is sharpest there, but the product is not education-only.

Sober. Confident. Dry.

Short sentences. Reference voice: The Economist, not TechCrunch. English even in Belgian context. The brand does not joke about regulators.

Evalgist is the brand. Products take suffixes.

Never sub-brands with independent identity. First mention uses the full name; second mention may shorten to the suffix.

Eight cells of ink. One cell of tone.

No outline, no frame, no highlight. The absence is a quiet member of the field, not a UI state.

The sizes it will actually be seen at.

Above 24 px the tonal cell renders at slate-300. Below 24 px it lifts automatically to slate-400 so the cell stays legible.

Mark, wordmark, and their agreed proportions.

Geist Sans 600. Primary wordmark ≈ 0.78× mark size; product suffix 10 px uppercase with 0.15em tracking, stacked beneath. Gap between mark and wordmark is optical.

Authoritative specification.

These values are the source of truth. Everything else is a derivation.

The component handles size- and surface-aware logic.

Never manually select between mark variants or hard-code lockup proportions. Import the primitive.

// Product UI — default size, inherits color
import { EvalgistMark } from "@evalgist/design-system/brand";

<EvalgistMark size={20} />

// Dark surface — sidebar, topbar, any inverted region
<EvalgistMark size={24} inverted />

// Full lockup — product pages, auth screens, hero
import { EvalgistLockup } from "@evalgist/design-system/brand";

<EvalgistLockup markSize={32} />

// Product header — Shortlist, Grade
import { EvalgistProductLockup } from "@evalgist/design-system/brand";

<EvalgistProductLockup product="Shortlist" markSize={32} />

// Tight context — nav, breadcrumb, dense header
import { EvalgistWordmark } from "@evalgist/design-system/brand";

<EvalgistWordmark size={15} />

// app/layout.tsx — wire the favicons
export const metadata = {
  title: "Evalgist",
  icons: {
    icon: [
      { url: "/favicon.svg", type: "image/svg+xml" },
      { url: "/favicon-32.png", sizes: "32x32", type: "image/png" },
      { url: "/favicon-16.png", sizes: "16x16", type: "image/png" },
    ],
    apple: "/apple-touch-icon.png",
  },
  manifest: "/site.webmanifest",
};

export const viewport = { themeColor: "#0f172a" };

Constraints that protect the reading.

Rules first; then visual examples of violations.

One accent. Brand, never state.

Editorial Plum — oklch(0.39 0.105 325) · #602e63 · 10.1:1 on white. Selected 2026-07-07 after a two-round shootout gated on one test: it must never read as a fourth confidence band.

Evidence Editorial. Evaluation made inspectable, not mysterious.

Illustration and generated imagery extend the design system — they do not start a second brand. Synthetic documents, evaluation grids, quote evidence, and slate composition. The full agent-readable contract lives in packages/design-system/IMAGE_STYLE.md.

Hero composite: a document fragment, a criteria matrix banded by confidence, and a quote card. All data synthetic; bands carry the only color.

DocumentCriterionEvidenceDecision

Spot diagram: source to human decision in four nodes.

OG card: one artifact, heading added in code — never generated. Rendered live from /api/og.

Add a surface line per family (hero, publication, spot, OG) and the negative-prompt list. Full templates in IMAGE_STYLE.md.

Evalgist default card

grid, document stack, evidence card, human review

Actual generated image, rendered here at preview scale. Source aspect ratio: 1200 x 630.

Evalgist Shortlist

same artifact, product lockup plus its own headline

Actual generated image, rendered here at preview scale. Source aspect ratio: 1200 x 630.

These captures informed the direction. They are references only — never committed as Evalgist assets. Each notes what to borrow and what to leave behind.

Source files for non-React contexts.

In product code, always use the React components. These files are for slide decks, email signatures, partner decks, press.