Jessar — Brand Guidelines

01 · Logo

Jessar, in any room.

The Jessar mark is a custom cursive wordmark. Treat it as a painting, not a typeface — never recreate it in another font, never modify the letterforms. Source files supplied by Jessar; current production file is cropped-logo-medium179x179-2.png on the live site (a higher-resolution / vector version is pending from the client).

Primary · on canvas

Warm-panel · for warm sections

Reverse · on dark · footer + dark sections

Accent · sparingly · campaign use only

Do

Give the logo room to breathe. Maintain a clear-space margin around the mark of at least 1× the logo's height on all sides. The cursive script needs whitespace to read.

Do

Display at minimum 56px height in digital contexts (the live site uses 56–64px in the nav, with a 1.4× transform to compensate for the cropped source padding). For print, minimum 30mm.

Don't

Don't pair the logo with a text wordmark. The cursive mark stands alone — no "JESSAR" wordmark next to it (we tried in v4/v5 and removed it in v6). The mark IS the wordmark.

Don't

Don't recreate, redraw, or substitute the mark. Don't set "Jessar" in Cormorant italic and call it the logo. Don't use a sub-brand's logo where the parent should appear. Logo files always come from Jessar's source.

02 · Colour

A warm canvas, quietly anchored.

The Soft Modern palette is built around three layers: warm canvas neutrals as the base, a terracotta coral accent used sparingly for emphasis and CTAs, and a three-tone sub-brand dot system that codes brand identity without taking over a layout.

Canvas neutrals · the base layer

Canvas

--canvas

#F8F5F0

Default page bg. Light, warm off-white. Sections alternate canvas / canvas-warm down the page.

Canvas-warm

--canvas-warm

#F0E9DC

Section panels, product image backgrounds, atmospheric warmth.

Canvas-deep

--canvas-deep

#E8DFC8

Image placeholders, deeper warm panels, gradient bottoms.

Surface

--surface

#FFFFFF

Pure white. Use rarely — reserved for dialog backgrounds, modal cards, edge cases. Never the page bg.

Hairline

--hairline

#E8E2D6

1px section dividers, card borders. The whole layout system runs on hairlines.

Hairline-deep

--hairline-deep

#D7CFBE

Stronger separators, hover borders, attention without weight.

Type colour · ink hierarchy

Ink

--ink

#1D1C1A

Headlines, buttons, primary text. Near-black with warm undertone.

Ink-soft

--ink-soft

#3F3B33

Body copy, paragraph text. Easier on the eye than full ink for long-form.

Muted

--muted

#6F6A62

Eyebrows, labels, captions, secondary nav. Mono-cap text usually.

Accent · used sparingly

Accent

--accent

#C87A5E

Eyebrows, italic emphasis, hover states, primary CTAs. The signature Soft Modern colour. Limit to ~5 places per page.

Accent-deep

--accent-deep

#A65E45

Hover state for primary CTAs, deeper accent moments.

Accent-light

--accent-light

#F3E8E2

Tinted panels (dealer CTA panel on PDP), tag backgrounds, subtle accent pulls.

03 · Typography

Three faces, doing different jobs.

Cormorant Garamond for display and serif moments. Inter for body, UI, and any text that needs to be skimmed. JetBrains Mono for SKUs, specs, eyebrows, and any label that should feel "data." All three are free Google Fonts — no licensing exposure.

Cormorant Garamond

Weight 300–500

Display only

Letter-spacing -0.01em

Line-height 1.02–1.1

A Canadian story,
in ten brands.

Cormorant Italic

Weight 400

Emphasis only

Always in --accent

See italic rule §4

The kitchen, day in and day out.

Inter

Weight 400 / 500

Body, UI, lede

16–18px standard

Line-height 1.6–1.7

Family-run since 1996, Jessar is the Canadian distributor behind ten housewares brands — from JS Gourmet in the kitchen to Jessar Lighting overhead. One catalogue. Coast to coast.

Inter Eyebrow

Weight 500

13px / uppercase

Letter-spacing 0.06em

Nav, button text

Become a Dealer

JetBrains Mono

Weight 400 / 500

10–12px standard

Letter-spacing 0.10–0.20em

SKUs · labels · eyebrows

In Focus This Season · 0:48

JetBrains Mono · Data

Weight 400

11–14px

No transform

SKU codes, dimensions

SKU 7-99096 · 30CR13 blade · 6 pieces

04 · The italic rule

Use italics like punctuation, not decoration.

Soft Modern's most distinctive typographic signature is the restrained use of Cormorant italic — usually one or two phrases per page, in --accent colour, to do the emotional or narrative work the rest of the type system isn't allowed to do. Get this wrong and the brand reads as decorative; get it right and it reads as considered.

Italic — yes

Section-level storytelling labels ("In focus this season", "Made for")
Brand names in narrative prose — "from JS Gourmet in the kitchen to Jessar Lighting overhead"
Emotional middle lines in story sections, made-for moments, sub-brand taglines
Tagline accents on cards — "The kitchen, day in and day out."
One-word emphasis in a long Cormorant headline — "Find what you're looking for."

Italic — no

Product titles — these are data, not narrative
Navigation labels — nav text is functional, not poetic
Spec table values — SKU, dimensions, materials
CTA text — buttons, "Find a retailer", "Become a dealer"
Body paragraphs at length — italic is a spice, not a base
More than 1–2 phrases per page section — restraint is the position

05 · Sub-brand identity

Three colours do most of the work.

Each Jessar sub-brand gets a coloured dot accent. Used on brand cards, eyebrows, sub-brand mark backgrounds, and anywhere the system needs to signal "this is the brand we're in right now" without taking over the layout. The three core colours map to the three flagship brands; specialty brands borrow from these or use derivative warm earth tones.

Sage

--sage · #7D9078

Kitchen / fresh / organic moments. Default for JS Gourmet (flagship kitchen brand). Also used on featured spotlight eyebrows when the spotlight is a JS Gourmet product.

Dusty Blue

--dusty · #7A8A9C

Quiet / soft / textile / electrical. Default for Beauty Cover (flagship bedroom textiles) and Xtricity (specialty light & power) — the two brands where the dusty register reads correctly.

Terracotta

--terra · #B8755A

Warm / earth / home. Default for JS Maison (flagship furniture & home) and warm-light Jessar Lighting (specialty décor). The connector between the accent palette and the warm canvas tones.

Specialty earth tones (ribbon brands)

For the seven specialty / ribbon brands (Limpus, Cook & Fresca, IBake, Pop Fluff, Veraroma, plus the two specialty assignments above), each gets a warm earth-tone dot in the #9C8A6E to #C09078 range. The dots are smaller (8px vs the flagship 12px) and live in the ribbon-card top-left corner. Don't introduce a new dot colour for a sub-brand without checking against the existing palette — the warmth needs to stay in family.

06 · Components

The same vocabulary, across every page.

Soft Modern is built from a small set of repeating components — brand cards, banners, hairline meta-row beams, image placeholders, warm panels with mix-blend-mode multiply. The PDP, homepage, and brand landing pages all draw from this set. Below, examples of the components in use.

Brand card · 4:5 image + body

Flagship · Kitchen

JS Gourmet

The kitchen, day in and day out.

Promo banner · 16:10

Hairline meta-row beam (PDP)

SKU

7-99096

Set

6 knives + box

Made for

Retail · Gifting

Used on PDPs to anchor product data between the lede and the CTAs. Hairline-bordered, no fill, mono labels, sentence-cased values.

Image placeholder · Shopify-style

Hero · 16:9

Used wherever an image will live. Communicates dimension intent without apologetic copy ("in commission" was banned in v6). Drop in a real image and the layout doesn't shift.

Section rhythm

Sections alternate canvas → canvas-warm → canvas → canvas-warm down the page, full-bleed bg, with content contained at max-width 1480px on the homepage (1280px on guideline / content pages). Every section has a 1px --hairline bottom border for separation. Padding standard: 120–140px top/bottom on desktop, dropping to 80–96px on mobile.

07 · Voice

Distribution work, told plainly.

Jessar's voice is the voice of a family-run Canadian distributor that's been doing this for thirty years. Plain-spoken, confident without bragging, restrained but warm. We talk about the work. We don't pitch ourselves with marketing words.

Position

Premium Canadian distributor.

Not a curator. Not a marketplace. Not a brand house. A distributor — the people who get good housewares onto Canadian shelves, through retailers who care. That's the work; that's the story.

Tone

Restrained, warm, direct.

Plain English, plain French. Short sentences when possible. Warmth comes from specificity (Saint-Eustache, Quebec, ten provinces, thirty years), not adjectives. Confidence comes from facts, not superlatives.

Person

"We" — the family.

First-person plural. The family-run identity is real and on display. Sign closing narratives "The Jessar family" with title "Owners · Distributors · Since 1996." Don't slip into corporate third-person ("Jessar Industries strives to…").

Cadence

Short, then longer.

Marklines work in cadence: "Three brands. Thirty years. Ten provinces. One Canadian distributor — family-run since 1996…" Short bursts establish facts, longer phrases carry the meaning. Mirror this rhythm in the body where possible.

We say

Family-run since 1996
Supplying Canadian retailers from coast to coast
Distribution work — the kind that takes thirty years to build
One catalogue. Coast to coast.
We still answer the phone ourselves
On a first-name basis with most of the people we work with
Housewares worth carrying
Three brands. Ten provinces. Thirty years.

We don't say

Curated / curation — Jessar distributes, doesn't curate
Innovative solutions / cutting-edge — corporate filler
World-class / industry-leading — superlatives without proof
Considered as a brand position — overused, taken
Excellence / passion / commitment — adjectival cliché
Discover as a CTA verb — too marketing-y; use "Browse" or "Visit"
Premium as a self-descriptor — let the design carry it
Issue 01 / Spring '26 — magazine convention; this is a homepage

Jessar — Soft Modern.