Valencia Jackson · Brand Standard

The Palette

Eighteen named fields and six neutrals. Thirteen rooms, each carrying a single case study and nothing else, plus four sections that open on a plate of their own.


The Fields

One to a room · Never repeated

Linen Paper #F4EFE9

Interstitials and quiet ground

The paper the rest is hung on. Warm enough that a page of dense text reads as paper rather than as a screen.

RGB 244 239 233  ·  Ink at 14.6:1

Silk Road Ochre #6B4E12

Heritage & Cultural Stewardship

Named for the UN Tourism Silk Road training. The pigment of dry earth and old trade routes.

RGB 107 78 18  ·  Paper at 6.7:1

Factory Espresso #2B1D14

Andy Warhol at the Art Institute of Chicago

A nod to the Silver Factory, and the closest this system comes to black without ever reaching it.

RGB 43 29 20  ·  Paper at 14.3:1

Florentine Sanguine #7A2C15

Michelangelo: Mind of the Master

Sanguine is the red chalk Michelangelo drew in, which is the exact medium the exhibition put on the wall.

RGB 122 44 21  ·  Paper at 8.4:1

Peony Mauve #52293C

Manet and Modern Beauty

The peony was Manet's flower in the late paintings, and mauve was the invented color of the Paris he painted.

RGB 82 41 60  ·  Paper at 10.6:1

Modern Wing Pewter #3F4449

The Terzo Piano Events Program

The steel and glass of Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing, for the one room about a calendar rather than an exhibition.

RGB 63 68 73  ·  Paper at 8.6:1

Pomodoro Red #6A1E16

Chef Carolina Diaz: World Pasta Champion

The color of the four-ingredient Spaghetti al Pomodoro that won Milan. The only pure red in the deck.

RGB 106 30 22  ·  Paper at 10.1:1

Provenance Pine #1F3A2A

Cleveland Museum of Art & Provenance

Named for the restaurant, and for the word museums use for an object's documented history.

RGB 31 58 42  ·  Paper at 10.8:1

Beacon Teal #14424A

MIX at the Cleveland Museum of Art

Named for the Beacon screen in the atrium. The one cool, lit color in the system, for the one room built on music and technology.

RGB 20 66 74  ·  Paper at 9.6:1

Oxford Blue #1C3348

Emory University

For Emory's Oxford College, where the university began. The one navy admitted to the deck.

RGB 28 51 72  ·  Paper at 11.4:1

Nocturne Plum #3B1E42

Music, Mindfulness and Healing at Harvard

For work built on music and contemplative practice. The only field with no warmth in it, deliberately.

RGB 59 30 66  ·  Paper at 12.7:1

Stuttgart Oxblood #4E1F27

Porsche Experience Centers

Automotive leather and German heritage, held back from anything that could read as a racing livery.

RGB 78 31 39  ·  Paper at 11.9:1

Foraged Moss #3A4520

The Taycan Launch

For a sustainability story told on the plate, drawn from the foraged and local sourcing that carried it.

RGB 58 69 32  ·  Paper at 9.0:1

Dominican Amber #8F3A1E

Taste the Paradise

The Dominican Republic is one of the few places on earth producing amber in quantity. The warmest field in the deck.

RGB 143 58 30  ·  Paper at 6.6:1

Delegation Slate #3A4E63

UNICEF USA

The grey blue of a hearing room and a delegation table, for the one body of work decided by appropriation rather than by campaign.

RGB 58 78 99  ·  Paper at 7.5:1

Threshold Ink #1A2233

Where This Leads

The darkest field, held back for the one statement that looks forward rather than back. Used once, at the close.

RGB 26 34 51  ·  Paper at 13.9:1

Milton Clay #754529

Giving Back

Named for the Habitat house handed to a family in Milton, Georgia on Christmas Eve. The warmest brown in the deck, for the one section that is not client work.

RGB 117 69 41  ·  Paper at 7.0:1

Archive Stone #5F594F

Appendix

A quiet warm stone for the record itself. The lightest field in the system, because the appendix should never compete with the work it verifies.

RGB 95 89 79  ·  Paper at 6.1:1

Ink & Structure

The neutrals every page is built from

Warm Ink #211D1A

All body text and structural rules

Never true black. Every word on white paper is set in this, and every structural rule that divides a section.

RGB 33 29 26  ·  White at 16.7:1

Mid Label #6F6A65

Eyebrows, ledes, secondary prose

The warm grey that carries a subtitle without competing with the sentence underneath it.

RGB 111 106 101  ·  White at 5.3:1

Muted Label #8A8480

Captions, sources, fine print

The quietest voice in the system, reserved for attribution and metadata that should never lead.

RGB 138 132 128  ·  White at 3.7:1

Rule Grey #C9C4BE

Hairline dividers

Every list separator and entry rule. Structural section rules use Warm Ink instead, which is what marks the hierarchy.

RGB 201 196 190  ·  Hairline only, never a fill

White Paper #FFFFFF

Every structural section

About, Recognition, Focus, Career, Giving Back, Contact and the Appendix all sit here. It is what lets a colored field read as a piece of work.

RGB 255 255 255  ·  The default ground

Field Paper #F4EFE9 at 92%

Type set inside a colored field

Linen at ninety-two percent for text, sixty-six percent for the hairline rule and the Roman numeral. No other ornament is permitted inside a field.

The only accent the system allows

Typography

Three faces · Three jobs

Cormorant Garamond

Display · Weights 300 and 400
Titles, statements, numerals

Reputation is an institution's oldest asset

Masthead 138px · Statement 52px · Case title 56px · Numeral 116px · Tracking .02em to .045em

EB Garamond

Body · Weight 400, roman and italic
All running prose and ledes

A museum is not a building with objects in it. It is a promise, made publicly, that certain things will be kept, interpreted honestly, and handed on. Italic carries every lede and every attribution note.

Body 17px at 1.68 · Lede 22px italic · Measure capped at 66 characters

Jost

Utility · Weight 300
Labels, eyebrows, metadata

Case Study · Bridging Art, Music & Technology

Eyebrow 10.5px at .28em · Kicker 10px at .24em · Source 9.5px at .22em · Always uppercase, always letterspaced

How It Behaves

The standard, in six rules

Color is reserved for the work

Structural sections, About, Recognition, Areas of Focus, Career History, and Contact, sit on white paper in warm ink. Four sections open on a full-bleed plate before returning to paper: Heritage, Giving Back, Where This Leads, and the Appendix. That restraint is what keeps a colored field reading as a piece of work rather than as a heading.

One field to a room

No field is used twice. None appears as an accent, a highlight, or a text color, and no two share a page. A field either fills the full width of a plate or it does not appear at all.

Every field is named for its subject

Sanguine is Michelangelo's chalk. Amber is the Dominican Republic's own stone. Ochre is the Silk Road. A field that cannot be named from the work it carries does not belong in the system.

Ornament inside a field

A hairline rule and a Roman numeral, both in Linen Paper at sixty-six percent, and nothing else. The Heritage, Giving Back, Appendix, and Threshold Ink plates carry the rule alone, without a numeral, because none of them is a numbered case study.

Accessibility and grayscale

Every field clears the accessibility floor against paper by a wide margin, the narrowest at 6.1 to 1, well above the WCAG AA threshold of 4.5. The fields are also spaced apart in luminance, and where two sit close together they are drawn from different hue families, so the palette survives grayscale printing and no two rooms collapse into the same tone.

What the system refuses