Spike Development Group — Brand Guidelines

01 — Positioning

Capital-grade, not crew-grade.

Spike Development Group is a nationwide platform for institutional commercial real estate — development and general contracting at the scale and discipline of capital, not the cadence of a job site. The brand reflects that altitude: restrained, serif-led, materially serious. Every visual decision should ask: would this appear in a Hines investor letter? If the answer is no, simplify.

"Build what capital expects. Sign what owners trust."

Positioning statement — internal use, not for marketing copy.

Brand principles

Restraint signals capital.

Institutional brands earn trust by withholding, not announcing. Negative space, single accents, and disciplined typography do more work than ornament. When in doubt, remove an element.

One accent, used sparingly.

Signature Gold (#B8945A) is the only accent — never replaced, never paired with secondary brights. It appears once per composition: a dot, a hairline, a single underline. Saturation is reserved.

Serif for substance, sans for clarity.

Fraunces carries the brand voice — display, numbers, callouts. Inter handles working text. The contrast between the two is intentional and consistent across every artifact.

Dark first. Light second.

The platform is dark-mode native — Obsidian is the canonical canvas. Bone exists for stationery, decks, and partner-facing print where light grounds the work. Always design both. The brand must read identically on either.

02 — Color Palette

A nine-color system. One accent. No exceptions.

The palette is split into two grounds (Obsidian, Bone), five neutrals (Graphite, Ivory, Steel, Charcoal, Mist), and a single accent (Signature Gold, with Bronze for hover/print). No additional hues are introduced for any reason — not for charts, not for status states, not for occasion. Hierarchy comes from value, not hue.

Ground colors

Obsidian

HEX#0A0A0B

RGB10 · 10 · 11

CMYK0 · 0 · 0 · 96

PantoneBlack 6 C

Bone

HEX#F4F1EC

RGB244 · 241 · 236

CMYK1 · 1 · 3 · 4

Pantone11-0507 TPG

Signature Gold

HEX#B8945A

RGB184 · 148 · 90

CMYK23 · 38 · 71 · 8

Pantone872 C (Metallic) / 4515 C

Neutrals & hover

Graphite

HEX#1A1C1F

RGB26 · 28 · 31

USEAlt dark surfaces

Ivory

HEX#FAF8F5

RGB250 · 248 · 245

USECard surfaces

Bronze

HEX#7A5B33

RGB122 · 91 · 51

USEGold hover · print

Steel

HEX#2E3338

RGB46 · 51 · 56

USEDividers · borders

Charcoal

HEX#3A3D42

RGB58 · 61 · 66

USEBody copy on light

Mist

HEX#9B9FA6

RGB155 · 159 · 166

USEEyebrows · meta

03 — Typography

Two typefaces. One voice.

Fraunces is the display face — variable serif, optical-size aware, set with tight negative tracking at -0.02em for headlines. Use weights 500 (Medium) and 600 (SemiBold) only. Inter handles working text at weights 400/500 with default tracking. Numbers in Fraunces use tabular figures (font-variant-numeric:tabular-nums) for alignment in financial contexts.

H1 · Display Headline

A development platform for institutional capital.

Fraunces SemiBold · 72px · -0.025em · line-height 1.05

H2 · Section Headline

National scale, deal-by-deal discipline.

Fraunces Medium · 48px · -0.02em · line-height 1.1

H3 · Sub-headline

Capital partners, owners, and operators.

Fraunces Medium · 32px · -0.015em · line-height 1.2

Lead Paragraph

Spike Development Group originates, executes, and delivers commercial real estate at institutional scale — from ground-up development through general contracting and post-completion stewardship.

Inter Regular · 20px · 1.6 line-height · Charcoal

Body

Body copy carries the working narrative. Set in Inter Regular at 16px with 1.65 line-height on Charcoal #3A3D42 for light grounds, and #C5CCD3 on Obsidian. Measure should sit between 60 and 75 characters. Avoid full justification; left-align with consistent rag.

Inter Regular · 16px · 1.65 line-height

Eyebrow / Caption

Section · Eyebrow · Meta

Inter Medium · 11px · 0.22em letter-spacing · UPPERCASE

Numerals (tabular figures)

$2.4B · 14.7% · 1,280,000 SF

Fraunces Medium · 64px · tabular-nums · -0.03em

Fraunces — Display

Aa Bb Cc

Medium 500 · SemiBold 600

Inter — Working text

Aa Bb Cc

Regular 400 · Medium 500

04 — Logo System

Wordmark, monogram, lockups.

The primary mark is "SPIKE." set in Fraunces SemiBold with a Signature Gold period — the single accent. The monogram is a square Obsidian "S" with the gold dot echoed in the lower-right corner. The wordmark and monogram are used independently — never side-by-side. The wordmark carries the name in lockups and chrome; the monogram serves as a standalone stamp for icons, avatars, and badges. Reverse variants exist for every form; the brand is built dark-first.

Primary wordmark

Primary · Obsidian on Bone

Reverse · Bone on Obsidian

Monogram

Bone

Obsidian

Transparent

On Gold (rare)

Lockups

Horizontal · Primary

Horizontal · Reverse

Stacked · Primary

Stacked · Reverse

Single-color variants

100% Black

100% White (KO)

Full color · default

05 — Clear Space & Minimum Size

Air around the mark.

Clear space is defined by X — the cap-height of the wordmark. Maintain X on all four sides of any logo placement: from page edges, image edges, and adjacent type. The mark requires this air to function as a mark.

X = cap-height of "SPIKE" — maintain X minimum on all sides.

Minimum size — wordmark

120px digital

0.75in print

Minimum size — monogram

16px favicon

32px app

48px tile

06 — Do's & Don'ts

Discipline above polish.

The mark is the institution. Treat it as such. The following are not stylistic preferences — they are brand-protective constraints.

Use the canonical SVG sources from /logo/
Maintain minimum clear-space of X = cap-height
Place on Obsidian or Bone grounds only
Use the reverse variant on dark photography
Keep the gold accent at full saturation, never tinted
Set numbers in Fraunces with tabular figures
Pair the wordmark with one and only one accent element per composition

Don't

Don't stretch, skew, or rotate the wordmark
Don't apply drop shadows, glows, or 3D effects
Don't recolor the gold — not to brass, copper, or yellow
Don't outline or stroke the wordmark
Don't place on busy photography without an overlay
Don't substitute fonts — Fraunces and Inter only
Don't add taglines inside the lockup
Don't reproduce below minimum sizes
Don't pair the brand with secondary brights (blue, green, red)
Don't place the monogram next to the wordmark. They are independent marks. The monogram stands alone as a stamp; the wordmark stands alone as the name.

07 — Voice & Tone

Institutional. Restrained. Capital-focused.

Spike's voice does not sell. It states. Sentences are short, declarative, and weight-bearing. The reader is a capital partner, a landowner, or a senior operator — never a homeowner, never a hobbyist. The brand does not use first-person plural exuberance ("we love what we do") or marketing softeners ("just" / "really" / "amazing"). It earns trust through specificity and omission.

Voice contrast

On-brand

"Eighteen ground-up developments. Four states. Delivered."

Off-brand

"We've built tons of amazing projects across the country and we're so proud of our team!"

On-brand

"Capital meets execution. The platform between."

Off-brand

"Your trusted partner for all your commercial construction needs."

On-brand

"Sites originated. Capital structured. Buildings delivered."

Off-brand

"We work hard to help our clients succeed in every project we take on."

Cadence

Short. Declarative. Periods do the work that exclamation points would in a lesser brand. Avoid dependent clauses where a sentence break will do.

Posture

Demonstrate, do not assert. State outcomes (square footage, completion dates, capital deployed) rather than adjectives ("best-in-class," "premier," "leading").

Lexicon

Use: platform, capital, deliver, originate, execute, steward.
Avoid: turnkey, solutions, synergy, robust, world-class.

08 — Photography Direction

Buildings, not crews. Light, not lifestyle.

Imagery carries the same restraint as type. The subject is the asset — aerial CRE at golden hour, architectural exteriors at dusk, structural details in raw material. People appear secondarily, framed within the asset, never as the focal point. The visual reference set is Hines, Related, Brookfield Property Partners, and Bishop Ridge — never trade-press editorial, never "construction-progress" documentation.

Aerial CRE at golden hour

Wide, elevated, off-axis. The asset reads as a placed object in the landscape. Long shadows. Warm low light raked across the elevation. No drone overlays, no compass roses, no annotations.

Restrained color grade

Slight desaturation, lifted shadows, warm midtones. The grade should feel like a Hines annual report, not a hotel brochure. Avoid HDR, avoid heavy contrast curves, avoid teal-and-orange.

No people-first imagery

Crews, hardhats, and handshakes do not appear in primary brand photography. If figures are present, they are scale references — small, anonymous, in motion. The asset remains the subject.

No construction iconography

Spike is a development platform, not a job site. Avoid cranes, blueprints, hardhats, scaffolding, and tool-belt visuals across all communications — print, digital, and signage. Material photography (concrete, steel, glass at scale) is acceptable as texture.

09 — Applications

The system in use.

Every asset in the brand system follows the same compositional logic: Obsidian or Bone ground, single gold accent, Fraunces-led hierarchy, generous negative space. The brand should be recognizable at any altitude — favicon to billboard.

LinkedIn Banner · 1128 × 191

OG Image · 1200 × 630

Letterhead · Letter + A4

See /stationery/letterhead.html — print to PDF for Letter, A4, and dark variants.

Business Card · 3.5 × 2 in

See /stationery/business-card.html — double-sided, Obsidian front, Bone back.

Email Signature

See /stationery/email-signature.html — copy from rendered block, paste into mail client.

Presentation Deck

See /templates/master-deck.pptx — 16:9 master with title and content slides.