XFone — Brand Guidelines

01 — Foundation

What the brand is for

XFone is the AI receptionist that sounds human, knows your business, and does the work — built for the UK first. The brand's job is to make a small business owner trust software with their most valuable asset: the next phone call.

Positioning

Element	Definition
Category	AI phone receptionist
Audience	Small businesses, 1–50 people. Trades & home services and automotive first.
Promise	Every call answered. Every job captured.
Proof	Hear it yourself — the sixty-second in-browser demo, before any signup.
Personality	Premium tech: the confidence of Apple, the precision of Linear. Calm, exact, understated. The product is the drama.

The five brand pillars

Show, don't tell

The demo before the pitch, everywhere. We never claim what we can demonstrate.

Minutes, not meetings

Anything that takes more than five minutes to set up is a bug. The brand must feel as instant as the product.

Plain English

The interface, the copy, the contract. The customer's words — calls, jobs, bookings — never ours.

Never miss — and prove it

Numbers over adjectives. Saved calls and booked jobs, surfaced relentlessly.

Honest machine

Never claims an unconfirmed action. Never invents an answer. Never guesses a price. The brand inherits the same rule.

Brand personality sliders

Where XFone sits on each axis. Creative work that drifts off these positions is off-brand, however attractive.

We are	We are not
Precise — engineered, measured, exact	Clinical, cold, bureaucratic
Confident — quiet certainty, understatement	Boastful, loud, hype-driven
Warm — on the customer's side, human in outcome	Cutesy, jokey, matey
Modern — frontier technology, worn lightly	Futuristic clichés, sci-fi, robots
British — of the high street it serves	Parochial, twee, Union-Jack kitsch

02 — Voice & Tone

Say less. Mean more.

XFone writes the way a great receptionist speaks: brief, warm, certain. Every sentence earns its place.

The rules

Short declarative sentences.

One idea per sentence. Full stops are confident; commas that chain clauses are not.

Numbers over adjectives.

"Answers in under a second" beats "lightning-fast". If a claim has no number, question whether it's a claim at all. Every statistic must meet the whitepaper §13 evidence bar.

No hype vocabulary.

Banned: revolutionary, supercharge, magic, game-changing, unleash, empower, seamless, cutting-edge (as copy), AI-powered (as a benefit). If everyone's deck says it, we don't.

No exclamation marks.

Anywhere. Enthusiasm is carried by substance, not punctuation.

The customer's words.

Receptionist, calls, jobs, bookings, diary. Never "conversational AI solution", "voice agent platform", or "omnichannel".

British English.

-ise endings, colour, licence/license correctly, DD Month YYYY dates, £ before the number, 24-hour times in product.

Copy examples

Write this

Every call answered. Every job captured.

Hear your business answered. Sixty seconds, no signup.

Booked straight into your diary. Confirmed before they hang up.

£49 a month. One saved job pays for the year.

Never this

Revolutionise your business with AI-powered call handling!

Our cutting-edge conversational AI delights your customers!

Seamlessly integrated omnichannel communication solution

Supercharge your growth with the magic of voice AI!

Tone by context

Context	Tone shift
Website & advertising	Maximum confidence, minimum words. Headlines under eight words.
Product UI	Functional and calm. Verbs first: "Call back", "Teach", "Book". No chat, no filler, no "Oops!".
The receptionist itself	Warm, professional, capable. Introduces itself exactly as each business chooses. Matches the courtesy of a trade counter, not a call centre script.
Documents & whitepaper	Measured, evidenced, technically literate. Confident enough to flag its own uncertainty.
Errors & incidents	Direct, factual, ownership first. What happened, what we did, what happens next. No cushioning language.

03 — Logo

The mark

A bold geometric X beside a lowercase "fone". The asymmetry is the identity: the X carries the weight; "fone" stays quiet. Never rebalance it.

Primary · black on paper

Reversed · white on ink

Rules of use

Rule	Specification
Colour	Monochrome only — Ink on light surfaces, Paper on dark. The logo is never grey, never Signal green, never gradient, never outlined.
Clearspace	On all sides, minimum clearspace equals the height of the "o" in "fone". Nothing enters this zone — including the page edge.
Minimum size	Full lockup: 24 px height on screen, 8 mm in print. Below that, use the X mark alone (min 16 px).
The X alone	The X may stand alone as app icon, favicon, avatar, and watermark — always solo, centred, monochrome. The X-alone mark is the origin of the iconography system (§07).
Backgrounds	Solid Ink, Paper, or Fog only. Never on photography without a solid panel. Never on Signal.
Misuse	Never stretch, rotate, shadow, bevel, animate per-letter, recolour, add a strapline into the lockup, or set "fone" in another weight. No exceptions for special occasions.

04 — Colour

Monochrome, then one signal

XFone is a black-and-white brand. Colour appears only as Signal — the green of a call answered, a line live, a job confirmed. Its scarcity is its power.

CORE

Ink#0A0A0A · rgb(10 10 10)Primary text · dark surfaces · the logo

CORE

Paper#FFFFFF · rgb(255 255 255)Primary background · reversed type

ACCENT

Signal#00D97E · rgb(0 217 126)Live states · confirmation · graphics on dark. Never body text on light.

ACCENT

Signal Ink#007A47 · rgb(0 122 71)Accent text & links on light surfaces (AA)

EDITORIAL

Dusk#8B7CFF · rgb(139 124 255)Ghost numerals · ambient glows · large graphic moments only. Never buttons, never live states.

EDITORIAL

Dusk Ink#5B4CC4 · rgb(91 76 196)Editorial labels & eyebrows on light surfaces (AA)

SURFACE

Bone#F6F4EF · rgb(246 244 239)Warm light surfaces — cards, tiles, alternate sections. Replaces cold grey panels in marketing.

GREY

Carbon#171717Cards & panels on dark

GREY

Graphite#525252Secondary text on light

GREY

Silver#A3A3A3Tertiary text · captions · disabled. Large text only.

GREY

Mist#E8E8E8Borders · dividers · hairlines

GREY

Fog#F5F5F5Light panels · alternate surfaces

SYSTEM

Ember#E5484DProduct UI errors and destructive actions only. Never marketing.

The 90 / 9 / 1 rule

90% — Ink & Paper

9% — Greys

1% — Signal

Any composition where Signal exceeds a few percent of the surface is off-brand. Signal means something is live, answered, confirmed — dilute it and it stops meaning anything.

Dusk (added Edition 1.1) is the editorial voice, not a second brand colour: oversized ghost numerals, ambient radial glows on Ink, and eyebrow labels. It never appears on interactive elements, never signals state, and never competes with Signal in the same moment. Bone warms every light surface that would otherwise be a cold grey card — the difference between a template and a brand.

Semantic use of Signal

Signal means	Signal never means
A call is live — the pulse dot, the active waveform	Decoration, backgrounds, section tints
An action succeeded — booked, confirmed, saved	Brand identity (the logo stays mono)
The primary action — one button per screen, at most	Multiple competing elements per view

05 — Typography

Three voices, one system

Display speaks in headlines. Text does the work. Mono carries the numbers. Nothing else is permitted.

Display — geometric grotesque · headlines, product names, pull-quotes

Every call answered.
Every job captured.

Primary: PP Neue Montreal (licensed) — interim/web-safe: Futura / Avenir Next stack. Weight 700 only. Tracking −2%. Sentence case always — never all-caps headlines, never title case.

Text — humanist sans · body, UI, documents

The receptionist greets callers the way the owner would, understands what they need, and captures every detail — then writes it into the systems the business already uses.

Primary: Inter (variable). Weights 400 / 500 / 600. Body 16 px, line-height 1.6. Never used above 24 px — that's Display's job.

Mono — numerals, data, transcripts, labels

712ms median · 99.98% uptime · £49/mo · 14:32 — "Hi, you've reached Hartley Plumbing…"

Primary: JetBrains Mono — system fallback SF Mono. Data only (amended Edition 1.1): metrics, timestamps, transcript excerpts, and tabular figures. Mono is the sound of the machine being precise — it never sets UI labels, navigation, buttons or eyebrows, which belong to Display in letter-spaced small caps (11–13 px, +12–22% tracking, weight 600–700). If a string isn't data, it isn't mono.

Type scale

Step	Size / line	Face · weight	Use
D1	61 / 1.05	Display 700	Hero headlines
D2	44 / 1.08	Display 700	Section heads
D3	31 / 1.15	Display 700	Card & feature heads
T1	19 / 1.55	Text 400	Ledes, standfirsts
T2	16 / 1.6	Text 400	Body
T3	14 / 1.55	Text 400–500	Secondary, tables
M1	13 / 1.5	Mono 400	Data, transcripts
M2	11 / 1.4	Mono 500	Eyebrows, captions, axis labels

06 — Grid & Space

Built on eight. Cut at forty-five.

Whitespace is XFone's loudest design element. The system is an 8-point grid, generous margins, and one signature angle inherited from the X.

8 px base unitAll spacing, sizing and padding in multiples of 8 (4 px half-step for fine UI).

12-column layoutDesktop 1080–1200 px content width, 24 px gutters; collapse to 4 columns on mobile.

Whitespace ratioMarketing surfaces breathe: section padding ≥ 88 px desktop / 64 px mobile. Never fill a quiet area.

Corner radiusSharp by default. 0 px brand surfaces · 2 px buttons · 8 px product cards. Nothing pill-shaped except the live-dot.

The 45° cutThe X's diagonal is the only permitted angle — section reveals, image crops, chart annotations. Never 30°, never 60°.

Hairlines1 px Mist borders, not shadows. Elevation is expressed by contrast, not blur. Max one shadow token in product UI.

07 — Iconography

Cut from the X

A bespoke set, drawn once, used everywhere. Every icon shares the X's DNA: square terminals, mitred joins, decisive strokes, and the 45° diagonal wherever direction is expressed.

Property	Value
Grid	24 × 24, 2 px live-area padding
Stroke	2 px, currentColor, no fills except deliberate solid accents (knobs, dots)
Terminals	Square caps, mitred joins — never rounded
Angles	Horizontals, verticals, and 45° only
Sizes	16 · 20 · 24 · 32 px. Scale the whole icon; never restyle the stroke.
Colour	Ink or Paper. Signal only for live/confirmed states.

The set — v1 · 22 marks

call-answer

call-live

waveform

booking

message

transcript

transfer

shield-screen

speed

integrations

trades

auto

crm

mobile

analytics

mic

security

global

knowledge

tune

always-on

x-mark

Icon rules

One metaphor per iconIf it needs two ideas, it needs a different word next to it instead.

Never mix librariesNo Feather, no Material, no emoji beside these. Missing an icon? Draw it to this grid or request it — never substitute.

Pair with Mono labelsIcons in product chrome carry M2 mono labels. Icons never appear as decoration without meaning.

Source of truthBranding/icons/*.svg in the repository. Edit the source, not copies.

08 — Graphic Language

Three motifs. No others.

XFone's graphic identity is built from what the product actually is: sound, conversation, and the X. Decoration that isn't one of these three is off-brand.

The waveform

Live sound, rendered as vertical 2–3 px bars on the 8-grid. Used in the demo, live states, and hero moments — ideally animated by real audio, never as a fake decorative squiggle. Signal-coloured when live, Ink/Paper otherwise.

The cut

A single 45° slice — the X's diagonal — used to crop images, reveal sections, and divide dark from light. One cut per composition. It is a scalpel, not a pattern.

14:32:04 — "Hi, you've reached Hartley Plumbing."
14:32:09 — "Morning — my boiler's leaking…"

The transcript

Real conversation as texture: mono type, timestamps, alternating turns. The most honest artwork we have — the product, verbatim. Always plausible, never a real customer's data.

09 — Motion

Nothing bounces

Motion exists to demonstrate the product and confirm actions — not to entertain. If an animation would still make sense with the sound off and the brand hidden, delete it.

120 ms — microHovers, toggles, key feedback. cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 0, 1).

240 ms — standardPanels, cards, page elements. Same curve. This is the default.

400 ms — deliberateHero reveals and the 45° cut wipe. Used once per view at most.

Live elementsThe waveform and pulse-dot move only when something is genuinely live. Fake liveness is a brand violation, not a flourish.

No physicsNo bounce, spring, elastic, parallax or per-letter animation. Ease out, settle, stop.

Respect the userHonour prefers-reduced-motion completely — content first, always.

10 — Photography

Real trades. Real light.

Photography shows the people XFone works for — never the technology itself. Documentary, not staged; the phone rings while they work, and XFone answers. That's the story every image tells.

Always

UK workshops, vans, sites and forecourts — hands mid-job

Natural light, true blacks, restrained saturation

Honest environments: worn tools, real signage, weather

People too busy to answer the phone — that's the point

Never

Robots, androids, glowing blue AI heads, circuit brains

Stock call centres, headsets, smiling receptionist clichés

Sci-fi gradients, HUD overlays, floating holograms

American trucks, US signage, right-hand traffic

Treatment: shoot or grade toward neutral shadows and controlled highlights; imagery sits on Ink or Paper with the 45° cut as the only permitted mask. The logo never sits directly on photography.

11 — Accessibility

Premium means everyone

WCAG 2.2 AA is the floor, not the target. A brand about answering everyone's calls does not publish surfaces some people can't read.

Pairing	Approx. contrast	Verdict
Ink on Paper	19.5 : 1	✓ All uses
Paper on Ink	19.5 : 1	✓ All uses
Graphite on Paper	7.8 : 1	✓ All text
Signal Ink on Paper	5.2 : 1	✓ Text & links
Signal on Ink	10.9 : 1	✓ Text on dark
Signal on Paper	1.9 : 1	✗ Never text — graphics ≥3 px only
Silver on Paper	2.7 : 1	✗ Large/decorative only, never body

Focus states2 px Signal outline, 2 px offset, on every interactive element. Visible always — no :focus removal, ever.

Never colour aloneLive/confirmed states pair Signal with an icon or label — Signal is reinforcement, not the sole carrier.

Type floorBody never below 14 px; touch targets ≥ 44 px; line length 45–75 characters.

The product's own standardTranscripts and captions ship for every recording — accessibility is a product feature before it is a compliance line.

12 — Governance

One source of truth

This document, the whitepaper, and the asset repository are the entire brand. If an asset contradicts them, the asset is wrong.

Asset	Canonical location
This document	Branding/XFone-Brand-Guidelines.html
Strategy & claims	whitepaper/XFone-Whitepaper.md (+ RESEARCH-NOTES.md for the evidence bar)
Logo	Branding/logo/xfone-logo-{black,white}.{svg,png}
Icons	Branding/icons/*.svg — 22 marks, v1

Namingkebab-case, content-first: xfone-[asset]-[variant].[ext]. No "final", no "v2-NEW", no copies of copies.

ChangesThe system evolves by editing this document first, then assets — never the reverse. Every edition is numbered.

StatisticsNo number ships in any asset unless it meets the whitepaper §13 evidence bar. Marketing inherits the research discipline.

The testBefore shipping any asset ask: is it true, is it quiet, is it fast, would a plumber trust it? Four yeses or it doesn't ship.