# Brand

> The identity canon: the name, the idea, the character and voice, the mark, color, type, language as material, and where the identity ships.

URL: https://www.prototemplate.com/handbook/brand

General Translation's identity, laid out for anyone who has to build with
it, including our partners at basement studio. This document is the written
canon. The living version is the [`/brand`](https://www.prototemplate.com/handbook/brand) page, and the visual
laws live in [`DESIGN.md`](https://www.prototemplate.com/handbook/design).

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## 1. The name

**General Translation** was chosen deliberately, in this order:

1. **Ambition.** Like General Motors or General Electric, the name says we
   intend to be the trustworthy, technologically innovative number one in
   the category, an enterprise in the old sense.
2. **Generality.** A reference to "artificial general intelligence": general
   AI models outperform specific translation models because they understand
   context and can be directed.
3. **Distinction.** Every other localization company seemed to begin with an
   "L".

### The naming system

| name | what it is |
| --- | --- |
| General Translation, Inc. | the company |
| GT | the short form, and the mark |
| `gt` | the open-source code library; you run `gt translate` |
| `gt-next`, `gt-react`, `gt-vue`, `gt-node`, `gt-python` | the framework-specific packages |
| Locadex | the AI agent product |
| generaltranslation.com | the domain (also held: gt.sh, generaltranslation.ai/.dev, locadex.com/.ai/.dev) |
| glyphfield.com | the companion tooling site (shader library, animation studio) |

## 2. The idea

**Every product in every language.** Native-level speed and quality, from
day one. That's the whole thesis, executed insanely hard.

The positioning: **the Vercel of localization.** Two halves designed
together: open-source developer tools (the Next.js of the analogy: the
`gt` libraries) and closed-source infrastructure (the Vercel: context-aware
translation APIs, versioning, editing, integrations, agents) that is the
best-in-class way to use those tools. Because we build the entire stack,
we can promise what point solutions can't: consistent, high-quality
translation across a whole business, integrated in an afternoon.

Two registers, one family: the open source should feel community-owned;
the platform should feel enterprise-grade.

The values, which the visual identity must carry:

- **Engineering-first.** Built by people with deep technical roots, for the
  world's best engineering teams.
- **Craft.** We care about the difference between drawn-once and drawn-twice
  lines. That is literal: see the line law in `DESIGN.md`.
- **Infrastructure-grade.** Reliable, fast, secure. The brand should feel
  like something an enterprise stands on, not an app it tries.
- **Cosmopolitan.** Urbane, sophisticated, connecting the world and its
  languages. Language is our material, not just our market.
- **Hand-crafted.** The brand reads as made by people who care, not
  assembled from a template.

## 3. The character

The brand carries itself like a **"fullstack director"**: it writes the
script and it pushes the camera. Creative and technically innovative,
never one without the other. On time, under budget, over-delivering,
always working with the best people, with a keen sense of the market and
for making things people love.

### Personality (working readings, from the completed system)

| | position | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Classic | ●──── toward → | **Modern** |
| **Reserved** | ← toward ────● | Playful |
| **Minimal** | ← firmly | Expressive |
| **Clever** | ← leaning | Warm |
| **Rational** | ← firmly | Quirky |
| Understated | toward → | **Confident** |
| **Serious** | ← leaning | Witty |
| **Neutral** | ← leaning, a glint allowed | Slightly mischievous |

### Aesthetic (working readings)

| | position | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Clean** | texture only as ordered dither | Textured |
| Soft | → | **Sharp** |
| **Geometric** | ← firmly | Organic |
| **Light** | paper-first; dark mode is one ink surface | Dark |
| **Muted** | one spectral accent per page | Vibrant |
| **Flat** | depth from lines and material, never shadows | Dimensional |
| **Monochrome** | four absolute colors + one accent | Colorful |
| **Structured** | ← firmly | Playful |
| Warm | → | **Cool** |
| **Elegant** | ← | Fun |

These are read from the shipped system for basement to confirm or push.

### Voice

Measured, declarative, precise, quietly confident. Every sentence is
complete and makes one claim. A caption states the mechanism: "A framed
cell has a 1px padding reveal that shows the ground underneath, so the
cell draws no border." Copy uses no exclamation marks, no hedging and no
marketing adjectives where a fact would do. Wit is allowed when it is
precise. Technical terms are used precisely and sparingly, then explained
plainly. The register sits closer to a well-written spec or a good
engineering blog than to marketing copy, and the copy is about the
product.

- Say: "Translations are generated at build time and deploy with the app."
- Not: "Supercharge your global growth with cutting-edge AI!"

## 4. The mark

The GT monogram (`/brand/gt-logo-light.svg`, `gt-logo-dark.svg` +
transparent PNG variants): every stroke of the mark is two parallel lines,
the doubled-line grammar at brand scale. Locadex carries its own mark
(`/brand/locadex-mark.svg`).

Rules:

- **One ink.** The mark renders in ink on paper or paper on ink. Never a
  third color, never a gradient, never a shadow.
- **The dark surface inverts the drawn mark's ink**, either as an alpha
  mask taking the surface's ink or as a clean invert. The mark is a
  drawing, not a picture.
- In illustration systems (the iso family), marks render as **alpha masks**
  so the shape takes the surface's ink; the sanctioned flourish is the
  Bayer-dithered specular shimmer (`DitheredMark`), never a GIF, never a
  filter glow.
- At text size, the wordmark sits inline with prose at the cap height of
  the line it lives in, as in the generaltranslation.com hero's "GT builds
  full-stack localization for apps, docs, and websites".
- **The identity must survive compression:** a favicon, a CLI banner, a
  README, a syntax-highlighted code block. Developers meet the brand in a
  terminal as often as on a website.

## 5. Color

Four absolute colors (ink `#070707`, raised ink `#101010`, titanium
`#8a8f98`, paper `#ffffff`) plus **exactly one spectral accent per page**
(the working accent: `#2f5ce0`; its dark-band lift `#86a8ff`). Structural
color everywhere derives from the four as alpha steps; dark mode is a pure
token remap. Full law: `DESIGN.md` §1. The accent is a controlled edge,
never a wash; one bright white; depth from lines and material, not shadows.

## 6. Type

- **Inter** is the one typeface: display, interface and text. Headlines,
  interface chrome, captions, long-form reading and documentation prose are
  all set in it. The build is the real rsms.me Inter (v4.1 variable, roman +
  italic, opsz axis), self-hosted rather than loaded from Google Fonts.
- **Headings use weight 500 at most.** Display text never goes bolder than
  500; long-form text is set at weight 400.
- **Multilingual-first.** Headlines, UI, and marks must hold up in CJK,
  RTL, and Indic scripts as well as Latin. A wordmark or layout that only
  works in English contradicts the company. Inter covers Latin, Greek and
  Cyrillic; other scripts fall back to the system face for that script, and
  every layout is checked in them. Licensed type needs credible CJK and RTL
  coverage, or well-matched companion faces.
- **Inter is the working typeface for the identity project.** It is not a
  final decision. Alternatives remain open if they satisfy the
  script-coverage constraint.
- **Monospace is an instrument voice, not a brand voice.** It appears where
  code artifacts appear (tokens, terminals, file paths, small labels in
  technical diagrams and product UI) and nowhere else, and even those
  labels are avoided where possible. The direction explicitly avoids
  monospace as the brand voice in headlines, body, and marketing.
- The prototemplate chrome (this site's own serif/grotesk pairing) is the
  lab's stationery, not the product brand.

## 7. Language as material

The signature device: **glyphs, characters that make up greater wholes.**
Writing systems are the raw material the brand keeps returning to:

- The **sentence reassembler** (`EverySentence`): a headline dissolves into
  glyph dust and reassembles in the next language. Matter is conserved; the
  same swarm becomes the next sentence.
- The **glyph field**: rain from eight writing systems condensing into the
  word "language," script after script.
- **Locale pills** (`LocaleTag`): flag print + code, the one way a locale is
  named anywhere. The prints are SVG, never emoji; a flag is a functional
  data chip, never decoration.
- The **1-bit Bayer language**: density as ordered dither, never alpha
  veils. This is the texture of the brand.
- The **doubled line**: every connector one path stroked twice; the mark's
  own grammar running through every diagram.

All of them run live in the build log on `/handbook/libraries`,
with their APIs.

## 8. Where it ships

The identity is applied on four kinds of surface today.

- **The site.** Marketing pages ship on generaltranslation.com, built in
  gt-cloud's `apps/landing`. The production landing page (gt-cloud #4213)
  has been canonical for the site since 2026-08-11.
- **Product surfaces.** The dashboard, onboarding, the sign-in plate and
  the Prototemplate shell have followed the brand deck (`/deck`) since
  2026-09-25.
- **Motion.** The films on `/motion` apply the identity to film: the blog
  trailers, the product films and the translation-history series.
- **The marks.** The speed marks chosen on 2026-09-29 (`/marks`) sit
  beside the doubled-line monogram, which stays the current mark
  (section 4). The title badges in the `/brand` and `/marks` heads cycle
  through a selection of the marks on `/marks`.

When in doubt about how the brand behaves, read the shipped surface the
work belongs to.

The site grew from the direction of the **Dossier**
(`/d/singularity-dossier`). It stays in the gallery with the other
directions as the working record of how we got there. From 2026-08-06 to
2026-10-07 this section named it the completed reference for the brand.

## 9. Context for partners

- **Industry:** AI developer tools; the full stack for localization,
  meaning i18n libraries, context-aware translation APIs, and the
  infrastructure for versioning, editing, and integrations.
- **Audience:** technical and product executives at growth-stage startups;
  their engineering and growth teams are the users.
- **Public names:** a customer or partner is named only where
  generaltranslation.com shows it. On 2026-10-10 the home page showed
  Cursor, Ramp, Mintlify, Profound, Partiful and ClickHouse, and a quote
  from Theo, CEO of T3 Chat. `/enterprise` showed Ramp with 11+ locales
  across its dashboard, landing page and iOS, Cursor with 14+ across web
  and docs, Profound with 47+ across platform and docs, Partiful with 2+
  across web, iOS and Android, and Sierra with 7+ across web and GTM, with
  a quote from Lee Robinson, VP of Developer Experience at Cursor.
  `/enterprise/contact` had partner pages for YC, Mercury, Slash,
  speedrun, a16z and The Residency. Every other name stays off public
  surfaces, this repository included. Read the live site again before a
  new surface names anyone.
- **Against:** legacy TMS (seat-based, partial-stack). GT is usage-based
  and owns the whole stack, so it can own the whole experience.
- **Admired:** Vercel, Resend, Stripe, for reliable, developer-first
  infrastructure with engineering excellence and customer experience.
- **Direction:** International Style discipline with Art Deco's
  future-embracing stance. Swiss grids, blueprints, boxes, no rounded
  corners. Water and ocean as the recurring theme, connecting the globe.
  Bespoke material textures (reference: materialarchiv.ch).
- **References:** Josef Müller-Brockmann and the Swiss poster tradition;
  Otl Aicher's Munich 1972 pictograms; Vignelli's subway map; split-flap
  departure boards; undersea cable maps and nautical charts; the Rosetta
  Stone; the Chrysler Building; Powers of Ten; vintage National Geographic;
  Borges' Library of Babel; the Whole Earth Catalog; transit signage; NYRB
  Classics; Dieter Rams; vintage Olympics stamps.
- **Avoid (final):**
  - monospace as the brand voice in headlines, body, or marketing; small
    mono labels inside technical diagrams and product UI remain
    instruments, avoided where possible.
  - smooth scrolling, scroll-hijacking, and inertia libraries; native
    scroll everywhere.
  - robot and sparkle iconography for AI.
  - the flag-soup cliche; flags are functional data chips only, printed as
    SVG, never emoji.
  - iridescent AI gradients and glassmorphism.
  - eyebrow text that has not earned its place; three stacked lines saying
    the same thing is noise, functional tags and labels are fine.
  - em dashes in rendered prose.

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The index of every page on this site, for agents: https://www.prototemplate.com/llms.txt