Social Visual System

Category: identity Sources: visual-identity.md, brand-assets.md, banned-words.md, content-pillars.md, core-messages.md Confidence: high Last Updated: 2026-08-12

The system for image-free social posts: static, typographic slides built from the brand's own tokens. No photography and no clutter. In a busy feed a set of slides that plainly belong together reads as authority, so every post is built from the same short rulebook and the feed is recognisable at a glance. Photographic or AI imagery on social is a separate, unsettled question and is not part of this system.

The rendered guidelines page is brand-wiki/output/social-visual-system.html.

The three laws

• One idea per slide. If it needs two, it is two slides.
• One signal per slide. Trace Yellow appears once, on the single most important element. It is a scalpel, not a coat of paint.
• One system. Same anchors, same type, same grounds, every time.

The four grounds

The ground sets the volume. Text colour is fixed per ground and is never a free choice.

Type and contrast

Inter carries body copy, metadata and every non-hook role; hierarchy inside those roles comes from weight and scale, not a second typeface. The hook is the one exception: Manrope, weight 800, is the sanctioned display cut. Tested against plain Inter and Inter Tight on a rendered Field Note (2026-08-12); both read as flat and dated at social scale, Manrope read as current and confident and was approved. Body and metadata stay in Inter regardless of what the hook uses. Uppercase is the default hook case, confirmed across Field Notes #1-#6 (2026-08-12): sentence case is still available for a specific line that needs it, but uppercase is the one to reach for first.

• Hook: Manrope 800, uppercase by default (sentence case when a line calls for it), 56–100px depending on line count and length, tracking -.01em, line-height ~1.0–1.15
• Headline: 600, 26–34px, Inter
• Body: 400, 15–18px, Inter, measure no more than 28 characters on a slide
• Meta / index / wordmark: 500, 11–13px, tracking .08em, Inter

Sanctioned text-on-ground pairings only:

• Ink on white or quiet surface, and paper on hero black — always.
• Ink on yellow — passes.
• White text on yellow — never.
• Yellow as body text — never. Yellow is a fill and accent, not a text colour on light grounds.

The devices

Reach for one device per slide. Mixing three in one frame is the clutter this system exists to avoid.

1. The highlighter — a yellow block behind one operative word. The workhorse move.
2. The keyline — a 3px yellow rule under a phrase. The quieter cousin of the highlighter.
3. The correction — strike the wrong claim, set the right one beside it. Built for myth-busting and red-flag posts (for example "CE rated armour" struck, "certified to EN 1621" beside it).
4. The label — one word filling the frame, from the Exposed / Covered lens. The only sanctioned all-caps use. Exposed on the dark ground carries the problem; Covered on the yellow or light ground carries the promise.
5. The number — one figure at display scale, grounding an abstract point in a real quantity.
6. The watermark — the Guiding Progress mark at roughly 5% ink on light (or 5% paper on dark), bled off a corner. Texture behind the words, never in front of them.
7. The pointer — the mark is directional by design; at small scale it works as a swipe or CTA cue.
8. The 45° cut — echo the mark's diagonal as the divide between two grounds. Once per set, never more.
9. Ground-flip rhythm — never run the same ground three slides in a row; alternate light and dark so the swipe has cadence.

Field Note posts

A Field Note shared to social is a single standout post, not a carousel. It carries one added constant so the series is recognisable at a glance: a yellow Field Note # tag in the top-left. Everything else is deliberately varied post to post, so the series reads as a system, not a template stamped out on repeat (confirmed 2026-08-12, after Field Note #1).

• Ground: rotate it. Don't default to hero black every time. Hero black, quiet surface, paper white and Trace yellow (per the four grounds above) are all in play; pick per post, not on autopilot. Text colour still follows the ground's fixed pairing, never a free choice.
• Hook case: vary it. Uppercase Manrope is one option, not the only one. Sentence case is equally valid, and either can carry the highlighter or run clean. Pick what the specific line needs.
• Highlighter: optional, not mandatory. It is one device among the nine above, not a fixed Field Note feature. Reach for it, the keyline, or nothing at all, depending on what the hook needs. When it is used alongside the tag, that is the sanctioned exception to "one signal per slide" from Field Note #1; when it is not used, the tag is the slide's only signal and the one-signal law applies normally.
• Layout: vary it too. Hook position, deck placement and overall composition are not locked to the Field Note #1 template. Reflow within the grid (margins, anchors) as the message needs.

The tag numbers the note (Field Note #14, # not №) to build the series and is the one true constant. Everything else, ground, case, device, layout, is chosen per post from the toolkit above, not repeated by default.

Carousel architecture

Open dark or yellow to stop the scroll, teach one idea per slide on the light grounds, and close on the yellow ground or a yellow CTA bar. A typical set is six to eight slides: Hook, Teach, Teach, Teach, Turn, Resolve.

The grid

• Canvas: 4:5 feed at 1080 × 1350 (primary), 1:1 at 1080 × 1080, 9:16 story at 1080 × 1920.
• Margin: 80px safe padding on all sides. No text in the outer margin.
• Anchors: slide index top-left, Trace Technical wordmark bottom-left, the single idea between them.

Guardrails

• No em dashes. Use a full stop, comma or colon.
• Say "apparel" not "gear", "test house" not "lab", "documentation" not "paperwork".
• No more than one yellow ground in a single carousel, and never three slides on the same ground in a row.
• Keep the wordmark and index in the same corners on every slide.

Related Articles

• Visual Identity
• Brand Assets
• Banned Words
• Content Pillars
• Core Messages