Essential
One idea per section. Clear hierarchy. No decoration added to make an ordinary point feel important.
ORCA IQ brand identity
See the quality
of every call.
Every vacancy and BD conversation, scored against your own standard of best practice.
Professional. Commercial. Conversational. Short.
The system in one line
Calm, precise and built for people who carry the revenue number.
ORCA IQ makes unseen call quality visible. The identity follows the same logic. Dorsal Black grounds the system. Sunlit Deep creates depth. Fjord Cyan identifies the moments that matter.
The writing stays direct. We talk about vacancy quality, BD conversations, fees and revenue at risk. The technology never becomes the story.
Foundation
Three working principles.
The layout is spare because the content is useful. The system is dark because the subject lives below the surface. Every decision has a job.
Commercial
Start with the recruitment problem. Quality, consistency and revenue earn attention. Software features follow.
Engineered
Use the grid, the tokens and the type scale. Nothing is eyeballed. Repetition creates trust.
Foundation
Where ORCA IQ sits in the family.
Three brands share a surname. The rules that keep them apart are not stylistic preferences.
ORCA IQ is a teal brand
Lead accent Oceanic Teal #026B7E, always, with Fjord Cyan #0F91B2 as the light and highlight.
Purple is retired
#7C3AED and its family are dead. Bringing purple back as a legacy or heritage accent is a violation, not a nod.
Blue belongs to the parent
ORCA Blue #1B9FE8 is the trainwithorca brand, Call Coach heritage. ORCA IQ never leads with blue. The Powered by ORCA lockup is the only place parent branding appears.
No serif, ever
Serif belongs to Bamboo, a different brand in the family. Inter and Space Grotesk are also banned: they belong to an internal mockup direction.
Foundation
The wordmark.
Lowercase orca. Uppercase IQ. Quiet confidence, with the intelligence layer picked out in Fjord Cyan.
ORCA IQ
Primary treatmentSaddle White / Fjord Cyan / Dorsal Black
Do
- Lead with the light-on-dark lockup.
- Keep clear space equal to the height of the I.
- Use Fjord Cyan for IQ and high-value moments.
Do not
- Bring purple back as a legacy accent.
- Place the mark on a busy image.
- Turn the wordmark into a decorative gradient.
Logo rules
- Wordmark styling: orca lowercase white, IQ in the cyan gradient. Never set the name in a different face or colour scheme.
- The mark was remapped to teal on 27 July 2026, pixel by pixel, so the cyan-to-violet ramp became cyan-to-teal. Any copy still showing a violet brain or IQ is the old file.
- The logo ships light-on-dark. On light collateral, place it inside a dark panel or ask before inverting anything.
- Never retint a client's own logo to match ours. When a client mark sits beside ORCA IQ, theirs stays exactly as supplied.
Files
Masterassets/orca-iq-logo-full.png
Trimmed web-readyassets/orca-iq-logo.png
Vectorassets/logo.svg
Powered by ORCAassets/powered-by-orca.svg
Visual system
Colour follows depth.
Always layer from darkest ground to lighter surfaces. Fjord Cyan is a signal, not wallpaper.
Dark mode working palette
Drawn from deep-ocean environments and organised by luminance. Ground dominates. Surface lifts. Primary moves the interface. Accent appears sparingly.
Ground
Dorsal Black. The dominant background.
Surface
Sunlit Deep. Cards and raised panels.
Primary
Oceanic Teal. Brand actions and strong emphasis.
Accent
Fjord Cyan. Small, high-value highlights.
Text
Saddle White. Primary copy on dark surfaces.
Narrative
Polar Blue. Long-form body copy on dark.
Muted
Mist Slate. Captions, rules and secondary detail.
Light mode tokens
For high-glare working environments and long-form documents. Teal remains an action colour. It never floods the canvas.
Ground lightGlacial white base background.
Surface lightPure white raised containers.
Text lightDorsal Black for maximum readability.
Muted lightDeep slate for supporting copy.
Action accentContrast-adjusted teal for light mode.
Colour ruling
No purple. No warm decorative accents. No large cyan panels. Performance states need a separate accessible specification before red, amber or green can enter the product.
Visual system
Archivo speaks. Lato explains.
Archivo replaced Raleway for display in July 2026. Raleway could not set tabular numerals and broke down above 40px. The voice did not change.
Display / Archivo 800
The quality of every call entering the business.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
0123456789 £ % & ?
0123456789 £ % & ?
Body / Lato 400
Every conversation scored against your own standard of best practice. Managers see what was missed and where to act.
WHAT ORCA FOUND THIS WEEK
Hero numberLato 90096px, tabular nums, never the display face
HeroArchivo 800clamp 46 to 96px, -0.03em
Section titleArchivo 800clamp 32 to 54px, -0.025em
Panel titleArchivo 80020px, -0.02em
Big statLato 90036px, tabular nums
BodyLato 40015 to 18px, line-height 1.55
Kicker / labelLato 90010 to 12px, uppercase, .12 to .17em tracking
ButtonsArchivo 700 to 80013px
The numeral rule
Every numeral is Lato.
Not the display face. Lato's digits are all exactly 580 units wide, so they are tabular by construction and cannot drift. Always pair with font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums. Archivo carries the words; Lato carries the numbers.
Why Raleway went
Raleway was retired on 28 July 2026. It ships no tnum table and its digit advances vary 18.5 per cent, from 518 to 614 units, so the brand's own rule that every numeral is tabular was impossible to execute in it. At 50px in the product's KPI strip the glyphs of 312 physically overlapped. Its heavy weights also compress counters rather than widening them, so it collided with itself above roughly 40px.
Visual system
The grid stays visible.
Borrow the discipline of an engineering manual. Keep the work open, aligned and deliberate.
123456789101112
12 columns on desktop
The navigation rail occupies its own field. Content uses repeatable 4 / 8 and 3 / 9 relationships.
4 columns on mobile
Collapse structure, not hierarchy. Labels lead. Specimens span the available width.
2x spacing rhythm
Start at 8px. Use 16, 24, 32, 48, 64 and 96. Break the rhythm only when the content explains why.
Space and structure
Generous space, hairline-bordered panels, one idea per section or slide.
Corners
Square on brand surfaces: this site and the demo sites run border-radius 0. The product app still carries the v1 radii of 16, 11 and 9px. That inconsistency is real and unresolved.
Stat groups
One joined panel with internal dividers, never separate floating stat cards.
Contrast lists
Checkmark and cross lists for can-see versus cannot-answer are a house pattern: green ticks, red crosses inside a red-tinted panel.
Fictional data
Mock data must look plausible and stay internally consistent. Never present it as customer data. The house fictional tenant is Northline Search, with consultants Maya Ellison, Josh Bracewell, Priya Anand, Callum Reid and Sofia Nkemi.
Imagery ruling
Product UI is the hero image.
Show the actual dashboard: qualification score, missed questions highlighted, manager recommendation. No stock photography, no team-at-whiteboard imagery, no clip-art intelligence metaphors beyond the logo mark.
Visual system
Components, live.
Working specimens use the same depth hierarchy. Figures below are fictional and exist only to show the system.
Actions
Specific, commercial and easy to recognise.
KPI strip
One joined panel. Internal dividers. No floating tile set.
Avg qual score71+4 this week
Vacancies flagged62 need requalifying
Calls scored312+12%
Watch list3Flat trend
Language
Write like an operator.
Experienced recruitment people do not need software theatre. Name the problem. Show the commercial logic. Stop.
How ORCA IQ sounds
Professional. Commercial. Conversational. Short. Write like an experienced recruitment operator talking to another, not a software company talking to a market. Concrete nouns. Numbers where they earn their place. Confident, never hyped. Plain-spoken about limitations; trust is the product.
Activity is measured.
But quality is invisible.
The language ruling
We sell performance intelligence and revenue. Coaching is the mechanism, never the headline. AI never appears in a headline, hook or subject line.
We say
vacancy qualification / qualification call / BD call / scored / consistency / quality and quantity / billing managers / placements / revenue at risk / blind spots / best practice
We never say
AI-powered / revolutionary / game-changing / cutting-edge / next-generation / disruptive / leverage / unlock / supercharge / seamless / robust / holistic
Dashes
No em dashes or en dashes in any copy that ships. Use periods, commas, colons, parentheses.
Quadrant language
Quadrant language is locked: Busy Fool, Lazy Expert, Perfect Consultant, At Risk Consultant. These four names are the only labels used, in the product and in every asset. Do not paraphrase them.
Approved CTAsBook a demoBook a 20-minute walkthrough
CTAs by channel
EmailWorth 20 minutes to see it on your own numbers?
LinkedIn organicHappy to show anyone how we score this
LinkedIn paidBook a 20-minute walkthrough
WhatsApp / warm networkHappy to show you if you are curious.
Loom outreachIf it is interesting, 20 minutes and I will show you it live.
Visual system
Two grounds, one brand.
Dark is the default. Light is where the work happens.
Dark, and this is the default
Everything a prospect or a market sees: ads, decks, carousels, social artefacts, covers, hero sections, demo mini-sites and this site. Dorsal Black #050B10 falling to Sunlit Deep #062233, cyan hairlines, Fjord Cyan atmosphere blooms, white and #7FE6FF headlines.
Light, and only where it is named
Two places: the product app, which is light-first at #F0F6F7 page, white cards, teal as accent only; and long-form documents, which may run light with dark panels as deliberate contrast moments. Nothing else. An internal tool being looked at all day is not a reason to go light.
The test
Dark is the default and the answer unless there is a reason otherwise. Light is not earned by how long a screen is looked at: internal tools, dashboards and team surfaces stay dark. Light is reserved for the product app, which is light-first, and for long-form documents. Anything else starts dark.
Signal colours
GreenPositive: high band, upward trend, wins (#5FE0A0 on dark)
AmberMedium: watch band, flat or mixed
RedRisk only: low band, decline, alerts
Signal law
Green, amber and red encode performance state and nothing else. Red is never a decorative accent, never a heading colour. Fjord Cyan is never a score band; it is the brand. If something needs emphasis but carries no performance meaning, use cyan.
Accessibility
Darren is colour-blind and reads red and amber as near-identical. The analytics layer carries a colour-blind-safe toggle which swaps the ramp for a magenta, yellow and teal triad that separates by lightness as well as hue. It is a viewer preference, not a default.
Still open
Signal colours were chosen against the purple system and have not been re-picked for the teal ground. They work. They were not designed for it.
Tints
Teal tintPairs with #026B7E or #08728C text
Green tintPairs with #15A05A or #16794A text
Amber tintPairs with #F0962B text
Red tintPairs with #F9314A text
Collateral
One domain per prospect.
The link you send never changes. It becomes the post-demo page after the meeting.
How it works
One domain per prospect, live for the whole cycle. The client URL never changes: it serves the pre-demo page before the meeting and is rebuilt from the post-demo template afterwards, so the prospect keeps a single link that evolves.
Cross-pollination
Improve a client site and the improvement belongs back in the template. Improve a template and it flows to the next client. The template domains are the source of truth.
Collateral
Ads and social.
One emphasis per asset. The CTA mirrors the product, never a generic SaaS button.
- Midnight surface, white or #7FE6FF headline, product-UI screenshot or clean recreated panel, logo small.
- One emphasis treatment per asset: one cyan phrase, or one number set large. Not both.
- CTA mirrors the product exactly: teal gradient pill, white Archivo, Book a demo or Book a 20-minute walkthrough.
Carousel pack
brand/carousel-pack/
Do not use until migrated. It is still purple and still Raleway.
Governance
Reject on sight.
The tells that an asset was made without thought. Naming them means nobody has to debate them later.
Always
- Ground the work in Dorsal Black or Glacial White.
- Use Fjord Cyan for high-value moments only.
- Set every numeral in Lato. Its digits are one width.
- Use recruitment language and concrete commercial nouns.
- Keep one idea per section.
Reject on sight
- Rainbow or per-category palettes; pastel KPI tiles; coloured score-tile washes. Signal colours are for dots, arrows and numbers, not washes.
- Emoji as data indicators. Fake precision such as 47.3 per cent better.
- Generic template layouts: three-card hero rows, Get Started buttons, the gradient-on-white SaaS look.
- Inter by default; any serif; flat black backgrounds.
- Any purple at all. The whole family is retired: #7C3AED, #6D28D9, #8b5cf6, #A78BFA, the #150a32 and #1d0f44 midnights, and the older homepage #8b3ce0.
- Raleway. Retired 28 July 2026.
- A number set in the display face rather than Lato.
- Anything that makes ORCA IQ look like every other software company. The bar is category leader: if it could be any SaaS brand's asset, it fails.
Known misalignments
The live trainwithorca.com homepage still carries retired purple tokens (#8b3ce0, #150f22 navy).Charlotte / Dom
The product app uses the v1 corner radii (16 / 11 / 9px) while this site and the demo sites are square. Nobody has decided which is right.Open
Signal colours were chosen against purple and have not been re-picked for the teal ground.Open
The carousel pack is still purple and still Raleway. Do not use it until migrated.Open
Any asset made before 27 July 2026 is purple; anything before 28 July is Raleway. Re-make or re-tint before reuse.Everyone
The demo sites deploy by direct upload, not from git. Connecting them needs the Cloudflare GitHub App authorised in the dashboard.Open
Decision log
13 July 2026v1 agreed as a proposal: purple #7C3AED, Lato and Raleway, light-first product.
24 July 2026The June keynote locked as the gold standard for decks. Deck discipline: about thirteen slides, one idea each, no product screenshots. Demo mini-sites ruled light-first (reversed 28 July). Signal-colour law restated. Quadrant language locked.
27 July 2026Purple retired. ORCA IQ becomes a teal brand. The product, decks, standalone pages and the logo raster were all migrated the same day.
28 July 2026Raleway retired, Archivo replaces it for display. Raleway ships no tnum table, its digit advances vary 18.5 per cent, and its heavy weights collide above 40px.
28 July 2026Demo mini-sites are dark, reversing the 24 July ruling. Both versions were built and compared: the light canvas fought the deep teal, with white panels reading as cut-outs rather than surfaces.
29 July 2026This site becomes the single source of truth. brand.md is generated from it and it is the brand book. The PDF is retired: it was a duplicate that drifted.
29 July 2026The used-all-day test for light surfaces is dropped. It read as a rule and would have been broken constantly. Dark is simply the default; light is named surface by surface, and today that means the product app and long-form documents only. Called by Dan while brand-checking the ORCA Hub.
The final test
Improve every vacancy.
Coach the floor better.
Make more money.