Brand guidelines
Ver. 1.0, 2024
Layout
Illustrations
About
This brand book is an integral part of maintaining
cohesion across the Lucid brand attributes,
messaging, and visual identity. It serves as the
standard for anybody involved with the brand’s internal strategy, persona, messaging, and visuals.
Our story
At Lucid, we help teams see and build the future. The modern workplace continues to evolve. Teams are more distributed, and businesses need to deliver customer value faster to stay ahead of their competition. What we do—provide a new and better way to collaborate—is more important than ever.
Our products have been designed to bring teams together. From anywhere. At any time. Lucid creates alignment throughout every stage of the workflow—from idea to reality. And when teams are aligned, they can move quickly to achieve things never achieved before.
We’re Lucid. Created by visionaries for visionaries.
Values
Clarity
We value understanding, insight, and “aha” moments. We bring clarity to complexity, wherever that might be. We seek accuracy and strive to share it in an intelligible way. Why? Because we believe accuracy is a prerequisite for any meaningful action.
Innovation
We value all forms of innovation, from earth-shattering inventions to daily problem-solving. Innovation should flow freely and quickly. We have an unshakable desire to remove any barriers that stifle ingenuity, creativity, or progress. Therein lies our personal method of innovation: We pave new paths in response to a broken status quo.
Empowerment
We value efficient and productive work for the masses. We empower individuals—no matter their industry, role, or experience level—to work intuitively. We empower teams of all sizes to work collaboratively. We’re inherently driven to make work better for everyone.
Personality
Smart
We attract the best of the best—the innovators, the visionaries, the thinkers, and the builders. Together, we find better solutions, unlock hidden opportunities, and unite our strengths to achieve groundbreaking leadership within our industry.
Lively
We’re energetic, action-oriented, agile, and quick-paced. We infuse the Lucid brand with vibrant optimism. We don’t have a job—we have a mission, and we go about achieving it with enduring passion.
Approachable
We are warm, friendly, and inclusive. Despite our knowledge and expertise, we’re incredibly unintimidating. We like people, and we like helping them solve their problems and turn their visions into reality. This means we meet them where they are and welcome them to join us.
Voice and tone
Our smart, lively, and approachable personality shows in everything we say and write.
This means our words are:
Always informative
Always friendly
Always confident
Always smart
Never robotic
Never superfluous
Never boastful
Never condescending
Visual principles
1
Simplicity
Brings clarity
That’s how we empower people to find solutions faster and innovate faster.
We embrace more negative space, shorter copy, and minimized color palettes. We eliminate superficial imagery, design clean layouts, and simplify instructions.
2
Contrast
Energizes
We leverage this basic design principle to bring things to life, focus attention, and communicate hierarchy.
We consider contrast in all areas—size, weight, volume, color, brightness, speed, pace, etc.
3
Consistency
Builds trust
It makes our brand more recognizable, dependable, and approachable. It creates a strong, scalable brand that can effectively and efficiently evolve with time.
With every design decision, we always consider how it relates to and impacts the brand as a whole.
Our logos introduce the world to the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite.
Every product within the suite is an integral part of how Lucid helps bring teams together to see their ideas and build the future. To reflect that united purpose, the product logomarks were all built on the isometric grid, to visually align them with each other toward that common goal.
The product logomarks are designed from the ground up to serve both as logos and product identifiers (icons).
Lucid logo
Our corporate logo is comprised of a symbol and wordmark. The spatial and scale relationships between them are intentional and purposeful. Lucid is our starting point — our foundation that everything is built upon.
There are four versions of our logo and they are available as fixed pieces of art, as shown.
The primary logo is used when the Lucid name is necessary to inform the audience. When Lucid’s name is obvious, the contained symbol can be used alone, at the designer’s discretion.
Always use the version that best suits the space for legibility and composition. For example, reversed logo styles are appropriate over dark images, and symbol marks are ideal when space is limited like on social media.
The Lucid logo is never used in colors other than Cool Grey 100 and White.
Logo safe area
Clear space helps us maintain and protect our visual identity. It prevents the logo from becoming lost or conflicting with design elements near it. For these reasons, it’s critical that the safe area around the logo is always maintained.
The “L” symbol is the key to checking the safe space. It can be rotated around each lockup, as shown, to ensure adequate padding.
NOTE: Never undermine the logo’s integrity by re-creating, modifying, rotating, or distorting it in any way.
NOTE: When the symbol is used alone, without its containing shape, there is an adequate and preferred safe area option. This is the only lockup with that flexibility. All others must maintain the full safe space at all times.
Product logos
Each product logo—Lucidchart, Lucidspark, and Lucidscale—is comprised of a logomark and wordmark.
Each logo comes in three styles: primary, grayscale, and one-color. They are designed for specific usage requirements and are each available as fixed pieces of art with default and white wordmark options.
The full logo is designed to work well in most cases, but if the logomark-only version best suits the space for legibility and composition, make sure the product name is obvious by making other design or messaging adjustments. The logomark-only version should not be displayed without clear reference to the product.
The Lucidchart, Lucidspark, and Lucidscale logos are never used in colors other than the specified colors.
Contact the brand creative team for usage guidance and approvals.
Lucidchart logo
Logo safe area
Clear space helps us maintain and protect our visual identity. It prevents the logo from becoming lost or conflicting with design elements near it. For these reasons, it’s critical that the safe area around the logo is always maintained.
NOTE: Never undermine the logo’s integrity by re-creating, modifying, rotating, or distorting it in any way.
Lucidspark logo
Logo safe area
Clear space helps us maintain and protect our visual identity. It prevents the logo from becoming lost or conflicting with design elements near it. For these reasons, it’s critical that the safe area around the logo is always maintained.
NOTE: Never undermine the logo’s integrity by re-creating, modifying, rotating, or distorting it in any way.
Lucidscale logo
Logo safe area
Clear space helps us maintain and protect our visual identity. It prevents the logo from becoming lost or conflicting with design elements near it. For these reasons, it’s critical that the safe area around the logo is always maintained.
NOTE: Never undermine the logo’s integrity by re-creating, modifying, rotating, or distorting it in any way.
Partner logo lockups
We use co-branding to highlight our offerings, endorsements, and integrations with partners. All partners should follow the linked guidelines for using Lucid's corporate and product logos in co-branded content.
Color palette
Our visual principles inform our use of color. Our minimal color palette helps our audience focus on what’s most important — fulfilling their needs.
Our clean core colors, Cool Grey and White, are used to set the tone, emphasizes clarity, contrast, and consistency.
The primary accent adds liveliness while secondary accents help soften things further and increase approachability. When used sparingly and strategically, they pop against our minimal core colors, drawing the eye to important information and break up space when needed, maintaining visual interest.
To ensure visual consistency across physical and digital media, we use predefined color values* for tints and shades rather than opacity values in most cases.
While our palette is simple, it’s also highly functional, offering everything we need to color block, create hierarchies, and present information effectively.
Lucid core
Primary accent
Secondary accents
Lucidchart
Core
Accents
Lucidspark
Core
Accents
Lucidscale
Core
Accents
Color system
Like Lucid, each of our product brand is built on top of a minimal, tonal color palette foundation. Honoring this system helps create a connection between our various brands, while their individual core color helps differentiate them from each other.
Using the Global Color System ensures that our audience can easily identify each of our products, their corresponding websites, and their evergreen marketing materials.
This system displays our uniquely powerful skills for simple visual communication.
NOTE: For tints and shades, we use predefined color values instead of opacity values in most cases to ensure visual consistency across physical and digital media. The complete Lucid brand color scale with Hex/RGB values is linked above.
Primary typography
Graphik is our primary typeface for its clean, accessible, and versatile sans serif design, ideal for various applications. It helps us anchor our brand.
With bold and/or large text, we draw the eye to our main ideas, creating hierarchies that let the audience know which information to read first. Utilizing the full range of weights strategically, we set our copy blocks with smaller, lighter weights, categorizing them below more dominant titles and headlines. These techniques help us make our messaging more friendly—readers can easily skim main ideas, diving deeper within the areas of their personal interest.
Graphik’s design is approachable, confident, purposeful, and friendly, making it a reliable foundation for our brand’s personality.
Tying back to our visual principles of simplicity, clarity, and contrast, we primarily use the five blue weights within the Graphik Wide family: Light, Regular, Italic, Medium, Semibold, and Bold. The entire family is available for use, including the many italic weights not listed here. This exemplifies our values while providing typographic solutions for every situation. This helps us bring consistency across all Lucid messaging. We use these various weights to establish hierachy and simplify and organize information.
To strengthen contrast with multiple typefaces, space out weight selections. Pair typefaces with one or two weights between them (even in the same family) and avoid very similar weights. Use Graphik Wide and Self Modern as secondary/tertiary typefaces for added contrast.
Secondary typography
Graphik Wide is an extended sans serif from the Graphik family, used as a secondary pairing to complement and enhance the main message.
Choosing a complementary, secondary typeface is essential to accentuating key design elements. Graphik Wide is our go-to for highlighting titles, subheads, and prominent features, used strategically and sparingly to establish a clear information hierarchy. We selectively use the full range of weights for important moments, ensuring consistency and clarity in the design.
Graphik Wide flawlessly merges boldness and refinement and strength and legibility to showcase our brand’s smart personality in important occasions.
Tying back to our visual principles of simplicity, clarity, and contrast, we primarily use the Light, Semibold, and Bold weights within the Graphik Wide family. The entire family is available for use, including the many italic weights not listed here. This exemplifies our values while providing typographic solutions for every situation. This helps us bring consistency across all Lucid messaging. We use these various weights to establish hierachy and simplify and organize information.
Use Graphik Wide to enhance contrast, not to stretch words visually. When using Graphik and Graphik Wide together at the same size, be cautious because the Graphik Wide portion can look like an unintentional mistake. To enhance visual contrast, use different weights when pairing these typefaces together.
Tertiary typography
Self Modern, our rounded, old-style serif, tertiary typeface, is strategically used to enhance and illustrate our main message with emotional expression and energy emphasis.
Its concave serifs give it a human, handmade feel that complements our character illustration system and extends it. We selectively use Self Modern for pull quotes, folios, swag, one-word callouts, and wall murals to establish a information hierarchy, choosing the appropriate weight for important moments to ensure consistency and clarity.
This expressive typeface effectively blends excitement, vibrancy, and approachability with a refined stature, showcasing our brand’s lively personality and character in important occasions.
Tying back to our visual principles of simplicity, clarity, and contrast, we primarily use the italic weight within the Self Modern family. However, the entire family is available for use, exemplifying our values while providing typographic solutions for every situation. This helps us bring consistency across all Lucid messaging. We use these various weights to establish hierachy and simplify and organize information.
Self Modern should never be used in all caps. When used in all caps, the curved structure of the typeface is not as prominent and does not integrate as seamlessly with the illustration system.
Motion
The strength of animation lies in its ability to entertain while still communicating important information. At Lucid, we need to ensure our brand’s animation reflects its personality and voice. Lucid is smart, lively, and approachable, and animation should feel delightful and guide viewers through the stories we tell.
Our animation is also purposeful and acts as an elegant means of communication. This section outlines how we tap into Lucid’s personality and imbue its identity into our animation.
We use photography to express the brand, draw interest to the message, and connect with our audience.
As the pioneers of visual collaboration, we rely on imagery to convey the moods and feelings relevant to our audience. These include abstract ideas such as envisioning, collaborating, building, and thriving.
People photography
Well–curated people photography humanizes our brand and connects with the audience on an emotional level. That’s why it’s important to carefully analyze the mood, subject, environment, composition, lighting, etc., when selecting or taking photos.
Our photos feel natural. They have a refined photojournalistic look, featuring candid subjects and environments.
USEFUL SEARCH TERMS INCLUDE:
Thinking / Deep in thought
Workplace collaboration / Professional teams
Hands laptop / Hands technology
Office confidence / Professional leadership
What to look for and consider
Mood.
Try to match the message and the context. In general, it should always convey a sense of optimism and an appropriate amount of energy.
Subject.
Our subjects represent the diversity of our audience in gender, age, race, culture, ability, industry, etc.
They project aspirational emotions through candid expressions and
body language.
Except in portraits, they don’t make eye contact with the camera.
Environment.
We generally show environments that are modern and relatable. If it’s irrelevent to or detracts from the story we’re telling, we should de-emphasize it accordingly.
Composition.
Subject placement, framing, perspective, camera angle, point of focus, foreground, and background should feel natural and helpful.
Lighting and color grading.
Even when a dramatic or filmic look is needed, it should feel refined, never more than necessary to set the mood or tell the story.
Conceptual photography
Our customers rely on us to solve complex problems. They are uniquely conceptual, high-level thinkers. For that reason, when conceptual photography is deemed appropriate, we depict patterns and objects in our product colors, featuring a mix of reality and tech.
Without a clear brand messaging strategy, abstract imagery can feel clichéd and off-brand. That’s why its use is reserved for Brand Creative-led or directed projects and campaigns. If you intend to use abstract imagery, please get approval and guidance from the Brand Creative team first.
Color options
Black and white photography
Black and white photos require a broad range of value (high contrast) to be successful.
Photos with with minimal tonal difference are best kept in full color. When photos are paired with content overlay like text, make the sure they contrast well with each other.
Color treatment
Our color photography takes on the same basic treatment that our black and white photos do: We enhance midtone contrast and soften harsh highlights and shadows.
Additionally, when it comes to people photography, we want to avoid oversaturated, overly red skin tones. We want to lean in on natural lighting that feels organic to the space.
Additional guidance
Expanded photograhy guidance for brand design use on marketing design assets is available. Please go to #brand-creative on Slack (Lucid employees) or email [email protected] (all other inquiries).
Elements and patterns
We use graphic elements and patterns to bridge the gap between our product interfaces and our audience’s real-world environment. In this way, we can tell the story of collaboration and ideation as it takes place within the interfaces our audience uses, their physical workspaces, and even their own minds.
An elements and patterns library for brand design use on marketing design assets is available. Present use case for pattern request to brand creative team. Please go to #brand-creative on Slack (Lucid employees) or email [email protected] (all other inquiries).
Product imagery is primarily used to inform and educate our audience. To those looking for solutions it gives them a glimpse into what our product has to offer. To our customers, it empowers them with instructions for our product’s powerful features.
There are multiple ways to present our product, ranging from instructional to conceptual. To decide which stylistic standard to follow, it’s important to define the message and goal for the imagery first.
Standard approach
There are three standard product presentation styles designed to address most of our messaging needs.
Instructional
This style is designed for showing how a feature works and how to use the product, and in rare cases where displaying the actual UI is necessary. It leans heavily on screenshots and high fidelity mockups. It’s best suited for educational materials.
Example use cases:
Product education materials
Step-by-step instructions
User guides
Template showcases
Simplified
This style uses a simplified version of the actual UI to communicate the subject matter without any unnecessary detail that clutters the message. It’s very effective with UI elements that are easily recognizable for what they do. This is the most commonly used approach in marketing and sales collateral.
Example use cases:
Marketing website
Videos, commercials
Marketing & sales collateral
Conceptual
The focus of this style on the what, not how. It’s designed to highlight the concept of a product feature. It also works well for product features that can’t easily be communicated in one image, or product features that don’t have its UI design finalized yet.
Example use cases:
Promotional messaging
Brand collateral
Commercials
Display ads
Brand marketing approach
To inject more brand personality into our product imagery, we leverage people photography. We find photographs of people expressing the appropriate brand personality.
People in the photographs can be interacting with the product or mimicking the real-life version of the product feature, like chatting for the chat feature.
This approach is designed to work with the simplified and conceptual styles.
