Brand Book · v0.1
How to render GLOBAÏA faithfully.
A working reference for partners, press, and collaborators. It covers the name, the symbol, the voice, the colours, and the typography that together make GLOBAÏA recognisable across the work we publish.
01
Name
The name brings together two ideas: global and Gaïa — the planetary whole, and the living Earth. It names both an inheritance and a task: to cultivate a planetary awareness commensurate with the world we inhabit.
Always write the name in capitals, with the trema on the second i. The trema is not decoration — it is the seam between the two words that compose it.
- Correct
- GLOBAÏA
- Incorrect
- Globaia · GLOBAIA · Globaïa · Globia
- Pronunciation
- glo · BAY · uh (EN) · glo · ba · YA (FR)
- URLs & filenames only
globaia·globaia.org- Legal form
- Non-profit · Swiss Stiftung (in formation)
- Founded
- 2010, by Félix Pharand-Deschênes
02
Mission
GLOBAÏA is a non-profit organisation devoted to cultivating planetary awareness through science and art.
Science offers orientation; art deepens perception. Science helps us know the world more accurately; art helps us experience its meaning more fully. The work translates complexity into imagery that crosses language and culture — because a shared planet demands a shared way of seeing.
The vision is of an inclusive, resilient civilisation capable of coexisting and coevolving with a thriving biosphere. In an age of fragmentation, acceleration, and systemic disruption, learning to perceive Earth more truly may be one of the preconditions for learning to inhabit it more wisely.
03
Voice
Plain, but never thin
Write so a curious sixteen-year-old can follow, and a working scientist still recognises the rigour. No jargon without a gloss; no gloss that flattens the idea.
Specific over abstract
"1.2 million years of climate" beats "a long-running climate record." Numbers, units, and named instruments make the writing trustworthy. Hand-wave nothing.
Earnest, not solemn
The subjects are grave; the writing need not be. Wonder is allowed. Affectation is not. Avoid both newsroom drama and corporate uplift.
Quiet authority
Sources are named, mechanisms are explained, uncertainty is stated. The work earns trust by being checkable, not by being loud.
British spelling, sentence case
Defaults: colour, visualise,
realised. Headings and titles in sentence case.
Em-dashes for asides, set tight — like that.
No italics for emphasis
Italics are reserved for taxonomic names, short titles, and foreign words used in their own right. Emphasis comes from word choice and rhythm.
04
Symbol
The mark is three crescents of one continuous body — a globe implied rather than drawn. It reads, at a glance, as Earth seen obliquely. It also reads as motion: three frames of a rotation, a world in the act of turning.
The 2023 geometric mark is the contemporary expression. Earlier marks — the Blue-Marble logo with its Equator and Polar Circles — remain in use for archival contexts.
Variants
05
Wordmark
The default lockup pairs the cyan symbol with the wordmark in starlight white. It is the preferred mark on dark grounds.
Variants
06
Clearspace & minimum size
Give the mark room to breathe. The protected area is defined as X, the cap-height of the wordmark — or, for the symbol alone, one quarter of its diameter. Nothing else may occupy this margin.
The minimum reproduction size keeps the three crescents legible. Below it, the form collapses and should be replaced by a favicon or monogram.
Minimum sizes
Shown at 1:1. These are the smallest sizes at which the three crescents and the wordmark remain legible.
Symbol · digital
24 px
Symbol · print
10 mm
Wordmark · digital
120 px wide
Wordmark · print
30 mm wide
07
Colour
The system rests on a single accent — a deep, atmospheric cyan — held against the void of pure black. Everything else is a graded light: a starlight scale used for text and headings, and a navy scale used for surfaces. The palette is intentionally narrow so that data visualisation can carry the colour load.
Primary
-
Brand Cyan
#00BFFF--color-accentPrimary brand colour. Links, H1, accents.
-
Void
#000000--color-bgPage background. The cosmos.
Surfaces
-
Deep Space
#080C12--color-darkElevated surfaces
-
Navy
#0A1520--color-navyCards, lower-emphasis surfaces
-
Slate
#151E2C--color-slateBorders, dividers
-
Steel
#3A455A--color-mutedMuted UI chrome
Ink & text
-
Starlight
#E8F0F8--color-headingH4–H6, strong text
-
Halo
#C8DCF0--color-heading-h1Hero headings (when not accent)
-
Cirrus
#B8D0E8--color-heading-h2H2 headings
-
Mist
#A8C4E0--color-heading-h3H3 headings
-
Body
#D4D8DE--color-textDefault body text
-
Quiet
#A3AEB9--color-text-mutedCaptions, metadata
Project accents
Individual interactives may override the brand accent with a thematic colour — a violet for deep time, a lavender for cosmology. These are local overrides, not new brand colours.
-
Holocene
#66AAFF -
Kosmophany
#9C7CFF
08
Typography
Alcyone
Atipo Foundry · Self-hosted · 5 weights
A shared planet demands a shared way of seeing.
Alcyone carries every heading and every paragraph on the site. Set headings in 300 (Light). Set body in 400 (Regular). Use 500 (Medium) for inline emphasis and 700 (Bold) only when an interface element demands it.
Comma Serif
Reserved for editorial set-pieces — mottos, drop caps, long-form pull-quotes. Not for body. Use sparingly: it is the brand's ceremonial voice.
iA Writer Quattro & Duo
Used only inside /thoughts/, the long-form section.
Quattro for prose, Duo for inline code. Both ship MIT and stay
confined to that section.
Monospace fallback
ui-monospace, "SF Mono", Menlo, "Courier New", monospace
— for year displays, coordinate read-outs, and data overlays.
Type scale
Major Second (1.125×) with a 12 px floor. Tokens are defined in
each page's scoped :root block.
| Token | rem | px | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
--type-xs | 0.750 | 12 | Captions, badges, axes (floor) |
--type-sm | 0.844 | 13.5 | Secondary labels, tooltips |
--type-base | 0.950 | 15.2 | Body |
--type-md | 1.069 | 17.1 | Card titles, section labels |
--type-lg | 1.201 | 19.2 | Panel titles |
--type-xl | 1.352 | 21.6 | Section headings |
--type-2xl | 1.521 | 24.3 | Page section titles |
--type-3xl | — | 30–48 | Hero H1 (clamp) |
09
Motto
Cultivating planetary awareness
through science and art.
Set in Alcyone Light, sentence case. Line break before "through" when set on two lines. May be paired with the wordmark below, never above. Never translated as a fixed string into other languages without consultation — the rhythm carries the meaning.
10
Do & don't
Write the name GLOBAÏA in capitals with the trema.
Strip the trema, lowercase the name, or italicise it.
Pair the symbol with the wordmark on first appearance in a piece.
Recolour the mark to match a host brand. Use the supplied variants.
Give the mark its protected clearspace on every surface.
Rotate, skew, distort, outline, or apply effects to the mark.
Credit screenshots as "Image courtesy of GLOBAÏA."
Crop a screenshot in a way that removes the GLOBAÏA name or attribution.
Reach out for embeds, partnerships, and print-resolution stills.
Reupload interactives to third-party platforms. Link to the live page.
11
Downloads
All assets on this page are SVG and ready for vector workflows. For raster exports at specific sizes, AI/PDF master files, or rights-cleared imagery from the interactives, reach out via the contact form.