Brand Identity
Playbook

A working system for jewelry that is made once, by one pair of hands, and never made again.

سعادة
Happiness  ·  سعادة  ·  Cairo, since 2016 Edition 02  /  July 2026
A feeling.
A stone.
One piece.

The whole identity, in six words. Every page after this one exists to keep that sentence true on every surface the brand touches.

شعور · حجر · قطعة واحدة
03Who this is for
04Voice
05The seal
09Colour
10Type
12Form and image
14In the world
The idea02

Every piece is made exactly once.
Then the design retires with it.

Across twenty posts there is no repeated frame, no repeated ground and no repeated colour. The medallion, the single most distinctive thing the brand owns, appears nowhere except the profile picture. The website speaks teal, ink and a high-contrast serif; the feed speaks warm stone and no typography at all. Two competent brands, running in parallel, neither reinforcing the other.

Nothing here needs inventing. Soad arranges each strand by hand at one bench in Cairo, one piece at a time. When a piece sells, the design goes with it. That is not a scarcity tactic; it is a description of the method. The work is already good and already loved. It is simply not being used as a system.

So the brand names the feeling before it names the object, and the object cannot be reordered. Competitors sell stones with borrowed meanings, or find a design that works and repeat it. Neither can claim this.

Who it is for

Not a demographic. One woman arriving at the bench for three reasons: a private reminder for herself, a gift that says the thing she cannot say plainly, or a word she wants to keep close.

What it sells

A feeling she is trying to hold, in a form she can wear. The silver and the stone are how it is carried.

The audit, in numbers

Posts reviewed20
Carrying the mark0
Distinct backgrounds11
Distinct colour casts7
Site ↔ feed overlapnone
Followers earned anyway 5,725

The last number is the point. The work is already good enough to build an audience without a system. With one, the same work compounds.

Who this is for03

Warm, exact, and never selling.

Warm

Affection arrives through a specific detail, never an exclamation mark.

Exact

Name the stone. Name the feeling. Say how many exist. "Beautiful" is not a description.

Quiet

Scarcity is stated once, plainly, and never repeated for pressure.

Always

The stone, by name
The feeling it is for
How many exist
One question, asked once
Arabic where the feeling lives

Never

"Perfect for any occasion"
Three or more hashtag lines
"Don't miss out", "Hurry", "Last chance"
Emoji as punctuation
Translating Arabic word for word

The caption, in five lines

Infinity Bracelet · Green Agate

Green agate, for the kind of strength that stays quiet.
One bracelet, made once. When it goes, the pattern goes with it.
What are you holding steady this week?

حجر أخضر، للقوة الهادئة

#naturalstones  #handmade  #madeonce

The stone and what it is for. How many exist. One question. The Arabic line. Three hashtags, not thirteen.

One paragraph, when one paragraph is needed

Happiness, سعادة, is one bench in Cairo. Since 2016, Soad Alkhafif has arranged natural stone and sterling silver by hand, one strand at a time, choosing each stone for what it means before what it looks like. Every piece is made exactly once. When it sells, the design retires with it.

Voice04

The mark is not a logo
to be placed tastefully.
It is a seal.

A closed ring, a flat disc, ornamental Arabic above a lowercase Latin word. Four parts, each already carrying an argument. Seals get pressed onto things; they do not float.

01 · the ring 02 · the disc 03 · the arabic 04 · the latin 05 · the filigree

01 Ring

Closed, unbroken, 2% of diameter. It guarantees the mark reads on any photograph.

02 Disc

Flat. Never a gradient. The brand's whole colour argument in one shape.

03 Arabic

Ornament before text. It leads because the feeling leads.

04 Latin

Lowercase, quiet, beneath. It explains; it does not announce.

05 Filigree

Too fine to survive reduction, which is exactly why a monogram exists.

The seal05

A quarter of itself, on every side.

D ¼ D ¼ D

D is the seal's diameter. Nothing, not type, an image edge, a product or another logo, may enter the dashed field. The rule scales with the mark, so it never needs recalculating.

Minimum size, shown at actual size

20 mm
seal, print

56 px
seal, screen

7 mm
monogram, print

24 px
monogram, screen

16 px
favicon

Below 56 px the Arabic collapses into texture. That is not a flaw to be fixed by thickening the letterforms. It is why the monogram exists, and why it is the only permitted reduction.

Ring weight is 2% of diameter, never re-drawn. At 16 px the ring falls below one device pixel and is dropped: ship the ringless variant as favicon.svg and the app-icon set.

The seal06

Six versions. No seventh.

01 Primary

The default. Every photograph, every product, every physical surface.

02 Ink

Single-colour print, embossing, foil, and anywhere teal cannot be trusted.

03 Ivory

On ink grounds where a full teal disc would be too loud.

04 Knockout, ink

On teal only. The disc is the ground.

05 Knockout, ivory

On ink only. Never on photography.

06 Monogram

Below 56 px only. س, seen, the first letter of سعادة.

The seal is never redrawn. Not traced, not cleaned up, not re-cut by a new supplier. One master per colourway; everything else is a scaled copy.

The monogram is a reduction, not an alternative. Never used above 7 mm in print, and never paired with the seal in the same composition.

No seventh version. Every seasonal badge and secondary logo dilutes the seal. The answer to "we need something new" is the seal, larger.

The seal07

Lower left.
Always lower left.

One position, one size, no exceptions. The discipline is the design: it is what turns twenty unrelated photographs into one body of work.

PositionLower left corner
Diameter13% of frame width
Inset5.5% of frame width, both edges
On photographyPrimary colourway
On tealInk knockout
On inkIvory knockout
Shadow Photography only. 4 pt Y, 6 pt blur, 30% ink

If a photograph cannot take the seal, recompose or replace the photograph. Moving the mark is never the fix.

08

Mostly quiet. Occasionally teal.

60% ivory and cream · every canvas 22% teal 14% ink 4% stone

A page is either ivory, teal or ink. Never two grounds fighting inside one frame, and never a gradient between them. Stone appears only where a real stone justifies it, and never as a page ground.

Happiness teal

#2F9AC1
47 · 154 · 193
76 · 20 · 0 · 24
PMS 7460 C

Deep teal

#2D809F
45 · 128 · 159
72 · 19 · 0 · 38
PMS 7692 C

Ink

#101314
16 · 19 · 20
0 · 0 · 0 · 92
PMS Black 6 C

Ivory

#FBFDFD
251 · 253 · 253
1 · 0 · 0 · 1
Unprinted stock

Pantone references are nearest matches for specification. Proof on the intended stock before a run: teal shifts markedly on uncoated paper.

Stone, and what it is for

Amethyst
Clarity

Amazonite
Balance

Turquoise
Protection

Rose quartz
Tenderness

Sage
Steadiness

Terracotta
Warmth

Permitted at small scale, one at a time, for a stone story. Never a page ground, never in the seal, never two together.

Measured contrast · WCAG 2.1

PairRatioBody text
Ink on ivory18.28AAA
Ink on cream16.79AAA
Ink on sand14.40AAA
Light teal on ink10.05AAA
Ink soft on ivory7.45AAA
Ink on teal5.79AA
Ink faint on ivory5.18AA
Deep teal on ivory4.38Large only
Ivory on teal 3.16 Fails

Two rules, and they are the ones that get broken. On teal, text is ink, never ivory. And on teal, ink never drops below 84% opacity: a soft grey that clears AA on ivory falls to 2.5:1 here. Small labels are set in ink rather than deep teal for the same reason.

Colour09

Three faces, seven steps, one voice.

Shown at working size

A feeling.

Display L · Fraunces 300 · 42 / 1.00 / −0.020em

Natural stone

Display M · Fraunces 320 · 29 / 1.07 / −0.015em

Amethyst & amazonite

Display S · Fraunces 360 · 19 / 1.18 / −0.010em

A piece chosen for a reason, made to stay close.

Lede · Inter 300 · 12 / 1.55 / −0.002em

Natural variation is part of the stone, and part of the story.

Body · Inter 350 · 9 / 1.62 / 0

Cairo  ·  handmade  ·  sterling silver

Label · Inter 600 · 6.6 / 1.00 / 0.22em, uppercase

Seven steps, no eighth. If something needs a new size, it needs a new position in the hierarchy. Sizes given for a 297 mm page; on web, multiply by 1.333 and hold the ratios.

Aa

Fraunces Variable · opsz 9–144 · wght 100–900

Display only, at opsz 144: the optical size that thins the hairlines and sharpens the brackets. It is the one face that looks drawn rather than specified. Never below 18 pt, never for body copy.

Aa

Inter Variable · wght 100–900

Everything else: body, labels, prices, data. Chosen because it has no opinion. Weights in use are 300, 350, 500 and 600. Nothing heavier.

سعادة

Amiri Regular · Bold

All Arabic. A naskh with the same warmth and generous counters as the calligraphy in the mark, so Arabic never reads as a translation bolted on afterwards.

Licensing. All three are SIL Open Font Licence 1.1, free for web, print and commercial use, with no seat count.

Fallbacks. Fraunces → Georgia → serif. Inter → system-ui → sans-serif. Amiri → Noto Naskh Arabic → serif. Ship arabic + latin for Amiri; the arabic-only subset lacks Latin punctuation.

Type10

Arabic leads.
English follows.

Arabic carries the feeling; English opens the door. The mark already does this, and every bilingual lockup in the system repeats it.

حجر أخضر للقوة الهادئة

Green agate, for quiet strength.

Amiri 400 at 40 pt over Fraunces 320 at 29 pt. The Arabic sits one step larger because naskh reads optically smaller at matched sizes.

OrderArabic first in every bilingual lockup. The mark itself leads with سعادة.
Optical sizeSet Amiri one step above its Latin partner, or +12% at matched steps.
AlignmentArabic right-aligned. English follows the Arabic axis, not the page's.
IsolationWrap every Arabic run in its own direction context so numerals and punctuation do not migrate.
NeverWord-for-word translation. The two lines are registers of one message, not two copies of one sentence.

Latin punctuation inside an Arabic run. Use ، and ؛, or set no terminal punctuation at all.

Arabic as decoration only. At 8% opacity behind a photograph it says nothing. Remove it.

Two copies of one sentence. If both lines say the same thing, cut one and let the other carry it.

Type11

Expand the mark. Do not invent another.

The ring, enlarged and cropped off the page edge, frames images and opens sections. Stroke stays 2% of its own diameter. The crown, the seal's filigree, divides a page. Never below 60 pt wide, never mirrored.

margin gutter

Twelve columns, 14 pt gutters, 44 pt margins on print; 5% and 1280 pt maximum measure on web. All vertical space is a multiple of 6: 12, 18, 24, 36, 56. Radius is 2 pt on panels, 0 on photography, full round on the seal.

Motion

GestureDurationCurve
Press feedback160 msout-expo
Hover, colour200–250 msout-expo
Image zoom600 msout-expo
Scroll reveal700 msout-expo
Drawer, sheet420 msdrawer
Stagger step 50–120 ms

out-expo  cubic-bezier(.23, 1, .32, 1)
drawer    cubic-bezier(.32, .72, 0, 1)

Things settle; nothing bounces. Content enters from 28 px below at full scale, never from scale(0), never from off-screen. Transform and opacity only: if a property triggers reflow, it is not animated. The seal never moves, never fades, never spins. Honour prefers-reduced-motion: reveals become instant, durations collapse to 0.

Form and image12

Real hands.
Real light.
Nothing else
saturated.

LightWindow daylight, soft-shadowed. Never flash, never a ring light, never two colour temperatures in one frame.
GroundIvory fabric, pale stone, or one plant. Never a patterned surface competing with the beads.
SubjectHands and neckline only, in motion or at rest. Never posed to camera.
GradeShadows lifted 5.5%, neutrals cooled toward teal, saturation at 85%.

Keep

Window light, one plant, wrist in motion

Keep

Pale stone riser, the stone is the only colour

Keep

Ivory ground, three pieces, even spacing

Not the feed

Magenta studio backdrop. No grade can hold it

Not the feed

Orange leather. The ground outshouts the silver

Not the feed

Denim and a printed page, two patterns at once

One frame, split. Ungraded left, graded right

Press stills are the exception, one per nine. A television backdrop cannot be graded into this palette. Crop to the hands, hold the frame for stories, or let the tile go to type instead.

Nothing is reshot to fix the feed. Three years of photography becomes one body of work through the grade, the crop and the seal. That is the whole correction.

Form and image13

Teal box · ink seal · ivory ribbon

The box is the only
thing that has to change.

The blush box photographs beautifully and belongs to a different brand. Same box, same ribbon width, same tissue: teal instead of pink, the seal blind-debossed on the lid. One box, one size, because variety belongs to the jewelry.

What is inside, at actual size

Hangtag · 40 × 70 mm

Care card · 50 × 70 mm

The tag carries the price and the feeling. The card carries the care instruction and the stone. Nothing is printed twice.

Today

BoxRigid lid, 120 × 90 × 35 mm
TealPMS 7460 C on greyboard
SealBlind-debossed, 34 mm
Wrap Ivory grosgrain 10 mm, ink tissue, Ø 38 mm sticker
In the world  ·  14

Small objects, exact gestures.

Thank-you card 105 × 74 mm, teal. Care card 50 × 70 mm, ink. Business card 85 × 50 mm, both faces. Uncoated, 400–450 gsm, no lamination, no spot gloss, no foil. The seal is the only relief on any surface.

The outer

Plain white mailer. One label, one sticker over the tissue. The address is handwritten on ruled lines, because one person is writing it.

Label 100 × 62 mm, ivory, hairline keyline. Sticker Ø 38 mm, teal, ink seal knocked out. Nothing on the outside says jewelry.

In the world15

Nine tiles, read as one surface.

Nine posts as they stand. Eleven grounds, no mark

The same nine, graded and sealed. Two tiles give way: a studio screengrab, and the one frame the palette cannot hold

Rhythm

Seven photographs, one teal tile, one ink tile, in that ratio. Two typographic tiles never touch.

Seal

Lower left, 13% of frame width, in every format, so it lands in the same place wherever a post is seen.

Formats

Feed1080 × 1350
Grid crop1080 × 1080
Story, reel1080 × 1920
In the world16

The system,
already running.

shopsaada.com is built on these decisions: ivory canvas, one teal section per scroll, the seal as the home link, Arabic in the header of every page.

Fixed on every page

Seal at 20 pt in the navigation
Ink on ivory, never ink on teal
Prices plain, never struck through
No countdown, no badge, no urgency

Home. The hero carries one sentence and one photograph

Product. One piece, one price, one action

390 pt

In the world17

Read at arm's length,
then in the hand.

One card carries the sentence people need from three metres away. Everything else on the table is the work, priced on its own tag, at its own scale.

Table card90 × 130 mm, ivory, one line
Price tagsPer piece. Never a shared list
SurfaceIvory linen. Never black cloth
RisersRaw concrete or pale stone
BoxesTeal, stacked, visible

The stall is the cheapest advertisement the brand owns. Someone walking past reads one sentence. If it is a discount, the sentence is wrong.

In the world18

Five rules that protect everything else.

01 The seal is never redrawn

Not traced, not cleaned up, not re-cut by a new supplier. One master per colourway; everything else is a scaled copy.

02 Lower left, 13%, no exceptions

If a photograph cannot take the seal, recompose or replace the photograph. The rule does not bend for one good picture.

03 One ground per surface

Ivory, teal or ink, chosen once and held for the whole page, post or panel. No gradients between them.

04 Ink on teal, always

Ivory on teal measures 3.16:1. Display type only, above 24 px, and never a caption or a button label.

05 No new asset without retiring one

Every seasonal badge and secondary logo dilutes the seal. The answer to "we need something new" is the seal, larger.

Asset library

/brand
  /seal  5 colourways, SVG + PNG @1600
  /monogram  SVG + 16→512 PNG
  /devices  ring, crown
  /fonts  Fraunces, Inter, Amiri
  /tokens  tokens.json, tokens.css
  /photography  graded masters
  /templates  social, print, dispatch
  playbook.pdf

Accessibility floor

Body text4.5:1 minimum
Display 24 px+3:1 minimum
Focus ring2 px teal, 2 px offset
Tap target44 × 44 px
Alt textNames the stone, not "jewelry"
Keeping it19
Made with meaning.
صُنعت بمعنى

What changed, and why

Teal became the ground, not the accent. It is the largest area of the mark, so it cannot be a trim colour.

The stone tones were demoted. Six sampled colours, decorative only. They were reading as a second palette.

The blush gift box is retired. The pink belongs to a different brand and the ink seal cannot sit on it.

Arabic leads every bilingual lockup. The mark already does this. The site and the captions did not.

The italic stays, and is now a rule. Only the word happiness is ever set in italic.

On the seal

The mark is not redrawn here, and that is a decision rather than an omission. It is hand-drawn Arabic calligraphy; the only true master is the founder's original artwork. Rebuilding it from a 320 px avatar would smooth exactly the swells that make it hers.

The next step is one job for one person: trace the original at full size, hold every stroke weight, close the ring, leave the filigree alone. Everything here is built to accept that file the day it exists, at which point every colourway is regenerated from it and nothing else changes.

Until then the six colourways are scaled from the single avatar master, never re-cut.

Colophon

Edition 02. Twenty pages, down from thirty-nine: eight dividers, a rollout timeline and eleven pages folded into the page they belonged to. Landscape A4, 297 × 210 mm, set in Fraunces, Inter and Amiri. Typeset in HTML, rendered by headless Chromium: live text, drawn diagrams.

Every photograph is the atelier's own. Artefacts are drawn to true proportion, then composited into those photographs with the frame's own light and grain. No stock and no generated imagery.

Sources. This repository's website, catalogue and design tokens; a local capture of twenty posts and the profile avatar. The live feed was unreachable at build time, so every count refers to that capture.

To confirm. PMS 7460 C is a direction; proof on the intended stock. Photographic masters are social-resolution, so full-bleed frames are interpolated: camera originals should replace them before printing large.

Happiness  ·  سعادة  ·  Cairo, since 2016 Brand Identity Playbook  /  Edition 02