Brand guidelines
The marks, colors, type, and voice of The Understanding Company and Vueni, and the reasons behind them.
Steamboat Willie
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.
Marks
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 the 1928 Steamboat Willie drawing. 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.
Color
Every page is black. Heat stands for stress and data, light sets the atmosphere behind a section, the neutrals carry text and controls, and indigo marks what you can press. Select any hex to copy it.
83Stress score, out of 100
- Late night+18
- Short sleep+16
- HRV down+16
- Buying fast+10
- Impulse category+10
- Returned here before+8
- Resting heart rate up+5
Data, hottest first
Score bars and charts take the ramp from the hot end. The largest signal is amber, and each smaller one steps cooler, down to blue. Shown with the demo member’s stress score for one late-night purchase.
Light
Three moods of colored light stand behind the phone stages: Steel, Ember, and Violet. Each one falls on black and fades to nothing before it reaches an edge, so it never reads as a box. Section lights use the same palette, with crimson, blue, and amber added on the home page, at low opacity: between about 13% and 22% at the brightest point, always fading out inside their frame.
Steel
A soft slate light, brightest at the center and gone before any edge.
Ember
A low orange glow, brightest at the center and gone before any edge.
Violet
A violet glow, brightest at the center and gone before any edge.
Neutrals, silver, and indigo
Vueni app
The dark appearance, as the site shows it. The stress score ring is one solid color by level, and score bars take the data colors.
Research
Charts in the web edition of the paper, on a near-black ground.
Silver belongs to the coin, and the coin is never gold. Amber appears only as heat, inside the ramp. Text is bone, gray, or ash on black, and all three pass WCAG AA. Indigo marks interaction and never sets body text.
Type
Timeless Serif sets the headlines, with its italic for the accent word. Timeless Sans carries body copy, labels, and buttons. Fragment Mono is kept for hex values, figures, and the tags inside thermal art. Everything else is set in sentence case.
Money that understands why you spend.
Vueni reads the context around your money and adjusts your card before a spiral starts.
Friday, 11:48 PM
- Corner Market
- $41.20
- Pharmacy
- $12.85
- Calm Mode
- On until 8 AM
Timeless Serif
Timeless Sans
Fragment Mono
The scale
Display
Timeless Serif Regular 400 · 86/99 · −0.025em
Page titles and closing lines. Chapter openers run larger, up to 96/110.
Money that understands why you spend.
Section title
Timeless Serif Regular 400 · 56/64 · −0.025em
The headline that opens a section.
Understanding is invite-only.
Row title
Timeless Serif Regular 400 · 24/30 · −0.01em
Numbered rows, cards, and feature names.
Protect privacy to support trust.
Lead
Timeless Sans Regular 400 · 22/33 · −0.01em · Ash
The paragraph under a title.
Vueni reads the context around your money and adjusts your card before a spiral starts.
Body
Timeless Sans 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.
Label
Timeless Sans Regular 400 · 14/21 · Ash
Labels, fine print, and helper text. Always sentence case.
Vueni membership is invite-only. Join the waitlist and we’ll reach out when there’s room.
Long reading. Research articles keep the same faces on a reading scale: serif titles and section headings with generous space above, and Timeless Sans body in a column no wider than 680px.
Components
The header is plain text links, with an underline under the current section, and one solid bone button. App screens stand on lit stages in Steel, Ember, or Violet light.
- 01
Text-link header
Timeless Sans links on black, with a 1px underline under the current section. The coin sits at the center.
- 02
One solid button
Bone fill and ink text in a full pill, one per view. Phones swap the links for “Menu.”
- 03
Lit stage
Phones show the app in its dark appearance, standing in Steel, Ember, or Violet light that falls off toward the edges.
- On the page
- Join the waitlistRead the research →
- In the header
- Join the waitlist
Buttons
One solid bone pill per view, with ink text: 48px and 16px on the page, 36px and 14px in the header. Everything else is a text link.
Imagery
Scenes from the 1928 film, rendered as heat maps and annotated with the signals Vueni reads. App screens in the dark appearance on lit stages, and people in their true color.
Thermal scenes
Each image is one moment from the film, redrawn as heat. The hotter the area, the stronger the signal its tag names.
- 01
Heat follows the ink
The drawing’s own ink becomes heat. Where a signal is strongest, it runs to white-hot.
- 02
Cool outlines
A crisp blue line keeps every shape readable, so the character and the scene read at a glance.
- 03
Box and tag
A thin white box frames the hot spot. Its tag, in mono capitals, names one real signal.
- 04
Orbit and grain
A dashed ellipse circles the subject, and fine grain covers the frame like film stock.
Connect
The galley. Tags read a receipt from Gmail and a shipping label from UPS.
Understand
The deck. Tags read a third order in a day and a matched receipt.
Steady
The steamboat. One tag reads the card limit Vueni set until morning.
Signals in the dark appearance, on Steel light Steel
Home in the dark appearance, on Ember light Ember
Calm Mode in the dark appearance, on Violet light Violet
App screens
The dark appearance in a natural titanium frame, with the demo member’s real numbers. The stress score ring is one solid color by level: amber when high, orange when elevated, blue when calm. Score bars keep the data colors, hottest first. Indigo marks toggles and the selected tab.
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
A share card is 1200 × 630: one light mood on black, the page’s thermal scene fading in from the right, a sentence-case label, a Timeless Serif title, and the coin with the address.
People
The founders, Damon and Steven, as photographed for the company page. People stay in their original color and are never given the thermal treatment.
Tags carry real signals.
A tag names something Vueni actually reads: SLEEP −2H 12M, HRV −18%, RECEIPT · GMAIL, LIMIT $125 · UNTIL 8 AM. No invented metrics or decorative codes.
Keep Willie readable.
Heat sits on the ink and the outline stays crisp, so the character is clear at any size.
The 1928 design only.
Pie-cut eyes, a long snout, no gloves. Later designs of the character stay out of our work.
No original footage.
We never show frames from the film itself. Every image is our own thermal rendering.
One scene per piece.
Each image holds a single moment from the film. Scenes are never collaged together.
Mono capitals stay in the art.
Fragment Mono in capitals appears only in thermal tags. Site labels stay Timeless Sans in sentence case.
Voice
We write like a calm friend who is good with money, in plain words and real numbers.
- 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.
Headings, buttons, labels, and navigation: “Join the waitlist,” not “Join The Waitlist.” Only the mono tags inside thermal art use capitals.
- 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
We also leave out “halal mode” (it’s Values mode), “financial wellness,” “unlock,” and “empower.” Say what the feature does instead.