koza

Brand Guidelines

Calm, useful, founder-led. A tool that respects your taste — and quietly looks like it.

Version 1.0 · August 2026 · usekoza.com
01
The wordmark

koza, lowercase, with the dot.

The mark is the name set in Instrument Sans Medium with tight tracking, finished by an olive dot resting at the baseline. The dot is the brand's entire flourish — everything else stays quiet.

koza
Primary · ink on paper — use this everywhere
koza
Reversed · the same lockup, for an ink tile only
Construction

Instrument Sans · weight 500 · letter-spacing -0.045em · always lowercase.

The dot

Diameter ≈ 18% of the font size · color Olive #B8C24A· hangs low at the end of the mark, gapped ≈ 9% from the “a”. Never raised toward the x-height.

Clear space & minimum size

Keep a margin equal to the width of the “o” on all sides. Nothing shares that space — no taglines, no partner logos. The mark holds at 16px tall on screen; below that, use the dot alone at favicon scale.

kozakozakoza
The dot’s one weakness
Olive on ink is 9.1:1 — unmistakable. On every light ground it is between 1.0:1 and 1.9:1, so at wordmark scale it reads as a detail rather than a signal, and on olive or sky it disappears outright. Never place the mark on olive, sky, spark or olive soft. On paper it is fine at 24px and up; below that, set the wordmark without it.
02
Color

Paper and ink first. Color earns its place.

Koza is a white-paper product with a disciplined ink scale, and it works in daylight — there are no dark grounds. Olive carries the brand and the call to action, the blue family does the work olive physically cannot, and spark is spent on one thing only.

The rule that decides the rest
Olive, spark and sky are light. Against paper they carry 1.2:1 to 1.9:1 — far under the 4.5:1 a reader needs. Put ink onthem and they run 9:1 to 14:1. So they are grounds, never letters. Ink does the talking; color holds the space. Where a color has to carry a word, that is the blue family’s job, and only at its deepest stop.
Ink
#191919
Primary text, the wordmark.
Ink 2
#5F5E5B
Secondary text.
Ink 3
#9B9A97
Captions, hints, labels.
Paper
#FFFFFF
The ground. Every surface starts white.
Line
#ECECEC
Hairline rules and borders.
Olive
#B8C24A
The brand. The dot and section washes. Not the primary action.
Olive Light
#D5DD7B
Accent tints, highlights.
Olive Soft
#E8ECCE
Accent washes and fills.
Blue
#3B82F6
Workflows and automations, and nothing else. Never a word — 3.7:1.
Blue Deep
#2563EB
Links, labels, active tabs, focus rings. The only color cleared for text.
Sky
#CFE8FF
Informational grounds. The blue family's lightest stop.
Spark
#E9F056
Oza, the AI — and only Oza.

The working ratio on any Koza surface: mostly paper, then ink, then an olive wash, then the olive itself, then a sliver of blue and a glint of spark.

Blue belongs to workflows
The mid stop, Blue #3B82F6, means workflows and automations and nothing else — the same restraint spark gets for Oza. It is not a general icon color, not a calendar dot, not a selected state. Which workflow this is comes from the data palette in Ch. 09; blue says only that an automation is involved.

This does not touch Blue Deep, which keeps links, labels, active tabs and focus rings — it is the only color in the book cleared for text, and Ch. 11 depends on it.
Retired in v1.0

Teal & Teal DeepThe colors meant to sell Koza, and the quietest in the set. Nothing replaces them: marketing weight now comes from type scale and white space, which is what makes a light brand read as considered rather than washed out.

PineThis was Nexity's green, verbatim. Koza's product actions cannot be painted in a tenant's brand color. Ink takes the primary action; Blue Deep takes links, active tabs and focus; olive stays on the mark and the washes.

Sky TextA fourth blue at 3.5:1, under the floor while being specified for emphasis words. Emphasis comes from the serif italic itself, set in ink.

03
Typography

Two faces, three jobs.

Instrument Sans sets headlines, the wordmark and product headings. DM Sans sets paragraphs, UI text and labels. Emphasis is the third job, not a third face: Instrument Sans 600 in ink, one phrase per screen.

Everything you’ve been opening six tabs for.

Clean, modern, friendly — without trying too hard. Body copy stays around 15px with relaxed leading; labels go uppercase with a touch of letter-spacing and never shout. Emphasis is the part you’d underline.

RoleSizeWeightTrackingFace
Display34–56px500-0.02emInstrument Sans
H224–32px500-0.025emInstrument Sans
H316–18px500-0.01emInstrument Sans
Body14–15px400normalDM Sans
Caption11–12px400normalDM Sans
Label10–11px600+0.1emInstrument Sans

Tracking tightens as size grows: −0.045em on the wordmark, −0.02em on display sizes, neutral at body, +0.1em on uppercase labels.

04
Oza

The assistant has one shape and one color.

Oza is the AI inside Koza. It is never called “the AI,” never given a robot, and never dressed in a second palette. Its mark is the wordmark's dot with rays — the one piece of the logo that was already a circle, given something to do.

Solid
The default, in ink.
Outline
On spark, or wherever solid would be too heavy.
Tile
App tile and launcher.
Avatar
Oza’s face in a thread.
States
Ready
Full ink. Oza is available.
Thinking
Mark stays ink; three dots animate beside it. Never a spinner, never greyed.
Done
A green check badges the mark. The mark itself never turns green.
Unavailable
The only grey state. Out of credit, or switched off for the space.
Why thinking is not grey
Grey is the language of switched off, and thinking is the opposite of off. So the mark holds full ink whenever Oza is present, and only the dots move. Grey now means one thing — and the difference between working and off is carried by motion rather than hue, which is the only version that survives a viewer who cannot separate the two colors.
Spark belongs to Oza
Spark #E9F056is Oza’s and nothing else’s. Not a pricing highlight, not a “new” badge, not a chart series. The restraint is the whole point: it is what lets a glint of yellow-green mean the assistant did this without a label. Spark is a ground, never type — 1.2:1 on paper. Ink sits on it at 14:1.

The mascot is still open. Oza is also a goat — the pun is worth having, and a mascot gives the assistant somewhere to live on an empty state. It is not drawn yet; a hand-drawn cartoon is illustration work, not geometry, and it needs an illustrator. The sparkle is what ships in the product; the goat, when it exists, is page furniture at large sizes only.

05
Voice

Calm, plain, sure of itself.

Koza talks like an operator who has done the work — never like software. Controls say exactly what happens. Nothing apologizes, nothing over-celebrates, and no infrastructure ever leaks into a sentence.

Say
“Saved”
Past tense, two syllables, done.
Not
“Your data has been synchronized successfully!”
No machinery, no exclamation points.
Say
“Couldn't save — try again.”
What happened, what to do.
Not
“Oops! Something went wrong 😢”
Never apologize vaguely, never emoji an error.
Say
“Clients can't see these.”
Names the person, not the permission model.
Not
“Visibility flag: internal_only”
Developer vocabulary stays in the codebase.
06
Product UI

Notion-quiet, never gadgety.

Flat white sections separated by hairlines, underline tabs instead of pill trays, soft parchment fields instead of bordered boxes, and actions that reveal themselves on hover.

ElementRule
NavigationTabs are quiet text with a 2px olive underline. Never segmented trays, never filled pills.
FieldsInputs sit on parchment #FAF9F7 with no border; focus brightens to white with a Blue Deep ring.
ActionsOne ink button per surface, in paper. Secondary actions are text. Destructive stays red and asks once.
Radii & chromeCorners stop at 8–10px. Fully-round pills are reserved for avatars and nothing else.
07
White label

Koza by default, their brand when it matters.

Every workspace starts fully Koza-branded: the wordmark in the sidebar, on the login screen, and across client-facing pages, signed “Powered by Koza.” The white-label add-on swaps client-facing surfaces to the workspace's own logo, favicon and brand color — and reverts to Koza automatically if the subscription lapses. Internal admin areas always stay Koza.

SurfaceWears
Koza-brandedLogin, team sidebar, settings, upgrade prompts, empty workspaces.
Workspace-brandedShare links, approval pages, connect pages, the client portal — once a logo is uploaded.
Attribution“Powered by Koza” on default surfaces becomes “Powered by {workspace}” under white label.
Two places the build disagrees
The team area resolves the tenant’s branding and falls back to Koza, so an agency currently sees its own logo inside the tool — the opposite of the rule above. And every email leaves as one hardcoded address, Nexity <hello@nexityagency.com>, so a client of any other agency receives mail signed by a tenant. That second one is the highest-priority fix in this book.
08
Naming

Write it the same way twice.

One decision made once, so nobody has to guess in a tooltip at 5pm.

ThingWriteNotWhy
The companykozaKoza · KOZALowercase everywhere, even opening a sentence. The mark and the word agree.
The assistantOzaOza AI · the AI · OZAIt has a name. Using it is the whole point of giving it one.
A client's areaSpaceClient Space · portal · workspaceOne word, capitalised as a product noun. “Spaces” plural.
The people using ityour teamusersNobody calls themselves a user.
Their clientsclientscustomers · accountsAgencies have clients. Match their language, not ours.
PossessiveKoza'sKozas
Two things to settle
The product still says “Client Space,” “Space” and “Spaces” in different places — this chapter is the target, not the current build; fix strings as you touch them. And koza is lowercase while Oza is capitalised: the company is a wordmark, the assistant is a name you address. Defensible, but worth deciding on purpose.
09
Status & data

Category color is not brand color.

Brand color says this is Koza. Data color says this is different from that. They answer different questions, they come from different palettes, and confusing them is how a product ends up with four blues.

Statuses, formats, campaigns and stages draw from this ten-color set. Each is a tinted ground with its own darker ink, so a label is always legible and never depends on the accent.

Aa
Gray
#EBECED / #6C6B68
book #787774 · 3.79:1
Aa
Brown
#E9E5E3 / #64473A
Aa
Orange
#FAEBDD / #A5570A
book #D9730D · 2.81:1
Aa
Yellow
#FBF3DB / #8B6B01
book #DFAB01 · 1.90:1
Aa
Green
#DDEDEA / #0E7768
book #0F7B6C · 4.27:1
Aa
Blue
#DDEBF1 / #0B6E99
Aa
Purple
#EAE4F2 / #6940A5
Aa
Pink
#F4DFEB / #AD1A72
Aa
Red
#FBE4E4 / #C13535
book #E03E3E · 3.51:1
Aa
Hot pink
#FCE7F3 / #C9246D
book #DB2777 · 3.91:1
The one rule
Never reach for a framework default. If a new thing needs a color, it takes one from the ten above, or it does not get one. Color is assigned by category, never by importance, and it stays put — a status keeps its color forever.
Five inks are darker than the book prints them
Every ground above is exactly the book’s value. Five of the ten inks are not: at the printed values they measure 1.9:1 to 4.3:1 against their own ground, which contradicts both “a label is always legible” here and the 4.5:1 floor in Ch. 11 — yellow at #DFAB01 was 1.9:1, effectively unreadable. Each has been darkened to the nearest value that clears 4.5:1; the original is noted under the swatch. The book should be amended to match.
10
Email

The surface nobody reviews.

Koza sends invites, magic links, booking confirmations, review requests, digests and automation mail. It is the only place the brand arrives uninvited, and the only place it is never checked.

StructureRules
Wordmark or the agency’s logo, left, 20px tallSender name is the brand of the surface it came from, never “no-reply”
One sentence saying what happened, in the subject and again first lineReply-to reaches a person
One ink button. Never twoNever email a password or a code that grants access on its own
The same link as plain text underneath — buttons get strippedTables and inline styles only — email clients ignore stylesheets
Footer: who sent it and how to stop receiving itReadable with images off

Subjects say the thing.“Zenah invited you to Koza” beats “You have a new invitation.” Name the person and the object; skip the greeting; never open with “Just a quick note.”

11
Accessibility

What we guarantee.

Scattered across three chapters this reads as trivia. Collected here it is a standard you can hold a screen against before it ships.

4.5:1
Any text, against whatever sits behind it. This is what rules the light colors out as type.
3:1
Icons, borders, focus rings, and any shape carrying meaning on its own.
Never hue alone
State pairs with a shape, a badge or motion. Working vs. off must survive color blindness.
Visible focus
Every control shows where the keyboard is. Blue Deep, offset, never removed.
16px floor
Below that the wordmark drops its dot and Oza switches to the solid cut.
Grey means off
One meaning, product-wide. Never busy, never merely quiet.
Known misses
Sky Text at 3.5:1 was specified for emphasis words and has been retired. Olive on paper is 1.9:1 and is a ground only. The dot itself sits under the floor on every light ground — which is why it is a detail, not a signal, and why it is never the only thing distinguishing anything. Ink 3 #9B9A97 measures 2.8:1 on paper and is still specified for captions and hints; it is the one open contradiction in this book.
12
Misuse

Ways to break the mark.

Six things that turn the wordmark into something else.

KOZA
Never uppercase. The name is lowercase everywhere, even at the start of a sentence.
koza
The dot lives at the baseline — never floated up like a degree mark.
koza
The dot is always olive. It doesn't recolor to match a campaign.
koza
No stretching, squeezing, or outlining.
koza
No gradients on the wordmark. Ink or white only.
koza· the social OS
No taglines locked to the mark. The wordmark stands alone.