About this
document.
How this guideline was made, what it owns, what it borrows, and who you talk to when something is wrong.
A working document, not a monument.
Fourteen pages of static HTML, each with the same shell: a top bar, a sidebar with section navigation, a Tweaks panel pinned bottom-right. Everything is hand-authored to make direct editing possible. The Tweaks panel lets you swap accent and surface tokens live; colors_and_type.css is the source of truth for the design system, which the document inherits via the same var(--br-*) tokens documented on each page.
Versioning
Numbered editions, each tagged in the top bar and at the foot of every page. A change to any token, any rule, or any forbidden pattern bumps the minor (v1.1). A change to the canonical palette, the wordmark, or the typography pair bumps the major (v2.0).
Two people, one issue tracker, no committees.
Eleanor M.
Owns the visual system: colour, type, layout, motion, components.
design@betterreviews.io
Editorial
Owns voice, tone, the forbidden patterns list, the Journal calendar.
words@betterreviews.io
For visual changes, open an issue with a screenshot and a token diff. For copy changes, open an issue with the rejected phrase, the rule it breaks, and a proposed replacement. Don't ship the change first. The brand earns its consistency by being argued for, not assumed.
What we own, what we license, what we credit.
BetterReviews Ltd. All rights reserved. Trademark application filed in the UK and EU (Class 9 · 42).
Cloud Dancer · Pantone 11-4201. The named canonical paper of the brand. Swap in CMYK as 3 · 3 · 8 · 0 when printing offset.
Terracotta · #CC6633. The canonical resting accent. Carries ~15% more saturation than the original clay while holding AA-large contrast on Cloud Dancer.
Phaedra Charles / Undercase Type · Google Fonts · SIL Open Font License v1.1. Italic axis intentionally not loaded.
Swiss Typefaces · self-hosted · BetterReviews holds a commercial licence for production use. Downstream re-use requires the same licence.
Helena Zhang · phosphoricons.com · MIT License. Regular weight only, 1.5px stroke.
All photography placed inside the Magritte frame must be original or licensed by BetterReviews. No stock people-smiling. No AI-generated imagery.
Sourced numbers cite BrightEdge, Pew Research, Adobe Digital Index, Yotpo, Princeton GEO. Falsifiability is the AI-slop filter.
Who can do what with the brand.
Internal (BetterReviews team)
- Apply the wordmark, monogram, tokens to any BetterReviews surface
- Build new components that follow the rules in this document
- Modify this document; bump the edition
- Use the licensed fonts in production
External (partners, press, integrators)
- Use the wordmark unmodified when referencing BetterReviews
- Use the favicon and OG card for link previews
- Refer readers here for typography and colour rules
- Do not redistribute the Euclid Flex woff2 files
- Do not recolour, recompose, or tagline the wordmark
Every revision since v1.0.
Twenty-two chapters published. Tokens stabilised at 89. Two typefaces, three voices. The Refusal landing surface ships parallel.
Stroke-continuity rule added. Peacock confined to drenched bands. Em-dash banned at file-save level.
Wordmark "i"-tittle moved to clay. Monogram introduced. Magritte frame defined.
A growth engine,
hidden in a review.