Brand guidelines

Thanks for taking an interest in Creative Boom. This page sets out our brand guidelines, covering our tone of voice, ethos, brandmarks, colour palette, typography, imagery, illustration, and how it all comes together. There's a link to download our visual assets at the bottom. If you have any questions or need anything else, email [email protected].

Introduction

Creative Boom is one of the UK's most loved platforms for the creative industries. Founded in 2009, we deliver news, inspiration, insight, and practical advice to over a million creatives every month. Our readers are artists, designers, makers, illustrators, photographers, filmmakers, and animators, and we support them at every stage of their careers, from education and first jobs to freelancing and leading a team.

Tone of voice

Creative Boom sounds informal, warm, friendly, compassionate, and fun. Creativity is a respected field, but most of our readers chose it because they love what they do, so we don't take ourselves too seriously, and we value experimentation and freedom of expression.

Our readers are savvy, so we never patronise them. Instead, we aim for a positive, encouraging tone that's conversational, with a dash of humour where it fits. We're not fancy, either. We avoid jargon, stick to the facts, and write in plain English that's easy to read and enjoyable to spend time with.

You can see our tone of voice in our icon, too: the pair of eyes that follows readers around our platform, bringing a bit of cheeky charm to a creative audience that could do with some light relief during the working day.

Our ethos

We're here to celebrate, inspire, and support the creative community. Think of us as a party on your screen where everyone is invited. Elitism is a dirty word to us. We're not here to intimidate; we're here to provide a welcoming, positive space full of inspiration and ideas.

Our brandmarks

Our logo matters to us. It's the symbol that represents and unites us, so please use it consistently to build awareness and recognition of the brand. Always use the logo files provided, and never recreate the logo yourself. Use the horizontal lock-up where there's enough room and the stacked lock-up where there isn't, and give the logo plenty of space to breathe. Our icon, the eyes, is for social media and avatars only.

Colour

Our primary palette is black and white. Our secondary palette is Mauve, Light Blue, Green, Deep Orange, Yellow, and Smoke, as set out below. Please always use the correct colour breakdowns: CMYK and Pantone for print, and hex values for digital.

Typography

Our primary typeface is Roobert Medium, a mono-linear geometric sans-serif family by Displaay. Our secondary typeface is ABC Diatype, a warm yet sharp grotesque by Dinamo that's ideal for body text and reading on screen.

Download our brand assets

Everything you need is in our brand assets folder, and you can view the full guidelines in Figma. That's where you'll find more detail on our tone of voice, logo and icon, typography, illustrations, and colour palette.