A single dominant purple, deepened with two darker accents and grounded in neutrals. The brand reads as confident, modern, and slightly editorial. Color is used as accent and emphasis, not as decoration.
Wordmark.
The Joust wordmark is the primary brand signature. The lowercase setting and rounded letterforms read as approachable; the weight reads as confident. Do not redraw or substitute the typeface; the wordmark is custom.
Clear space and minimum size.
1x clear space where 1x is roughly the cap height of the wordmark. More is better. Print minimum 0.75 inch wide; digital minimum 96 pixels wide.
Logo misuse.
- Do not stretch, skew, or rotate.Keep the wordmark on its baseline at original proportions.
- Do not recolor outside the palette.Joust Purple, Plum, Deep Purple, Charcoal, or paper white only.
- Do not add shadows, glows, or 3D effects.The wordmark stands on its own.
- Do not place on busy photography without backing.Use a solid surface so the wordmark reads cleanly.
Primary color.
Joust Purple
#84249A
RGB 132, 36, 154
Primary brand color. Used for emphasis, secondary buttons, links, brand markers, and section accents. Primary invitations to talk use Warm Ivory with Deep Purple text.
Purple Tint
#B17CBA
RGB 177, 124, 186
Muted accent for headline phrases and emphasis on dark surfaces. Use Joust Purple for accent text on light surfaces. Do not use the tint for small text on purple buttons.
Buttons and action colors.
Primary invitations to talk use Warm Ivory #F2EDE4 (RGB 242, 237, 228) with Deep Purple #1E0722 text. Hover brightens the fill to white #FFFFFF. Keep the label deep purple in every state.
Secondary buttons use Joust Purple #84249A with white text and a deeper purple #6F1C83 hover. Purple Tint belongs in dark-surface headline emphasis, not button labels. Keep a visible keyboard focus ring.
Cyan and amber remain small service markers and navigation cues. They are not the primary button fill. Keep the existing Plum and Deep Purple backgrounds, grain, motion, and light-to-dark transitions.
Dark accents.
Plum
#43184C
RGB 67, 24, 76
Secondary accent. Headers, text accents, full-bleed dark sections.
Deep Purple
#1E0722
RGB 30, 7, 34
Primary text on light. Body copy, high-contrast type.
Surfaces.
Stark White is the default light surface. Charcoal and Deep Purple are both valid dark surfaces; Charcoal reads more editorial and neutral, Deep Purple reads warmer and more on-brand for cover and section divider treatments.
Stark White
#FFFFFF
RGB 255, 255, 255
Primary light mode surface. Reading documents, content slides.
Charcoal
#0F0F12
RGB 15, 15, 18
Primary dark mode surface. Hero panels, deck dividers, editorial covers.
Document Background
#F5F5F5
RGB 245, 245, 245
Page and section backgrounds inside light mode.
Alt Row
#F9F0FB
RGB 249, 240, 251
Table alt rows and subtle highlight blocks. A soft purple tint that ties to the primary.
Accent set.
A small categorical palette for wayfinding only: the four brand-pillar dots, the voice-attribute markers, and the category bar across Application cards. Never a primary color, never a fill for large areas or type. Joust Purple always leads; these only tag and separate. The four map one to one to the voice attributes.
Cyan
#3FB6C7
RGB 63, 182, 199
Confident. Pillar one and the first voice-attribute marker.
Magenta
#C41880
RGB 196, 24, 128
Warm. Pillar two and the second voice-attribute marker.
Amber
#E8B547
RGB 232, 181, 71
Sharp. Pillar three and the third voice-attribute marker.
Green
#4CAF7A
RGB 76, 175, 122
Plainspoken. Pillar four and the fourth voice-attribute marker.
Forbidden.
These values look close to brand colors at a glance but read wrong in practice. Do not use them in any Joust material.
#F0A2FF
Too pastel. Undermines brand authority and reads as off-brand decoration rather than considered design.
#BF0983
Wrong hue family. Reads as cheap and conflicts with the brand's primary purple.
Typography.
A single typeface, used at scale. Poppins handles everything from cover treatments to body copy. Weight and size do the work of differentiation. No second typeface.
Joust provides senior technology leadership and hands-on engineering, from choosing platforms to building and connecting systems.
Caption
Poppins Regular 400
Used for table captions, footnotes, and metadata.
Pairing rules.
- Headings.Poppins. Weight 600 for H1 and H2, weight 500 for H3 and below.
- Body.Poppins. Weight 400 for body, weight 500 for emphasis.
- Document defaults.11pt body in Word, 16 to 17px body on web.
- No second typeface.Poppins covers everything from a 96pt cover treatment to an 8pt footnote.
- Letter-spacing.Tighten Poppins slightly at display sizes (-1 to -3 percent). Leave default at body sizes.
- Fallback.If a vendor or third-party platform cannot load Poppins, fall back to Inter, then system-ui sans-serif. Never Helvetica, Arial, Times, or Georgia as the primary.
Decorative pattern.
A soft diagonal sheen is the brand's one decorative element. A lighter wash sweeps from the upper-left toward the middle of the surface at roughly 135 degrees, giving covers, section dividers, and dark hero panels a sense of depth without ornament. The sheen reads as paper or material quality rather than as a graphic.
- Where it goes.Cover, section dividers, dark hero panels. Never on content slides with body type or on documents that need to feel utilitarian.
- Color and opacity.On dark surfaces, white at 6 to 10 percent opacity. On light surfaces, Joust Purple at 4 to 8 percent opacity. Always reads as material, never as a defined band.
- Direction.Always 135 degrees, from upper-left toward the middle. Never reverse the angle, never run vertical or horizontal.
- Restraint.One sheen per surface, never two. Stops at roughly 60 percent across the surface so the lower-right stays clean for the wordmark or a focal element.
Diagrams.
Diagrams follow the card system, not clip art. A diagram is a small set of labeled cards connected by arrows, and it should read like a page from a deck, not a piece of stock illustration.
- Nodes are cards.Rounded rectangles in Alt Row #F9F0FB or white, carrying the standard shadow. Titles in Poppins 600, descriptions in Poppins 400, both in Plum.
- One hero per diagram.The step that matters most, usually the human gate, fills Joust Purple with white type. Never more than one hero in a single diagram.
- Arrows are Purple Tint.#B17CBA, 1.75pt, with triangle heads. Flow reads left to right. Solid lines mark the default path, dashed lines mark exceptions and fallbacks.
- Word graphics.Clouds and type collages use brand purples only, set in Poppins, on white or a brand dark surface.
Shadows.
Cards and diagram nodes cast one standard shadow: outer, Deep Purple #1E0722 at roughly 20 percent opacity, 12pt blur, 3pt offset, falling to the lower-right. Small elements such as icon circles use a softer variant, 6pt blur and 1.5pt offset. Shadows never appear on the wordmark or on type.
Headline pattern.
A headline should express one clear thought. An accent phrase can emphasize part of it when the layout benefits from two lines. The color treatment is optional; it should not force the wording.
The pattern
Three sections, one argument.
Different shapes. Same answer.
Joust is a senior technology practice for what comes next.
- The pattern.Use a natural headline. It may be a single sentence, a short phrase, or two related clauses.
- Accent color.On dark surfaces, use Purple Tint #B17CBA for the second clause and white for the first. On light surfaces, use Joust Purple #84249A for the accent and Deep Purple #1E0722 for the first clause.
- Where it shows up.Section openers, deck headlines, hero copy, the closing wordmark line ("Technical clarity for what's ahead.").
Imagery.
Photography favors quiet confidence over hustle. Architectural lines, considered light, real environments. Avoid stock-photo composites and over-staged team shots.
- What works.Editorial framing, strong geometry, cool palettes, single subjects in environment.
- What does not work.Suited handshakes, pointing-at-laptops, saturated corporate composites, forced group shots.
- Treatment.On dark sections, photography may carry a 10 percent Deep Purple overlay. Never colorize photography in Joust Purple. No duotones.
