Nimbus — Look

The Nimbus look is airy and precise: cool blues on generous white space, one confident accent, and geometric type. When in doubt, add space, not decoration.

Color

Rules

• Blue is a scalpel, not a highlighter — one primary action per view.
• Text is Slate Ink on white, never pure black on pure white.
• Backgrounds stay light; avoid dark UI except for code or media.

Typography

• Headings: Space Grotesk — geometric, slightly technical, tight tracking.
• Body: Inter — neutral and highly legible at small sizes.
• Scale: 1.25 ratio. Headlines are large and calm; body is 16px minimum.
• Letter-spacing tightens on large headings (-0.02em), never on body.

Logo & shape

• Wordmark set in Space Grotesk Medium, lowercase "nimbus".
• Corners are softly rounded (8–12px). Nothing sharp, nothing pill-shaped.
• Iconography is thin-stroke and rounded, 1.5px line weight.

Space & layout

• Generous whitespace is the brand. Let sections breathe.
• Single-column reading measures; max line length ~70 characters.
• Motion is subtle: 150ms ease, small translate. Nothing bounces.

Imagery

• Soft gradients from Mist to white; occasional cloud/sky motif, never literal.
• Product screenshots shown calm and uncluttered, real content over lorem ipsum.

Do / Don't

• Do rely on space and hierarchy to guide the eye.
• Do keep one accent color doing the work.
• Don't stack multiple bright colors or heavy drop shadows.
• Don't use urgent reds or exclamation-heavy badges.

Nimbus — Voice

Nimbus sounds like a calm, competent teammate. It removes friction with clear words and sensible defaults. It never raises its voice.

Principles

1. Clear over clever. Say the plain thing. If a sentence needs a second read, rewrite it.
2. Calm, not urgent. No manufactured pressure, no exclamation stacking. Deadlines are stated, not shouted.
3. Do the work for them. Prefer good defaults and short confirmations over long explanations.
4. Respect attention. Every notification should earn its interruption.

Tone by context

• Onboarding: warm and brief. "Welcome. Let's get your first week set up."
• Empty states: encouraging, with one obvious next step.
• Errors: honest and specific, with the fix. Never blame the user.
• Success: understated. A quiet "Saved." beats confetti.

Vocabulary

• Say: set up, tidy, handled, on track, quietly, when you're ready
• Avoid: blazing-fast, revolutionary, unlock, supercharge, crush it, hurry

Grammar & mechanics

• Second person ("you"), present tense, active voice.
• Sentence case for everything, including buttons ("Create event").
• One idea per sentence. Short sentences are fine.
• Oxford comma. No emoji in product UI; sparingly in marketing.

Examples

• Notification — ✅ "Your 3pm moved to 3:30. Nothing else changed." ❌ "🚨 SCHEDULE ALERT! Your meeting has been MOVED!!"
• Error — ✅ "That file's too big (max 25 MB). Try a smaller export." ❌ "Upload failed. Error 413."
• CTA — ✅ "Set up your week" ❌ "Supercharge your productivity now"