The Kettle Black
Brand & Website Guidelines
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A quiet kind of confidence. Monochrome, editorial, and unhurried — a serif wordmark, an old earthen pot, and a single plum dot that says the rest.
The full stop after BLACK is the brand's one spark of colour. Render it in Plum #6B2D5C on digital surfaces — the wordmark and pot stay monochrome, and the dot carries the personality. One accent, used once. Never colour the letters or the pot.
Keep clear space equal to the height of the pot's mouth on all sides. Nothing intrudes.
Icon · 24px minFavicon · 16pxBelow 120px wide, use the icon alone rather than a full lockup.
Don't stretch, condense, or distort the lockup.
Don't place the mark on saturated colour. Black, cream, or photography only.
Don't add shadows, glows, gradients, or outlines to the mark.
Open Sans carries every word of running text, navigation, captions and buttons. It is quiet on purpose — clean, neutral and highly legible — so the serif and the single plum dot do the talking. Use 400 for body, 600 for labels and buttons, 300 for large intros. Letter-spacing stays near-zero in paragraphs and opens up only for uppercase labels.
Focus state borders in plum. Inputs sit on cream within white cards.
The Kettle BlackPot + wordmark + plum dot, left. Uppercase Open Sans links, right. Active link in plum.
Serif heading with the plum-dot full stop, a short Open Sans paragraph, and a quiet hairline frame.
The name winks at "the pot calling the kettle black." We're in on the joke — confident, a little dry, never trying too hard.
Underneath the wit is genuine hospitality. Short, human sentences. We invite; we don't announce.
Say less. White space, few words, one accent. Elegance is what we leave out.
Monochrome and moody, warmed by cream. Think matte ceramic, curls of steam, dark stoneware on linen, hands at work, low contrast and natural light. Photography stays black-and-white or deeply desaturated so the world matches the mark — and the only colour that ever appears is a single plum note, used like punctuation.