Brand
How the Fifty One Degrees brand looks, reads and is put to work. A short, practical guide for anyone making something in our name, with the assets ready to download.
Questions, or need a format that is not here? Email hello@51d.co.
The idea
A fixed point on the map.
Fifty One Degrees takes its name from the latitude of London, our home: 51.4°N. The brand is built to feel like that. Precise, grounded and senior, with no decoration that does not earn its place. We are practitioners who build, not advisers who talk, and the identity carries the same restraint: one typeface, one accent hue and a great deal of white space.
This page is the short version of how the brand works. It is enough to keep anything you make on-brand without a long manual. When in doubt, choose the quieter option.
Logo
The mark and wordmark.
The logo pairs an aperture mark, a point fixed on a map, with the full wordmark set in the brand typeface. Use the supplied artwork. Do not redraw or re-typeset it.
Ink on light
White on darkClear space
Keep clear space around the logo equal to the height of the aperture mark on every side. Nothing else sits inside that zone.
Minimum size
In the website navigation the logo sits at 30px tall. Do not place it below 20px in height on screen, or 12mm wide in print.
Colour
Violet-black ink, one accent hue.
The palette is deliberately tight. Violet-black ink carries text and the brand, and a single violet is the only brand hue. A small supporting palette exists for data and status work, never for decoration.
Core
Ink
Primary text and the brand colour.
--c-ink
Paper
Default page background.
--c-paper
Surface
Violet-tinted secondary surface.
--c-paper-2
Violet accent
Violet
The primary accent. The only brand hue.
--c-accent
Deep violet
Hover states and depth.
--c-accent-deep
Bright violet
Accent for use on dark surfaces.
--c-accent-bright
Soft
Tints, badges and quiet fills.
--c-accent-soft
Supporting palette
Each tone has one job. Use them sparingly, never decoratively, and do not mix two supporting tones in a single component.
Signal
Apricot. Positive outcomes and "after" figures.
--c-signal
Field
Pistachio. Live and in-production status.
--c-field
Claim
Raspberry. Risk, losses and "before" figures.
--c-claim
Haze
Fog. Secondary data and tertiary text.
--c-haze
Paper-warm
Alternative section background to rest the violet.
--c-paper-warm
Typography
One family, end to end.
The brand is set entirely in Google Sans. Weight and tracking do the work that a second typeface usually would: bold for display, medium for interface, and uppercase mono-style tracking for eyebrows and figures.
Bold 700
not headcount.
SemiBold 600
Regular 400
Regular 400
Tracked 500
Voice & tone
Plain, senior, specific.
We sound like an experienced practitioner explaining something clearly, not a vendor selling. Short sentences. Concrete outcomes. No hype.
Practitioners, not preachers
Lead with what we build and the outcome it drives. Show the work rather than describing a philosophy.
Clear over clever
Prefer the plain word. Cut filler, jargon and adjectives that add nothing. If a sentence reads the same without a word, remove it.
UK English, always
Optimise, organisation, programme. Spell it the British way throughout, in copy and in interface text.
The name in full
Always write “Fifty One Degrees” in full. Never “51D” or “Fifty One Degrees Ltd” in body copy.
Punctuation
Do
- Use a comma, colon or full stop where a pause is needed.
- Use en dashes only for genuine numeric ranges, such as 2–4 weeks or £5m–£250m.
- Keep hyphens in compound words, such as mid-market.
Don’t
- Never use em dashes anywhere, in copy, headings or interface text.
- Avoid dashes in general; rewrite the sentence instead.
- Avoid exclamation marks and hype words.
Usage
Keep it clean.
The identity holds up when it is left alone. A few rules keep it consistent everywhere it appears.
Do
- Use the ink logo on light surfaces and the white logo on the ink colour or dark imagery.
- Give the logo room. Respect the clear space on every side.
- Keep generous white space; let layouts breathe.
- Use the violet accent sparingly, for emphasis and interaction.
Don’t
- Don’t stretch, rotate, recolour or add effects to the logo.
- Don’t place the logo on a busy background or a low-contrast colour.
- Don’t introduce additional typefaces or brand colours.
- Don’t use the supporting palette as decoration.
Downloads
Get the assets.
Everything you need to use the brand correctly: the complete kit as a single download, plus the logo artwork and the colour palette as code, file by file.
Complete brand kit
Logo artwork, the app icon, leadership photography and a read-me covering the colour palette, typography and usage rules, in a single .zip (5.8 MB).
