Studio standards

Brand guidelines.

A garden's first season is the one that proves the design. So is the brand. These pages keep the studio's voice, palette, and rhythm consistent from the proposal letter to the finished site.

01 · Palette

Six colors, drawn from the work itself.

Sage and deep forest are the structural pair. Terracotta is reserved for warmth and accent, never for area. Cream and bone soften the editorial pages. Charcoal sits everything down.

Sage

#8B9D83

Soft accents, plant-mark backgrounds

Deep forest

#2E4033

Logo, primary action, dark sections

Terracotta

#C67B5C

Accent, never area. Stone, brick, autumn.

Cream

#F7F3EA

Page background, long-form reading

Bone

#FBF8F1

Photography backgrounds, gallery air

Charcoal

#2D2A26

Body text, dark labels

02 · Typography

Cormorant for the voice. Inter for the read.

Cormorant Garamond italic carries headlines and editorial moments. Inter handles long-form copy and any UI label that needs to be unambiguous. There's no third typeface.

Two designers. One way of working.

Cormorant Garamond 400 italic · clamp(2.75rem, 2rem + 3.5vw, 4.75rem) · line-height 1.05

A section heading sits with quiet weight

Cormorant Garamond 500 italic · clamp(1.85rem, 3vw, 2.5rem)

Lead paragraph for the section. Roomy line-height, generous max-width, no decorative drop-cap. The garden doesn't need a logo on every leaf.

Inter 400 · 1.18rem · line-height 1.65

Default body. The everyday voice of the studio. Sentences run a little longer than a marketing site; the readers are clients, agents, and other designers who appreciate a fully-formed thought.

Inter 400 · 1rem · line-height 1.7 · max-width 60ch

A caption, photo credit, or specimen note. Italic, smaller, never set with the body copy.

Cormorant Garamond italic · 0.95rem · muted

03 · Components

A small set of building blocks.

Buttons

Schedule a consult Plant gallery View past work

Forest fill for the primary action. Terracotta fill is reserved for plant- and material-related links. Outline is the soft secondary; never overload a section with three solid fills.

Editorial eyebrow

A manifesto of sorts

Sits above section titles. Tracked uppercase, never colored except on dark sections. The visual cue that a new chapter is starting.

Specimen card

Amelanchier alnifolia

Saskatoon serviceberry · native, four-season interest

Used wherever a plant, stone, or material is named. Latin name in italic, common name + note as a single muted line. No icons.

04 · Voice

Read like a studio note.

If a sentence wouldn't sit comfortably in a hand-written letter to a client at the close of the season, it doesn't sit on the website either.

Speak as a peer to the client. Most readers are sophisticated homeowners, agents, and other designers. Don't oversell, don't condescend.
Patience over urgency. Gardens are slow. The voice should match. No "schedule today" pressure language.
Specifics over abstractions. "A 14-foot drystone retaining wall, hand-laid in two days," not "premium hardscape solutions."
Latin botanical names where appropriate. Italicized, paired with the common name. The audience knows the difference.
Owns the seasonality. "First-season disappointment is normal" is more honest than "instant transformation."

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