Skip to content
01Brand guide

How Karasu looks and sounds.

For anyone writing, designing or presenting for Karasu Intelligence. Everything here is counted in the ten strokes of 烏.

Karasu, crow. Written as 鳥, bird, without the eye.
02

The name

"Karasu Intelligence"The full name: in the logo, at first mention on any page, in signatures and on contracts. Never KI or Karasu AI.
"Karasu", "the Karasu team"Everywhere after the first mention, and how clients refer to us. The aim is a reference like "the Karasu team sorted our bordereaux".
The storyTold on the About page, in a first post, or when someone asks. Never in a headline, and never as a puzzle. Lead with problem-solving and tool use. No carrion, omens or murders of crows, and no bird imagery anywhere.
03

The mark

Karasu Intelligence
Karasu Intelligence

烏 in Noto Sans JP Bold, a hairline in the type colour, then Karasu in Source Sans 3 Bold and Intelligence in Regular, all on one line. The change in weight lets "Karasu" carry the name. On colour, the whole mark goes to Bone.

04

Colour

Bone
#EDE7DBThe page. Never white.
Prussian
#1C3248Bands, the primary button, the mark on colour.
Mist
#DDE3E8Document cards and extracts.
Ink
#182330Type.
Brass
#9C7A2EThe current stroke and annotations only. Never small text.

Use one accent at a time. Brass marks the current stroke, and nothing else on the page should compete with it.

05

Type

64px · Source Serif 4Trusted data first.
36px · Source Serif 445 days → 20 days
24px · Source Serif 4Bordereaux turnaround
17px · Source Sans 3Running text, one idea per paragraph, about 68 characters a line.
14px · Source Sans 3Captions, labels and notes

Source Serif 4 for headlines and figures, Source Sans 3 for everything else. Five sizes and no others. Both are free under the SIL Open Font License.

06

Counting in strokes

Sections, steps and stages are numbered 01 to 10, never past ten.

01
04
10

Each number carries a bar of ten strokes. Done strokes are Ink, the current one is Brass, the rest are still to come. Layouts sit on a ten-column grid.

07

Voice

PlainShort sentences, everyday words, one idea per paragraph.
NumerateSay the number and the unit. Prefer days, records and pounds to adjectives.
No jargonWrite as an underwriter would speak, not as a data team would.
No tool or model namesPlatforms and AI models appear only on the page for the CTO and in technical proposals. Say AI plainly.
No borrowed linesNever "unlock", "leverage", "end-to-end", "AI-powered", "agentic" or anything every consultancy says.
We write

Your bordereaux reach capacity providers 45 days after period end. Here's what's in the way.

We don't write

We leverage cutting-edge AI to unlock the value in your data.

08

Imagery

Imagery is annotation.

No illustrations, stock photos or mock dashboards. Use real, anonymised material, marked up in Brass the way it was diagnosed: brackets, circles and short notes. Anything not yet measured is labelled illustrative.