Brand Standards
Contents
01
Foundation
Why the product exists, what it refuses to do, and how three editions share one mark.
02
Identity
Every approved lockup, the 60° grid it is built on, and the six prohibitions.
03
System
The measurable layer — hues bound to cable domains, ratios computed at render time.
04
Practice
How the system behaves once it meets a real surface and a real reader.
Foundation
RackWire began as a single HTML file for planning the cabling of a theatre rig — one document, opened from disk, that made no network request and asked for no account. That constraint turned out to be the product. A planner used in a rack room, a dimmer beach or a loading dock has to work where the signal does not, and a plan that cannot be opened in ten years is not a plan. Everything below follows from holding that line while the tool grew from one stage to three editions.
Offline is the default, not a mode
Every edition opens from a local file and completes its core work with the network unplugged. Features that require a connection are additive and are named as such at the point of use. A release that cannot be exercised on an air-gapped laptop has regressed.
Provenance over plausibility
Any figure a user could sign a load schedule against carries its source. Datasheet values and representative values are visually distinct everywhere they appear, and the tool never silently upgrades one to the other.
The file outlives the vendor
Plans are plain JSON with a documented shape, exportable to CSV without loss of the fields an engineer needs. No format we ship should require RackWire to read it.
Foundation
One mark, three editions, one descriptor rule
Identity
The monochrome cut inherits currentColor, so a single file serves both
knockout and solid-ink reproduction. Its interlace is cut into the geometry rather than masked,
which is why it survives scaling inside a lockup.
Identity
Dashed frame = one core node C on every side.
Identity
Prohibitions only — none of these is a judgement call
System
#22D3EE
RGB 34 211 238
CMYK 72 0 6 0#E879F9
RGB 232 121 249
CMYK 27 56 0 0#FB923C
RGB 251 146 60
CMYK 0 51 84 0#A3E635
RGB 163 230 53
CMYK 40 0 87 0#63788F
RGB 99 120 143
CMYK 56 34 20 12#EDF3F9
RGB 237 243 249
CMYK 3 1 0 0#0E141C
RGB 14 20 28
CMYK 78 62 47 76#070A0E
RGB 7 10 14
CMYK 82 66 51 90The signal hues are the same tokens the planner uses for its cable domains, so the identity and the running application cannot drift apart. Steel carries structure only and must never be given signal meaning — the full hue↔domain binding, including the two hues added at v1.1, is on page 09. Across any surface the signal hues together cover no more than 10% — the composition reads dark first, colour second.
System
Names and bindings are frozen
A plan drawn in Pro renders identically in Studio. New domains may add hues; bindings never move.
Slate is not Steel
Slate #74889D draws cables only; Frame Steel #63788F stays chrome and never signals meaning.
One field, both themes
Fixed against Rack Ink, never per theme. In a light theme the field stays dark — yellow reads on paper.
System
Measured in OKLab, ΔE ×100, simulated for protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia
The floor is 8; 15 for normal vision. Blue↔Slate sits in the 6–8 band, legal only with a secondary encoding — labels, punch list and connector geometry separate every run. Magenta↔Cyan sits below the band, both hues locked at v1.0: a recorded exception — a Studio lighting run draws its reserved dash pattern as a primary channel, never colour alone. All seven hues clear the 3:1 chrome gate against Rack Ink (page 09).
System
Ground, ink, chrome and accent
Remaining signal hues against ground
Measured at render time, not authored. Body copy ≥ 7:1; chrome ≥ 3:1; below 3:1 prohibited. Frame Steel clears 3:1 but not 7:1 — chrome only, never body copy.
System
System stack by policy — a webfont that fails to load changes every measurement
Terminate the DMX chain at the last fixture.
SOCA-19 · 32 A · 3-phase · 208 V
The wordmark is drawn outlines, not set type, so no licensed display face is
required to reproduce the logo. Where a heading must visually echo the wordmark, use the heading
stack at 600 with -0.02em tracking — never attempt to re-set the logotype.
System
The floor is 24px in this format and 12px in the printed document format. Nothing renders below it, including captions, table cells and legal lines. If content does not fit above the floor, the page is carrying too much and must be split — never shrink to fit.
System
12 columns · 32px gutter · 96px margin, at 1920px.
System
currentColor. Signal hues only when the icon
denotes that cable domainPractice
Treatment recipe
Capture at 2× device pixel ratio on the ground background with browser chrome removed. Crop to the feature, never the whole window. No drop shadow, no perspective, no device frame. Corner radius 8px. Annotate with the accent at 2px stroke only.
Generated imagery — permitted
Exploratory concept work and internal moodboards. Abstract textures and geometry where no human, no identifiable artist's style and no third-party mark is depicted.
Generated imagery — prohibited
Any screenshot or depiction of the product. Anything imitating a living artist's style. Depictions of real equipment, venues or people. Any generated asset that ships without disclosure in the asset record.
Practice
RackWire talks to somebody standing in front of a half-patched rack with a call in forty minutes. It states what is true, names what it does not know, and gets out of the way.
Precise, not pedantic
Give the number, the unit and the source. Do not restate the obvious, do not hedge a value that is measured, and never pad a sentence to sound thorough.
Plain, not folksy
Short declarative sentences in the language an engineer already uses. No exclamation marks, no jokes in error states, no addressing the user as “friend”.
Candid, not alarming
Name the failure and the fix in the same breath. A warning that cannot be acted on should not have been written.
Practice
Oops! Something went wrong 😕
Import failed at line 42: unknown port type “XLR7”.
Unlimited devices, infinite possibilities!
Studio plans an unlimited device count. Pro stops at 150.
This device might use around 500W
575 W — nominal. Confirm before signing a load schedule.
Warning: potential DMX issue detected
Universe 2 is unterminated. Terminate at the last fixture.
Each “don’t” above shipped on a real surface at some point. The pattern behind every rewrite: name the thing, give the number, state the next action. Adjectives that cannot be checked against a datasheet do not appear on any RackWire surface, marketing included.
Practice
Provenance badges are the one place colour carries meaning outside cable domains: green for a datasheet value, amber for a representative one. That pairing is fixed and must not be restyled to match a surrounding surface.
Practice
Instant — 120ms
Hover, focus ring, button press, checkbox. Anything acknowledging a pointer that is already
on the element. Easing ease-out.
Transition — 220ms
Panel open, inspector slide, tab change, cable dialog. The default for anything moving a
region of the interface. Easing cubic-bezier(.2,.8,.2,1).
Deliberate — 400ms
Full-view change and first paint of the canvas. Nothing exceeds 400ms; a plan of 150 devices must never wait on an animation.
prefers-reduced-motion: reduce every duration
collapses to 0ms and transforms are removed. Opacity changes may remain. This is mandatory and
ships with the first release that has any motion at allPractice
All three editions ship from rackwire.studio, with the application at app.rackwire.studio. The tier descriptor appears on the manual masthead and in the application header; the marketing site uses the base lockup and names the edition in copy.
Practice
Rows marked open are slots for the brand owner to fill or have reviewed, left empty rather than filled with plausible boilerplate.