Corporate identity

How the African Angels Community identity is used.

Sections 1 to 6 are the identity itself and are not open to interpretation. Sections 7 to 10 show how it is applied. Where a medium is not covered, follow the nearest example and the rules in 1 to 6.

Version  3 Issued  5 October 2026 Status  Adopted Supersedes  All previous usage
Download PDF A4

ContentsWhat is here

1.0 The brandName, descriptor, tagline

One name, one descriptor, one tagline.

African Angels Community brings together the most experienced and active individual investors on the continent.

Naming

The full name is African Angels Community. The short form is AAC and it may be used freely in body copy once the full name has appeared in the same document. The organisation takes a singular verb: African Angels Community is, not are.

Never written

AAC Community  ·  African Angel Community  ·  the AAC  ·  A.A.C.  ·  AACommunity

Descriptor

In the lockup the words AFRICAN ANGELS COMMUNITY sit beneath the AAC wordmark as a fixed part of the artwork. They are not a strapline and are never reworded, translated or reset.

Legal name

Use the registered entity name, not the brand name, on contracts and statutory filings.

Tagline

Sentence case. The wording is fixed - do not paraphrase, shorten, add "Africa's" or turn it into a headline. Use it once per document, on the cover or opening slide, through the tagline lockup.

2.0 The symbolAnatomy and clear space

An open ring holding the continent. One angel beside it.

RING CONTINENT DISC - 1d
The ring

An open circle in Oxblood. It reads as a closed-membership community rather than an open marketplace. It is drawn as a stroke, never filled. Stroke is 4.3 units on a 100-unit ring diameter and scales with the artwork.

The continent

Africa, sitting inside the ring rather than over it. Never recoloured, never cropped by the ring, never replaced with a different projection or outline.

The disc

The solid form at upper right, the individual angel. It sits outside the ring. Its diameter - 42.9 units, written 1d - is the unit that governs clear space throughout.

The three elements are one piece of artwork. Do not separate the disc from the ring, move it to another corner, add further discs or scale any element independently of the others.

Clear space and minimum size

Clear space

At least 1d stays clear on all four sides, measured from the outermost edge of the artwork. Nothing sets inside that margin - no text, no rule, no image edge, no page trim, no adjacent partner mark. Where space is tight, reduce the lockup rather than the clear space.

Full lockup

Never below 120 px on screen or 32 mm in print. The descriptor stops being legible first.

Symbol alone

Never below 16 px or 5 mm. Below 24 px the continent detail closes up - use the supplied favicon rather than scaling the lockup down.

Signage

AAC's own working rule: lockup width in mm at least 30 × viewing distance in metres. 3 m needs 90 mm; 10 m needs 300 mm; 25 m needs 750 mm.

Partner marks

Separate by at least 2d and align on cap height, not on bounding box.

Standalone symbol

Permitted only after the full name has been established on the page - favicons, watermarks, loading states, avatars, app tiles, badges.

3.0 LockupsEight approved forms

The horizontal lockup is the default.

Use horizontal unless the space or the ground forces something else. Every form ships as vector artwork; nothing here is rebuilt by hand.

horizontal
Primary. Site headers, deck covers, letterheads, email signatures.
392 × 104  ·  alias: primary
horizontal-reversed
On Ink or Oxblood grounds. The descriptor turns Paper, never Oxblood.
392 × 104  ·  alias: reversed
horizontal-mono-ink
Single-colour work - laser print, embroidery, engraving, stamps.
392 × 104  ·  alias: mono
stacked
Square-ish spaces - banners, sponsor walls, lecterns, name badges.
260 × 200
stacked-reversed
The stacked form on dark grounds.
260 × 200
tagline
Lockup with the positioning line. Covers and opening slides, once per document.
700 × 88
mark  ·  avatar-circle  ·  app-tile
Symbol alone and the two pre-cropped icon forms. Do not crop your own.
160 × 109  ·  256 × 256  ·  256 × 256

Choosing a lockup

The ground decides the variant. The space decides the orientation.

GroundUseWhy
Paper or any near-whitehorizontal / stackedFull colour. Oxblood symbol and descriptor, Ink wordmark.
Ink…-reversedEverything reverses to Paper. Oxblood on Ink is 1.62:1 and illegible.
Oxblood…-reversedAs above. Never set the Oxblood symbol on an Oxblood ground.
Light tint or pale photographhorizontal / stackedOnly where the area behind the artwork holds above 85% lightness and carries no detail.
Mid-tone or busy photograph…-reversed on a panelDarken the area behind the mark to Ink at 80% or more, then reverse out. Never place the colour mark straight onto a photograph.
One-colour processhorizontal-mono-inkEngraving, embroidery, foil, rubber stamp, single-plate print.

Print handoff. The type in every SVG is live Outfit. Outline it (Illustrator: Type → Create Outlines) before it goes to a printer. Otherwise the wordmark reflows on any machine without the font.

4.0 MisuseNine things that break it

Each example below has been produced deliberately.

None of them is acceptable in any medium, at any size, for any audience.

01

Do not stretch or condense. Scale proportionally only.

02

Do not compress vertically.

03

Do not rotate or set on an angle.

04

Do not recolour. Oxblood, Ink and Paper only.

05

Do not add shadows, glows, bevels or gradients.

06

Do not place the colour lockup on a mid-tone or busy ground.

07

Do not set Oxblood on Oxblood or on Ink.

08
AAC

Do not retype the wordmark or substitute another typeface.

09

Do not box, outline or enclose the lockup.

Also prohibited, without illustration: separating the disc from the ring or moving it; filling the ring; replacing the continent outline; adding a strapline, division name or year inside the artwork; animating the elements independently; applying transparency below 100%; using a screenshot of a mark in place of the supplied vector.

5.0 ColourThree and nothing else

Three colours and nothing else.

Oxblood#7A2230rgb(122, 34, 48) The single accent. Symbol, descriptor, links, emphasis rules, key figures, section markers.
Ink#241F20rgb(36, 31, 32) Wordmark and body text on light. Also the dark ground for reversed lockups, covers and code panels.
Paper#FFFEFCrgb(255, 254, 252) The default ground. Also the reversed-out colour on Ink and Oxblood.
Supporting tokenHexUse
--aac-rule#E2DED8Hairline rules, table borders, dividers, input outlines
--aac-muted#4A4744Secondary text, captions, the tagline, long body copy
Proportion

Roughly 70% Paper, 22% Ink, 8% Oxblood across a document or a screen. Oxblood is an accent - when it starts covering large areas it stops signalling anything.

No ramp

There is no tint or shade scale and no secondary palette. If a chart needs more than three values, vary Oxblood's opacity over Paper - 100 / 70 / 45 / 25% - rather than introducing a new hue.

Semantic colour

Where an interface must show status, use conventional green, amber and red at low saturation. Semantic colour is not part of the brand palette and never replaces Oxblood as the accent.

Print

No spot or process match has been specified. Convert from the RGB values in a colour-managed workflow and proof before a production run. Do not let a printer improvise a Pantone equivalent.

Grounds and contrast

Every combination below has been measured.

ForegroundGroundRatioVerdict
InkPaper16.13 : 1AAA  the default pairing for body copy
PaperInk16.13 : 1AAA  reversed lockups, covers, dividers
OxbloodPaper9.93 : 1AAA  descriptor, links, accents at any size
PaperOxblood9.93 : 1AAA  reversed out of an Oxblood panel or button
MutedPaper9.15 : 1AAA  captions and secondary copy
OxbloodInk1.62 : 1Fails  never use this pairing
Paper ground - default

Across the continent

Members meet through a standing programme of working sessions, online and in person.

Read more
Ink ground - covers, dividers

Across the continent

Members meet through a standing programme of working sessions, online and in person.

Read more
Oxblood ground - emphasis only

Across the continent

Members meet through a standing programme of working sessions, online and in person.

Read more

On an Ink or Oxblood ground the accent role passes to Paper: an Oxblood link on Ink is unreadable. Carry hierarchy with weight, tracking and rules rather than reaching for a lighter tint of Oxblood.

6.0 TypographyOutfit, at three weights

Outfit, at three weights.

Light 300Outfit
Regular 400Outfit
Semibold 600Outfit

AaBbCcDdEeFfGg HhIiJjKkLlMm 0123456789 R $ % & @

Outfit is the only typeface in the identity. Three weights do all the work: 300 for display and long-form calm, 400 for body and interface, 600 for the wordmark, headings and anything that must be found by scanning. Weights 100, 200, 500, 700, 800 and 900 exist in the family but are not part of this identity.

Fallback

Declare the stack as "Outfit", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif. Where Outfit cannot be installed, fall back to Helvetica or Arial and keep the weights and the tracking. Do not substitute a different geometric or display face to get closer - a clean fallback reads better than a near-miss.

Licence

Outfit is an open-source typeface served by Google Fonts. It may be embedded in documents, installed on machines and served from AAC's own domain without a licence fee.

Web

family=Outfit:wght@300;400;600 - request only the three weights so the page stays light.

Numerals

Group thousands with a space, never a comma: 4 000 000, not 4,000,000. Use a non-breaking space so a figure never splits across lines. Tabular figures wherever numbers line up in columns.

Hierarchy

Display
300  ·  −0.025em  ·  1.05
Covers, opening slides, hero statements
Heading
600  ·  −0.018em  ·  1.2
Section titles, slide headings
Subheading
600  ·  +0.09em  ·  uppercase
Sub-sections, table group labels
A light-weight lead paragraph that opens a section.
300  ·  1.5  ·  muted
One per section, never two in a row
Body copy. Members meet through a standing programme of working sessions, online and in person.
400  ·  1.6  ·  Ink or Muted
Target 60 to 70 characters per line
Descriptor / eyebrow
400  ·  +0.24em  ·  uppercase  ·  Oxblood
Section markers and the lockup descriptor
Caption, footnote, source line and folio
300  ·  1.4  ·  faint
Never below 7 pt in print
Alignment

Everything ranges left. No centred body copy, no justified setting, no hyphenation.

Emphasis

Weight 600 or Oxblood - not italic, not underline, not all-caps mid-sentence. Underline is reserved for links.

Measure

Keep running text to 60 to 70 characters. Two columns before a line gets longer than that.

Language

UK English throughout. Dates as 6 September 2026. Minimum 7 pt in print, 12 px body and 11 px captions on screen.

7.0 ApplicationsStationery and documents

Sections 7 to 10 are applications, not the identity.

Where a medium is not covered here, follow the nearest example and the rules in sections 1 to 6. Contact details that appear on stationery are set centrally and are not reproduced on this page.

Stationery

Letterhead

A4, 210 × 297 mm. Horizontal lockup 46 mm wide, 20 mm from the left trim and 18 mm from the top. Margins 20 / 20 / 18 / 16 mm, first baseline 62 mm from the top. Body Outfit 400 at 10.5 pt / 1.55, ranged left. Footer: a 0.4 pt Oxblood rule 20 mm from the bottom trim with the contact line beneath in Outfit 300 at 7 pt. Continuation sheets carry the symbol only, 14 mm wide. Stock 120 gsm uncoated.

Business card

90 × 50 mm, 400 gsm uncoated, square corners, 3 mm bleed and 5 mm safe area. Front: lockup 40 mm wide at 8 mm from left and top; name Outfit 600 at 9 pt; role Outfit 400 at 7 pt, +0.14em, uppercase, Oxblood. Reverse: Oxblood flood with the reversed symbol 24 mm wide, optically centred, no text. Never rounded corners, spot UV over the mark, foiling in a non-brand colour or a second language on the same face.

Compliment slip

DL, 210 × 99 mm. Lockup 46 mm wide at 12 mm margins. "With compliments" in Outfit 300 at 14 pt, Muted. Footer rule and contact line as the letterhead.

Email signature

Plain HTML, maximum 420 px wide so it does not wrap on mobile. One image only - the lockup as a PNG at 2× served at 150 px, with explicit width and height and alt text reading "African Angels Community", since many clients block images and the block must still read without it. Name 15 px / 600, role 12 px / 400 Oxblood, contact 11 px / 300 Muted, disclaimer 9 px / 300. A 1 px #E2DED8 rule above the contact block. Short form on replies. No quotes, seasonal graphics, environmental footers, vCards or tracking pixels. The disclaimer wording is set centrally and is not edited locally.

Presentations

Four masters at 1920 × 1080, 16:9 only, 96 px margins on all four sides.

The masters

1 Title, Ink ground, reversed lockup. 2 Section divider, Oxblood ground. 3 Content, Paper ground. 4 Data, one hue at four opacities.

Type

Title 72 px / 300. Slide heading 40 px / 600. Body 22 px / 400. Eyebrow 14 px / 400, +0.22em, uppercase, Oxblood. Footnote 12 px / 300.

Furniture

Symbol 26 px tall bottom right on every content slide with the slide number beside it. Nothing else recurs.

Charts

One hue. Oxblood at 100 / 72 / 46 / 26% opacity, in that order, with a 0.5 px #E2DED8 baseline and tabular figures.

Restraint

No transitions beyond a cut, no drop shadows, no icon sets, no stock photography of handshakes or skylines.

Export

PDF for circulation, with the type outlined or embedded. Never send the working file outside AAC.

Reports and documents

Format

A4 portrait. Margins 22 mm left and right, 20 mm top and bottom. Body Outfit 400 at 10.5 pt / 1.55, one column, ranged left.

Cover

Ink flood, reversed lockup 52 mm wide at 20 mm from left and top, title Outfit 200 / 300 at 28 to 34 pt in Paper, date and status in mono at 7 pt.

Section heads

Oxblood eyebrow, +0.2em, uppercase, 7 pt. Title Outfit 600 at 18 pt with a 0.5 pt Oxblood rule 22 mm wide beneath.

Note boxes

Ground #F6F3EF with a 1.5 mm Oxblood rule on the left edge. No border, no radius.

Tables

0.5 pt #E2DED8 horizontal rules only - no vertical rules, no fills, no banding. Figures tabular and right-ranged.

Folio

Rule 20 mm from the bottom, document name left and page number right, both mono at 7 pt.

9.0 Digital and socialWeb, icons, interface

Website, icons and interface.

Header

72 px tall, Paper ground, 1 px #E2DED8 rule beneath, lockup 172 px wide.

Buttons

Primary: Oxblood ground, Paper label, Outfit 500, 2 px radius, 14 px vertical padding. Secondary: 1 px Oxblood outline, Oxblood label, transparent ground.

Links

Oxblood with a 1 px underline in the same colour, hovering to Ink. Never blue, never underline-on-hover-only.

Focus

2 px Oxblood outline at 3 px offset on every interactive element. Never remove the focus ring.

Fields

1 px #E2DED8 outline, Paper ground, 2 px radius. Oxblood outline on focus. Errors are stated in words, not colour alone.

Icons

Use aac-mark-oxblood.svg as the SVG favicon with a 32 × 32 PNG fallback. Use aac-app-tile.svg at 180 × 180 for apple-touch-icon. Do not generate icons by screenshotting the lockup.

Dark interface

Ink is the ground and the accent role passes to Paper. Oxblood text on Ink fails contrast.

Social

PlatformAssetPixelsArtwork
LinkedIn, companyPage logo300 × 300avatar-circle
LinkedIn, companyPage cover1128 × 191horizontal-reversed on Ink
LinkedIn, personalBackground banner1584 × 396tagline, reversed
XProfile, header400 × 400  ·  1500 × 500avatar-circle, reversed on Ink
InstagramProfile, post, story320²  ·  1080²  ·  1080 × 1920avatar-circle, stacked
FacebookProfile, cover170 × 170  ·  820 × 312avatar-circle, reversed on Ink
YouTubeChannel art, safe area 1546 × 4232560 × 1440horizontal-reversed, centred
Margin

96 px on a 1080 px canvas, scaled proportionally at other sizes. The symbol sits in a consistent corner across a series.

One idea per post

Headline in Outfit 300 on dark, 600 on light. No more than three lines.

Imagery

No stock imagery, no gradients, no emoji in graphics. Photography, where used, is documentary - real people at real AAC events, never staged business imagery.

Sign-off

The web address set in mono caps. No social icons unless AAC has an active account on that platform.

10.0 SignageBanners, backdrops, events

Pull-up banners, backdrops and the small things.

Pull-up banner

850 × 2000 mm, visible area 850 × 1900 mm - nothing critical sits in the bottom 100 mm, because the cassette eats it. stacked lockup 320 mm wide, centred, top of artwork 260 mm from the top edge. Oxblood base band 850 × 180 mm with the web address reversed out in mono at 34 pt, +0.16em.

Backdrop

Ink ground, alternating the reversed symbol and the reversed horizontal lockup on a staggered grid - 400 mm horizontal pitch, 300 mm vertical, rows offset by half a pitch.

Name badge

90 × 55 mm landscape in a clear holder. Lockup 34 mm wide top-left, name Outfit 600 at 16 pt, role in Oxblood uppercase at 8 pt, organisation Outfit 300 at 7.5 pt. A 5 mm Oxblood band at the foot carries any category - Member, Founder, Guest - reversed out.

Lectern and tables

Lectern panel 400 × 300 mm with the stacked lockup 220 mm wide. Table talkers and place cards use the symbol only at 14 mm, top-centred, names in Outfit 600 at 14 pt.

Lanyards and merchandise

Plain Ink or Oxblood webbing; if printed, the wordmark repeats in Paper at 10 mm cap height. Merchandise is single-colour only - horizontal-mono-ink or reversed. Embroidery below 40 mm wide uses the symbol alone, since the descriptor will not hold a stitch.

Ground rule

Event material is Paper or Ink. Oxblood is used as a band, a rule or a panel - not as the ground for a whole surface, other than a business-card reverse.

Production

Supply large-format artwork at 1:10 with type outlined, 25 mm bleed and colours converted in a proofed profile. Never send RGB PNGs to a large-format printer.

11.0 Asset packageWhat ships

Everything ships in aac-brand/.

Download this page as a PDF A4

The same guidelines as this page, for reading offline or sharing.

FileContents
README.mdInstall, variant table, usage notes
aac-brand.cssColour and type custom properties
aac-logo.jsThe <aac-logo> custom element
svg/aac-logo-horizontal.svgPrimary lockup  ·  392 × 104
svg/aac-logo-horizontal-reversed.svgPrimary lockup, reversed
svg/aac-logo-horizontal-mono-ink.svgPrimary lockup, single colour
svg/aac-logo-stacked.svgStacked lockup  ·  260 × 200
svg/aac-logo-stacked-reversed.svgStacked lockup, reversed
svg/aac-logo-tagline.svgLockup with positioning line  ·  700 × 88
svg/aac-mark-oxblood.svgSymbol on light, favicon  ·  160 × 109
svg/aac-mark-reversed.svgSymbol on dark
svg/aac-avatar-circle.svgSocial profile  ·  256 × 256
svg/aac-app-tile.svgApp icon  ·  256 × 256

Two lines to install

<script src="aac-brand/aac-logo.js"></script>
<aac-logo variant="horizontal" height="44"></aac-logo>

Give the element height or width - the other dimension follows the artwork. Aliases: primary, reversed, mono.

Without JavaScript

<img src="aac-brand/svg/aac-logo-horizontal.svg"
     alt="African Angels Community" height="44">
Tokens

--aac-oxblood --aac-ink --aac-paper --aac-rule --aac-muted --aac-font

Office

Google Slides and Keynote place the SVGs directly. PowerPoint and Word prefer PNG - export at 1×, 2× and 3× from the SVG rather than screenshotting a slide.

Vector editors

File → Place, then outline the type before any print handoff.

Never

Trace, redraw, re-export from a screenshot or reconstruct a mark from this page.

12.0 GovernanceWho decides

Who decides and what happens next.

Sections 1 to 6 are the identity and are not open to local interpretation. Sections 7 to 10 are applications: where a medium is not covered, follow the nearest example and the rules in 1 to 6.

VersionDateChange
16 September 2026Identity adopted
220 September 2026Contact details confirmed
35 October 2026Thousands grouped with spaces, not commas
Approvals

Anything applying the identity outside these examples is approved before production - new formats, co-branded material, merchandise, signage, paid media.

Third parties

Printers, agencies, event organisers and partners are sent the manual and the aac-brand/ package together. Neither is issued without the other.

Proofs

Anything printed at scale is checked against the manual before the run.

Review

Annually or on any change to the entity name, the tagline or the asset package.

Open items

Print colour

No spot or process match has been specified. If AAC adopts a printed programme, commission a proofed conversion once and add it to section 5.0.

Photography

The direction is stated but no library exists. Build one from real AAC events rather than licensing stock.

Existing material

Material produced before this manual is not yet aligned to it.

Identity questions go to African Angels Community before anything is produced, not after. Use the contact form on this site.