Brand
A steady hand on the wheel.
Brand guidelines · The Understanding Company and Vueni
The marks, colors, type, and voice we use everywhere, and the reasons behind them.
01Why Steamboat Willie
We chose the Mickey who was steering.
In the 1928 short “Steamboat Willie,” one of the first films Mickey Mouse appeared in, he stands at the wheel of a river steamboat, whistling as he steers. That is the Mickey on our coin.
We chose him for that moment. Our work is to help people steer toward a healthy and wealthy future, one ordinary decision at a time. Vueni reads the context around your money and offers a steady hand on the wheel. You still choose where the boat goes.
The coin is polished silver, never gold. Money should feel calm and clear, not flashy.
02Marks
Two marks, one family.
The silver coin stands for The Understanding Company. The V stands for Vueni, the product we build. Use the files as supplied.
The Understanding Company
A polished silver coin carrying Mickey as drawn in 1928. For the company, the site, favicons, and share cards.
Vueni
A V whose right stroke carries a single calm pulse. For the product, the card, and the app.
Clear space
Leave a quarter of the coin’s width empty on every side, and half the V’s height around the V. No text, edges, or other marks enter that space.
Minimum size
Keep the coin at 24px or larger in layouts; below that its face fills in. Favicons are the one exception. The V stays crisp down to 16px.
Use the files as supplied.
Don’t redraw, recolor, outline, stretch, or rotate the coin or the V.
Silver coin, one-color V.
The coin is never gold, champagne, or flattened to one color. The V is ink on light and bone on dark.
Keep Disney out of it.
Never set the coin beside Disney names, characters, logos, or film stills, or anywhere that suggests Disney made or endorses our work.
03Color
Quiet neutrals, one accent.
Apple neutrals carry almost everything. Indigo is the only accent, and it marks one thing at a time: the selected tab, Calm Mode, the line that matters in a chart. Select a swatch to copy its hex.
The Understanding Company
A black ground and Apple neutrals. Text is bone or ash; surfaces are smoked glass.
Coin silver
Only inside the mark. The coin is silver, never gold or champagne.
Vueni
The product pages: a white canvas, soft panels, and ink type.
Vueni app
iOS 26 neutrals with one accent. Every screenshot uses the light appearance.
Semantic, in the app
Status only, never decoration. Each one means the same thing on every screen.
Research and data
Charts in the web edition of the paper, on a near-black ground.
Never gold or champagne. Not in the marks, the app, the charts, or the photography grade. The contrast figure on each swatch is for black or white text, whichever reads better.
04Type
Two typefaces, set with care.
Switzer does the talking. Fragment Mono labels, counts, and cites. Everything is set in sentence case.
Switzer
Neo-grotesk
- UnderstandingLight 300·Display and section titles
- UnderstandingRegular 400·Body, leads, and row titles
- UnderstandingMedium 500·Buttons and research headings
Switzer by Indian Type Foundry. Free from Fontshare under the ITF Free Font License.
Fragment Mono
Monospace
- RECEIPTS · YOUR INBOXRegular 400·Eyebrows, uppercase at 0.12em
- $41.20 · 11:48 PMRegular 400·Data labels, figures, footnotes
Fragment Mono by Wei Huang and URW Design Studio. Free from Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
The scale
Display
Switzer Light 300 · 96/96 · −0.035em
Page titles and closing lines. Chapter openers run larger, up to 112/110.
Money that understands why you spend.
Section title
Switzer Light 300 · 56/59 · −0.032em
The headline that opens a section.
Understanding is invite-only.
Row title
Switzer Regular 400 · 24/30 · −0.012em
Numbered rows, cards, and feature names.
Protect privacy to support trust.
Lead
Switzer Regular 400 · 22/32 · −0.01em · Ash
The paragraph under a title.
Vueni reads the context around your money and adjusts your card before a spiral starts.
Body
Switzer Regular 400 · 17/28 · −0.01em
Reading text, in a column no wider than 680px.
Receipts find their transactions, packages report back to your balance, and the signals from your body quietly shape your card, so a hard week never turns into a hard month.
Caption
Switzer Regular 400 · 14/21 · Ash
Fine print, figure notes, and helper text.
Vueni membership is invite-only. Join the waitlist and we’ll reach out when there’s room.
Eyebrow
Fragment Mono 400 · 11/16.5 · 0.12em · Uppercase
Section labels, data labels, and captions on images.
Money that understands why you spend
Research articles
A reading scale for long text: a 64/64 title, 30/40 section headings at Medium 500 with 64px above and 24px below, 22/28 subheads, and 17/28 body in a 680px column. On phones, titles drop to 34 and section headings to 24.
In the app
Screens use the device’s own system font, SF Pro, so they read as iOS. Money is always set in tabular figures.
In Framer
Text styles live under TUC Money/ and Vueni/, for example TUC Money/Mono for eyebrows and TUC Money/Fine Print for disclosures.
05Components
Liquid Glass, used sparingly.
Surfaces follow Apple’s iOS 26 material. Frosted white glass carries the one primary action, and smoked glass holds navigation and panels.
On the company site
On Vueni pages
- Height
- 48px on the page, 40px in the nav
- Shape
- A full pill, never a rounded rectangle
- Label
- Switzer Medium 15px (14px in the nav), sentence case
- Press
- Scales to 0.97 in 160ms
Navigation
The nav floats over everything as smoked glass: a 45% graphite tint, a 24px blur, and a one-pixel highlight on the top edge. The coin sits on an 18px-radius tile at the center.
Years and Dollars
Panels and cards
Smoked glass for stages on dark pages, a hairline card for research, and the soft hatched panel on Vueni pages.
- Corners
- Pills are fully round. Cards take 20 to 24px, phone stages 32px, and the coin tile 18px.
- Motion
- Ease out expo, cubic-bezier(0.16, 1, 0.3, 1). Sections fade in and rise 24px. With reduced motion, they only fade.
- Layout
- A 1200px page with 24px gutters on phones. Reading columns stop at 680px.
06Imagery
Real light, real people.
Photographs of real places at first light, app screens as they really look, and people in their true color.
Photography · dawn mistPhotography
Mist, still water, and first light, with one cool, neutral grade. The moment a hard night gives way to a clear head.
App screens
The light iOS 26 appearance on every page, in a natural titanium frame. Indigo is the only accent inside the app.
Damon Kirk
Steven FarrarPeople
The founders, Damon and Steven, as photographed for the company page. People stay in their original color, never black and white.
The Understanding Company · Detroit
Money that understands why you spend
Vueni connects receipts, shipments, and health signals to every purchase, and helps before stress spending starts.
Share cards
Every page gets a 1200 × 630 card: black ground, mono eyebrow, Switzer Light title, the coin, and a hairline band shaped by the page’s own seed.
Photograph real places.
No stock handshakes, piles of cash, or vector illustrations of money.
Show the app as it is.
Light appearance, real layouts, and the demo member’s numbers. No mock dashboards.
Keep people in color.
No monochrome or duotone treatments on portraits.
07Voice and naming
Understanding, not judgment.
We write like a calm friend who is good with money: plain, specific, and kind.
- 01
Describe, don’t judge.
Say what happened and why it might have happened. Never scold, shame, or moralize about spending.
- 02
Plain and concrete.
Short sentences, real numbers, everyday words. “A softer limit until 8 AM,” not “optimized spend controls.”
- 03
Sentence case, always.
Headings, buttons, and navigation: “Join the waitlist,” not “Join The Waitlist.”
- 04
Honest about evidence.
Product effects are planning assumptions until we measure them. We never claim Vueni closes the wealth gap.
- 05
Clean punctuation.
No em dashes in interface copy. En dashes only in ranges and in “Black–White.”
Names
- The Understanding Company
- Spell it out first, then TUC.
- Vueni
- The product: card, account, and app.
- Calm Mode
- A softer card for hard nights. Both words capitalized.
- Smart Nudges
- Our notifications. A Smart Nudge suggests; the member decides.
- Pots
- Savings goals with a purpose.
- Values mode
- Lowercase “mode.” Never named after one religion: it serves people of any faith or none.
Say this, not that
Say: Sunday nights have been hard lately.
Not: You overspent again.
Say: A softer limit until 8 AM
Not: Optimized spend controls
Say: Vueni may help members build savings. We will measure it.
Not: Vueni closes the wealth gap.
Say: Join the waitlist
Not: Join The Waitlist
Words we leave out
- delve
- crucial
- robust
- comprehensive
- nuanced
- seamless
- leverage