The brand book for geerd — a technology company that builds software for the people who run education.
If the software solves complexity, the brand embodies simplicity.
Contents
This document defines how geerd thinks, speaks and looks. It is written for designers, engineers, marketers and partners. Every rule has a reason; when a rule is not here, default to less.
Philosophy
Institutions run on fragmented systems, spreadsheets and repetitive work. geerd turns that into software that is clear, connected and reliable. The brand does the same job visually: it absorbs complexity so the viewer never sees it.
Short sentences. No adjectives we cannot prove. The strategy is written to be repeated by an engineer as easily as by a founder.
Brand essence
Clarity.
Brand promise
We make it simpler.
Mission
Turn the operational complexity of education into simple, reliable software.
Vision
Every institution runs on infrastructure as intelligent as the people inside it.
Positioning
For institutions running on fragmented systems, geerd is the technology company that turns operational complexity into clear, connected software — built by people who understand the work.
One line
geerd builds software that makes educational institutions simpler to run.
Personality
Like a team of very capable people who understand difficult problems and build elegant solutions. Never flashy, childish, bureaucratic, “startup-y”, futuristic or academic.
Values
Brand attributes
Brand story
Behind every institution is a small number of people holding it together: registrars, programme directors, finance teams, administrators. They work with tools that were never designed for them — spreadsheets that break, systems that do not talk to each other, processes that live in someone's head.
geerd was started to build for those people. We study how the work is really done, then build software that makes it clear, connected and dependable. Not a platform for the sake of a platform — solutions to specific, difficult problems, done properly.
Elevator pitch
Universities and schools run on dozens of disconnected systems and manual processes. geerd replaces that friction with precise, connected software — so the people who run institutions can spend their time on the institution, not the admin.
Tagline options
geerd solves problems for education. Not an LMS, not a “school management system”, not a platform. A technology company with a domain.
Territories explored
Positioning statement
geerd is the technology company that turns the operational complexity of educational institutions into clear, connected software.
We compete on the quality of the solution, not the size of the platform. Products come and go; the promise stays: we make it simpler.
How we describe the offer
The existing logo is kept. It is already what the brand needs: geometric, lowercase, quietly distinctive. This chapter formalises how it is used.
Reading the mark
A solid circle held inside an open ring. The ring opens at the top-right with two flat terminals — a system with an entry point, a process that closes. The solid circle is the resolved state. Read together: complexity taken in, a clear result held at the centre.
Wordmark
Four lowercase letters built from the same circle as the symbol; the ‘e’s share the diagonal cut of the ring opening. Always lowercase, always as supplied artwork — never typed.
Refinement (minor)
Brand teal is fixed at #00968F, sampled from the artwork. Recommend a vector master with the symbol-to-wordmark gap set to exactly 0.25× symbol height, and optical alignment of baseline to the ring's lower edge.
Symbol — standalone
The symbol works alone: app icon, favicon, avatar, watermark, slide corner. Use it alone only where “geerd” is already established on the same surface or the context is the product itself.
Clear space & minimum size
x
x
Incorrect usage
Never stretch, recolor, rotate, outline, add shadows or gradients, place on busy imagery, or set the wordmark in a typeface.
White, near-black, cool neutrals and one teal. Teal is a signal, not a paint: it marks the resolved state, the primary action, the brand. Roughly 5% of any surface.
Teal scale
500 for fills and brand. 600 for teal text on white (4.9:1) and hover. 700 for pressed. 50–100 for selected rows and subtle tints only.
Neutral scale · cool, teal-tinted
Neutrals carry a trace of teal so grey never reads as dead. Never use pure #000 or pure grey.
Roles
Semantic · used only for state
Semantic colors appear as text, a 6 px dot or a thin tint — never as a filled block. Charts use neutrals plus one teal; a second series uses Teal 200.
Accessibility
Teal 500 is for buttons, fills and text ≥ 18 px medium. Teal text below that size uses 600. Never convey state by color alone.
Two open-source families, one job each. Outfit for display: geometric, circle-based, the same DNA as the wordmark. Manrope for text and interface: a quieter geometric with open apertures and true tabular numerals.
geerd
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789
Weights 400, 500 (default), 600. Never bold 700+. Always negative tracking at display sizes.
2,048
Enrolment closed for 1,284 students across 32 programmes. 98.7% of transcripts were issued within 24 hours.
Weights 400, 500, 600, 700 (numbers only). font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums on every table and metric.
Type scale
Case. Headlines are sentence case, always. Never all caps except the 11 px mono label. Never title case.
Measure. 45–65 characters for body. Headlines wrap with text-wrap: balance; body with pretty.
Fallbacks. system-ui, sans-serif. Documents: Outfit and Manrope embedded; email: Helvetica Neue / Arial.
Space, alignment, proportion, hierarchy. One 4 px base, one 12-column grid, one radius scale — shared by the website, the products and the documents.
Grid · 12 columns · 24 px gutter
Spacing scale · base 4
Inside components: 4–16. Between components: 16–32. Between blocks: 48–64. Between sections: 96 (product), 128–160 (marketing).
Radius · borders · elevation
Borders are 1 px #DEE3E4; structure comes from lines and space, not shadows. Elevation is reserved for things that actually float: menus, modals, toasts.
The product is the brand's strongest expression. Calm, precise, efficient. Lines instead of cards, hierarchy instead of decoration, one teal action per view.
Buttons
Heights 32 / 36 / 44. One primary per view. Verbs, not nouns: “Issue transcript”, not “Submit”.
Forms & inputs
Notifications
Loading
Empty state
No applications yet
They will appear here as students apply.
Close enrolment for BBA Year 1?
37 incomplete files will be moved to the waiting list. You can reopen enrolment at any time.
Tables. Row height 40. Numbers right-aligned, tabular. Row dividers #EEF1F1, header divider #DEE3E4. Selected row Teal 50. No zebra stripes.
Charts. Neutrals for context, teal for the value that matters. No gradients, no 3D, no legends where a label will do.
Navigation. Left sidebar, flat list, 6–8 items max. Current item is white on the grey rail. Breadcrumb in the header.
Filters. Pill chips; active chip is Teal 100 with Teal 600 text and a count. Filters never hide the total.
One family of devices, all taken from the symbol: the open ring, the resolved dot, the flat terminal. Used one at a time, at scale, with a lot of air. Never as pattern or wallpaper.
Rules. Devices are ink or teal on white / grey, or teal or white on ink. Stroke widths 1.5 (diagram), 8–14 (device). No gradients, no glow, no blur.
Don't. Don't tile the ring. Don't combine devices. Don't draw abstract “network” meshes, hexagons, isometric cubes or circuit boards.
Product screens are graphics. The best illustration of geerd is a real, cropped interface at high resolution on a neutral field.
Circle-based geometry, 1.5 px stroke, round caps — the logo's construction at 24 px. Icons label; they never decorate.
Grid · 24 px · 20 px live area
Core set
Production set: extend from an open-source 24 px / 1.5 stroke library with round caps (e.g. Lucide) and redraw anything that breaks the circle rule. Never mix libraries on one surface.
Editorial, not stock. Real people doing real work in real institutions — shot like a documentary, graded like a product. Photography is optional; when in doubt, use the product instead.
Subjects. People who run institutions, at work. Environments and details. Software on real screens, never composited. No posed groups, no handshakes, no students smiling at laptops.
Treatment. Natural light, neutral grade, slightly lifted blacks, low saturation. No teal tint, no duotone, no filters. Crop tight or very wide; avoid the middle distance.
Composition. Off-centre subject, quiet negative space where type will sit. Photos sit in the grid with 8 px radius; full-bleed only on the website hero and deck section openers.
Motion explains state; it never performs. One easing curve, three durations, and the ring as the only signature movement.
Signature · the ring closes
The contour draws clockwise to 270° — outlined, never filled — then a point at the centre grows until it almost meets the ring, leaving the thin band of the icon. Used for app launch, long-running processes and completion. It is the only branded animation; everything else is functional.
cubic-bezier(0.2, 0.8, 0.2, 1) — everything. Linear only for progress and shimmer.Clear, intelligent, direct, human. We don't argue that technology is revolutionary. We show that we understand the problem and have solved it.
Principles
One headline. One explanation. One product visualisation. One action. Then the problems, one at a time. Whitespace is the layout.
Rhythm. 120–160 px between sections. Each section makes one point and has at most one CTA. The product screenshot is the hero image.
No. No logo walls above the fold, no feature grids with icons, no stock photos of campuses, no floating gradient blobs, no chat widget on page load.
Yes. One ink section per page, real numbers from real customers, engineers' names on the “Talk to us” page.
The same six ingredients — ink, white, teal, Outfit, Manrope, the ring — across every surface.
Sales deck · 16:9 · white slide, one statement, one number pair
Social · 1:1 · ink, one fact, cropped ring
Mobile · 44 px targets, same rules
Card · 85 × 55 mm · the one place teal fills a surface
Conference booth · back wall · ink, logo, one line, one ring — nothing else
In one sentence
Make simplicity feel sophisticated.
Assets to produce next. Vector logo master (SVG/PDF) with the refinements in 03; favicon and app-icon set; Figma library of 07; font licence note (all OFL); deck template; document template.
Questions about this system: brand@geerd.ma
Part one defined what geerd looks like. Part two defines how it moves, what it publishes and how it holds up in a feed — so the system survives a timeline, a product launch and a freelancer who has never met us.
Nothing in part one changes. Chapter 34 lists the eight places part two makes a 1.0 rule sharper, and why.
Written for
Social and marketing designers, motion designers, product designers, freelancers, and the tools any of them point at a brief.
The one test
Does this communicate complexity, resolution, or the product that creates the resolution? If not, remove it.
Part two
15 Brand in motion 16 Brand behaviour 17 The graphic toolkit 18 The dot and the ring 19 Motion principles 20 Motion specification 21 The content system 22 The social system 23 Social formats · 01–04 24 Social formats · 05–08 25 In the wild · LinkedIn 26 In the wild · Instagram 27 In the wild · Carousel 28 The video system 29 The ident 30 Video production rules 31 Short-form storyboard 32 Voice in practice 33 Do / Don’t 34 Revisions to 1.0
Complexity in. Simplicity out.
The one page to read before making anything. Everything after it is the working detail.
geerd exists in the space between complexity and clarity.
Complexity is not the enemy. Unresolved complexity is.
An institution is complex because the work is real: thousands of people, decisions with consequences, records that have to be right. None of that should be flattened or apologised for. What should end is the part where the complexity is left for a person to hold in their head, reconcile by hand, and carry alone.
geerd takes fragmented systems, information and processes and turns them into something a person can understand and act on. That is the whole company. So the identity does the same job, on every surface, every time:
Many become one.
Noise becomes signal.
Fragments become structure.
Complexity becomes resolution.
Which gives every piece of work the same shape and the same discipline. Show the complexity honestly. Resolve it completely. Let the product be the proof. Then stop — the resolution is the last thing that happens, and nothing decorative may follow it.
The consequence
Complexity may be visually rich.
Resolution must be visually simple.
Teal appears only where something has been resolved.
Motion carries the transformation, never the decoration.
If a piece has no complexity to resolve, it is an announcement — keep it to one line.
Do not make geerd more
complicated in the attempt
to document its simplicity.
One rule decides most compositions: complexity may be visually rich, resolution must be visually simple. They are never given equal weight.
Complexity · may be rich
Twenty-two records, six partial connections, no alignment and no teal. It is allowed to be dense, crowded and uncomfortable, because that is an accurate picture of the work before geerd.
May fill the frame. Carries no teal at all — nothing has been resolved yet.
Resolution · must be simple
One point, held in one closed system. The same twenty-two records, reconciled. Everything that could be removed has been removed — that is what makes it read as an answer.
Occupies little. Carries all the teal. One resolution per surface, and it is the last thing that happens.
The two vocabularies
Build complexity with
Multiple dots
Fragments of records and interface
Overlapping information
Lines and multiple paths
Dense, deliberately uneven layouts
Repeated elements
Disconnected systems
Grey — never colour
Build resolution with
Reduction
Alignment to one axis
Simplification
One clear point
A completed ring
A clean, real interface
A single signal
Teal
How the two are weighted
Area
Uneven, always
Complexity may take most of the frame. Resolution takes a fraction and still wins, because it is the only thing aligned and the only thing in teal. Equal halves make a comparison chart, not a geerd composition — the exception is the Before → After format, where the split is the point.
Order
Complexity first
In a static piece, complexity sits above or left of the resolution. In a moving piece, it comes first in time. Never resolve before you have shown what was wrong — a resolution with nothing to resolve is decoration.
Teal
Earned, not applied
Teal marks the resolved state. It follows that a piece with no resolution — a problem post, an open question — gets no teal beyond the logo. This replaces “roughly 5% of any surface” with a test you can actually apply.
Stopping
Nothing after
Once the resolution has landed, the composition is finished. No flourish, no secondary animation, no third statement. The silence after the answer is part of the answer.
The test, applied
Does this communicate complexity, resolution, or the product that creates the resolution?
Three answers are valid. A fourth — “it makes the layout feel more designed” — means the element comes out. Applied honestly, this removes most of what would otherwise get added.
Twelve primitives, all derived from the mark. Everything geerd draws is one of these, used at the stated budget. Nothing else gets invented on a deadline.
One unit of information — a person, a record, a decision, a result.
The system that holds the dots. 270° arc, flat terminals, opening top-right.
A fragment of the ring — a system underway, a process not yet closed.
Connection, flow, integration — the path information takes.
The substrate — the institution’s existing structure, always already there.
A clipped piece of a record or interface — a row, a cell, half a table.
A bounded set — a cohort, a term, a programme, one institution.
Not a shape but an operation: the device runs off the edge so only part shows.
The resolved value — the one dot, number or state that the piece is about.
Attention on real interface — the product’s own focus treatment, borrowed.
The person inside the system. Proof that a human is doing the work.
A real, cropped interface at high resolution on a neutral field.
How they combine
A composition uses one device at rest. Grid may sit behind it and a signal may sit inside it — those two do not count as a second device, because neither can be a subject on its own.
Legal: grid + fragments + signal. Ring + signal. UI frame + highlight + crop. Dots + lines + signal.
What never combines
Ring with arc. Two rings. Nested containers. A drawn diagram with a real interface in the same frame. Any device tiled into a pattern.
1.0 §08 said “don’t combine devices”, which read as a ban on all combination. The rule is really about subjects: one subject, supported.
The mark is already the whole story: a point held inside an open system. These are the two elements geerd owns, and the only behaviours they are allowed.
The dot
The unit of information
A dot is one thing that can be counted: a student, a record, an application, a decision, a signal, a result. It is never an abstract particle — if you cannot say what one dot is, the composition has no subject.
Eleven behaviours
Appear
A record enters the system.
Disappear
A step is no longer needed.
Multiply
Volume made visible.
Move
Information travels.
Resize
Weight, share, or importance.
Connect
Two systems integrate.
Cluster
A cohort, a term, a group.
Separate
A set breaks into cases.
Align
Reconciliation. The core move.
Collapse
Many become one.
Resolve
The outcome. Terminal.
The ring
The system that holds it
A ring is the system, process or boundary around the dot: an institution, a term, a workflow, a completed state. It opens at the top-right because a system that takes anything in needs somewhere to take it in.
Eight behaviours
Open
A closed system gains an entry point.
Close
A process completes. The signature.
Expand
Scope grows — one school to many.
Contract
Scope narrows to a single case.
Rotate
Re-orientation. Never a spin.
Crop
The house move — part shows.
Reveal
The system is disclosed.
Encircle
A value is placed in a system.
Three more ring states exist in 1.0 and are unchanged: primary teal on white, white on ink, and mono ink for print.
How the two relate
At rest
Dot inside ring
The resolved state, and the logo. If a composition ends anywhere else, it has not resolved.
Ring, no dot
A process running
A system with nothing in it yet — loading, in progress, enrolment open. Legitimate, but never the final frame.
Dot, no ring
A value, unplaced
A number without a system around it. Use for a metric; it is the one case where a bare teal dot is allowed.
Many dots, no ring
The problem
The complexity state. All grey. Adding a ring here resolves the picture too early and kills the tension.
Do
Say out loud what one dot is before you draw forty.
Keep the ring at 270°, flat terminals, opening top-right — always.
Let one dot be teal, and only after it has been resolved.
Use the ring at scale and cropped; it is strongest as a fragment.
End on the dot inside the ring. That is the sentence’s full stop.
Don’t
Tile either element into a pattern, texture or background.
Spin the ring, pulse it, or use it as a loading spinner.
Draw a second ring, or nest one inside another.
Make the dots into a constellation, network mesh or node graph.
Colour more than one dot teal — then nothing is the signal.
Eight verbs. Each one means something, so each one is used only when that is what happened. Motion communicates transformation; it never decorates.
Introduce complexity. The first beat of almost every geerd piece.
Show disconnection — systems that do not talk to each other.
Show integration — the moment separate things join.
Show organisation. This is reconciliation, and it is the brand’s core move.
Simplification. Many become one — literally, on screen.
The outcome. The one branded movement geerd owns.
Disclose information progressively, in reading order.
Move attention to the signal without moving the frame.
The canonical sentence
Multiply → Scatter → Connect → Align → Collapse → Resolve
Read in order, the verbs are the company’s story. That sequence is the ident (chapter 29) and the spine of every geerd film. Reveal and Focus are supporting verbs — they carry information, not transformation.
Grammar
A piece uses three verbs at most. Six is the ident; anything else is showing off.
Verbs never overlap. One finishes, then the next begins.
Resolve is terminal. Nothing animates after it.
Any verb may be dropped. None may be reordered.
1.0 said the ring closing is the only branded animation. That still holds inside the product. Chapter 19 exists because film and social are not the product — so motion now has two tiers, and the boundary between them is strict.
Tier one
The product
BrightStep, EasyClass, AlmaHub, and any interface a person can click.
1.0 §11 applies unchanged: 150 / 250 / 400 ms, nothing longer.
The ring closing is the only branded animation. Everything else is functional.
No auto-playing loops, ever.
The eight verbs of chapter 19 do not apply here.
Tier two
Communication
Film, social, reels, event screens, decks, the website’s hero — anything watched rather than used.
The eight verbs apply. Three per piece, in order.
Beats run 600 / 900 / 1400 ms. A full arc is 2.5–4 s.
Loops are allowed, and must run 4 s or longer.
Resolve is terminal, then hold 800 ms before the cut.
The boundary test. If a person can click it, it is tier one. If they can only watch it, it is tier two. A product demo video is tier two showing tier-one motion — the interface inside it still animates at product speed.
Durations, in milliseconds and frames
| Duration | @ 30 fps | @ 60 fps | Used for | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 150 ms | 5 f | 9 f | Hover, focus, toggles, colour change | Product |
| 250 ms | 8 f | 15 f | Menus, tooltips, row expand, Focus | Product |
| 400 ms | 12 f | 24 f | Modals, page transitions, Reveal | Product |
| 600 ms | 18 f | 36 f | Multiply, a short Reveal sequence | Narrative |
| 900 ms | 27 f | 54 f | Scatter, Connect, Align, the ring closing | Narrative |
| 1400 ms | 42 f | 84 f | A full beat with a hold — the longest single move | Narrative |
Easing · the only curve
cubic-bezier(0.2, 0.8, 0.2, 1)
Everything, at every duration. In After Effects: ease out ~80, ease in ~20. Linear is permitted only for progress bars and shimmer. No other curve is approved — do not switch to ease-in-out because a move is long.
Stagger
40 / 60 / 90 ms
40 ms for dots, 60 ms for rows and captions, 90 ms for full blocks. Elements that belong together land together — stagger the start, share the finish.
Exit
Fade only
60% of the enter duration, no movement. Things leave quietly; only arrivals are worth watching. Unchanged from 1.0.
Hold
800 ms minimum
After Resolve, the frame is still for at least 800 ms before the cut or loop. Without the hold the resolution reads as another transition.
Never, in either tier
Bounce, elastic, overshoot, spring
Cartoon squash and stretch
Rotation beyond 90°, or any spin
Random particle systems and drifting ambience
Parallax and scroll-jacking
Animated gradients, glows, light sweeps
Letter-by-letter typing
More than three flashes per second
Accessibility
On the web, every animation in this system sits behind prefers-reduced-motion: durations drop to 0 and loops run once. A reader who has asked their OS for calm gets the resolved frame immediately.
In video, the same intent applies by construction: no strobing, no high-frequency flicker, and no essential information carried by movement alone — every moving statement also exists as type on the frame.
Captions are never the only channel either. If the voiceover says the number, the number is on screen.
Four levels of hierarchy and one five-step formula. Between them they answer the question that stops most work: what goes on this, and in what order.
Four levels, in falling weight
Level 1
The idea
One sentence. The whole point. If the reader takes nothing else, they take this.
Outfit 500 · 88–120 px · −0.03em · Ink, or white on ink
Level 2
The evidence
The number, the fact, the screenshot that proves level 1 is not an opinion.
Manrope 600 tabular · 40–64 px · Ink; teal if it is the resolved value
Level 3
The explanation
Two lines at most, for the reader who is already interested.
Manrope 400 · 30–34 px · 1.5 · Neutral 700
Level 4
The metadata
Product name, date, source, logo. Findable, never prominent.
JetBrains Mono 500 · 20–22 px · +0.08em caps · Neutral 500
The two-second test. Show the piece to someone for two seconds, then take it away and ask what it said. If they give you level 1, it works. If they say “something about geerd”, the branding is competing with the message — shrink level 4.
Sizes above are for a 1080 px canvas. Scale proportionally; never below 20 px for level 4, which is the floor for legibility on a phone.
Applied · 4:5
Insight
Your registrar shouldn’t be the integration layer.
3,000 transcripts a year.
Four spreadsheets.
AlmaHub keeps one record, so an export stops being a decision someone has to make twice.
AlmaHub
L4
L1
L2
L3
L4
One idea, one proof, one explanation, and the mark small enough that it never arrives before the sentence does.
The formula · every piece of geerd content, in order
The real situation, in the institution’s own words. No product yet.
“3,000 transcripts a year, issued from four spreadsheets.”
Format 01 · 06
Say why it costs something — time, risk, or a person’s evening.
“Every one is a chance to send the wrong grade.”
Format 01 · 03
What changes. One sentence, and the first place teal is allowed.
“Formulas are defined once. Every transcript is right.”
Format 02 · 05
The product, metric or customer. The claim stops being a claim.
“Grading period: 3 weeks → 4 days.”
Format 04 · 05 · 07
Close in the brand’s own language — the dot, the ring, the mark.
The dot inside the ring. Nothing after it.
Format 08
How to use it
A single post takes one or two steps, not five. A carousel takes all five, one per slide. A film takes all five as its structure. The formula is the order, not the length.
If a piece has no problem in it, it is an announcement — go straight to step 5 and keep it to one line.
The failure to watch for
Starting at step 3. A post that opens with what geerd does, to a reader who has not been reminded what is broken, reads as a brochure.
Lead with the problem — 1.0 §12, unchanged, and the single most important rule in this book.
Four canvases, one margin, one type ramp, and a teal budget per format. Sizes are the easy part — the budget is what keeps a feed of geerd posts looking like one company.
Four canvases · dashed line is the 8% margin
Square · 1:1
1080 × 1080
X, LinkedIn. Safe everywhere, strongest for a single statement.
Portrait · 4:5
1080 × 1350
The default. Most feed height LinkedIn and Instagram will give you.
Landscape · 16:9
1920 × 1080
YouTube thumbnails, X cards, slides, event screens.
Vertical · 9:16
1080 × 1920
Reels, Shorts, Stories. Motion lives here.
Margin · one number
8% of the short edge
88 px on any 1080 canvas. Nothing but a deliberate full-bleed crop crosses it. One margin for every format means a freelancer never has to ask.
9:16 safe area · platform UI eats the frame
Which leaves 904 × 1280 for the work. Design in that box, not the full frame, or the logo ends up under a Reels button.
Type ramp · at 1080 px, scale proportionally
| Role | Family | Size | Tracking | Leading | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Statement | Outfit 500 | 88–120 px | −0.03em | 1.06 | The idea. One per canvas. |
| Statement · small | Outfit 500 | 56–72 px | −0.025em | 1.1 | When the idea needs three lines. |
| Hero number | Outfit 500 | 120–200 px | −0.035em | 1 | Metric format only. |
| Evidence | Manrope 600 | 40–64 px | −0.02em | 1.15 | Tabular numerals, always. |
| Body | Manrope 400 | 30–34 px | 0 | 1.5 | Two lines maximum. |
| List item | Manrope 500 | 34–40 px | 0 | 1.35 | Before / After stacks. |
| Label | JetBrains Mono 500 | 20–22 px | +0.08em | 1 | Uppercase. The format name, the date. |
The teal budget · maximum share of the canvas, by format
| 01 | The problem | 0% | Logo only. Nothing has been resolved yet. |
| 02 | Before → After | ≤ 25% | The After block, and nothing above it. |
| 03 | The insight | ≤ 2% | One underline, or one dot. |
| 04 | The product | As the UI does | Whatever the real interface uses — one action. |
| 05 | The metric | ≤ 8% | The resulting number only. Never the starting one. |
| 06 | The workflow | ≤ 5% | The final node only. |
| 07 | The quote | ≤ 2% | The rule under the attribution, or the mark. |
| 08 | The announcement | ≤ 10% | The mark, plus at most one word. |
1.0 put teal at “roughly 5% of any surface”, which was impossible to check and quietly ignored. The budget replaces it: teal marks the resolved state, so its share is decided by how much of the piece is the resolution. A problem post gets none. The logo never counts against the budget.
Platforms
4:5 primary · 1:1 · 16:9 link card
Thought leadership, announcements, customer stories, metrics
Formats 02 03 05 07 08
4:5 feed · 9:16 stories and reels
Insight, workflow, brand, behind the work
Formats 01 03 06 07
X
16:9 · 1:1
Insight, metric, announcement — short and quotable
Formats 03 05 08
YouTube
16:9 · 1280×720 minimum
Thumbnails. Must read at 320 px wide — three words at most
Formats 04 05
Short-form video
9:16
Problem → resolution arcs, 15–30 s
Chapters 28 31
Carousel
4:5 · 5–7 slides
One argument, one step per slide
Chapter 27
Logo on social
Bottom-left, on the margin. Symbol alone at 40 px on 1:1 and 4:5, where the account name is already on screen. Full horizontal logo at 96 px minimum on 16:9 and 9:16, which get shared out of context.
One logo per canvas — including the one inside a screenshot. If the product UI in your image shows the logo, leave it out of the layout.
Grid
Six columns on 1:1, 4:5 and 9:16. Twelve on 16:9. Gutter 3% of the short edge — 32 px at 1080.
Text sits on four columns of six, so a line breaks before it reaches the far margin. A statement that runs the full width reads as a paragraph, not a point.
Eight repeatable formats cover almost everything geerd publishes. Pick one, fill it in, and the post is on-brand without a designer having to judge it. Specimens are shown at 4:5; every format states its own variation.
4:5 · 1080 × 1350
Layout
Statement lower-left on four of six columns. The complexity field sits top-right and is cropped by the frame. Nothing is centred.
Typography
Outfit 500 · 92 px · −0.03em. One numeral begins each line — the numbers are the design.
Image
None. If an image is used it is the product, never a photograph of people.
Colour
Ink field, white type, Neutral 500 dots. Zero teal. Nothing has been resolved.
Graphic elements
Dot × 12, scattered. No lines — nothing is connected yet.
Do
Let the counts do the work. Get them from the institution.
Keep the last line human. Someone is holding this together.
Don’t
Add the solution, or any teal.
Use red or a warning colour. Complexity is not an error.
Number the lines, or add an icon per line.
Variation
9:16 — dots run as a vertical column down the right edge, statement in the lower safe area.
4:5 · 1080 × 1350
Layout
Two stacked blocks joined by a vertical rule. The After block bleeds to both margins so it reads as a change of ground, not a box.
Typography
Before in Manrope 500 · 38 px. After in Outfit 500 · 52 px — the resolution gets the display face.
Image
None.
Colour
White above, Teal 100 below, one phrase in Teal 600. ≤ 25%, all of it after the rule.
Graphic elements
The vertical rule — a Line, so orthogonal. Never a drawn arrow at an angle.
Do
Keep the counts true.
Make After shorter than Before. Three down to two, always fewer.
Don’t
Red for before, green for after.
Equal type sizes — that makes it a comparison, not a resolution.
A diagonal or curved arrow between the halves.
Variation
1:1 — side by side, Before on the left, the rule running vertically between them.
4:5 · 1080 × 1350
Layout
Statement across four of six columns in the top third. Body two lines beneath. The lower two-thirds stay empty, deliberately.
Typography
Outfit 500 · 96 px · −0.03em. Body Manrope 400 · 32 px.
Image
None. The whitespace is the image.
Colour
White. One 6 px teal underline beneath the single word carrying the argument. ≤ 2%.
Graphic elements
The underline. That is the whole graphic.
Do
Make it arguable — someone should be able to disagree.
Name the thing the reader already resents.
Don’t
Quotation marks. It is a statement, not a quote.
An author photo or a byline.
Centring it, or filling the empty area.
Variation
16:9 — statement on the left half, right half empty. Reads well as an X card.
4:5 · 1080 × 1350
Layout
One line of type top-left, the real interface below it, bleeding off the right edge.
Typography
Outfit 500 · 64 px — smaller than other formats, because the screenshot is the argument.
Image
A real interface at 2× minimum. Never a device mockup, never in perspective.
Colour
Neutral 50 field so the white UI separates. Teal only where the product itself uses it — one action.
Graphic elements
UI frame plus Crop. One Highlight if a specific row is the point.
Do
Crop into the part that proves the line.
Use real names, real programmes, real numbers.
Don’t
Three screens fanned out, shadows, reflections, floating perspective.
Placeholder data. It is visible from across the room.
A second teal action.
Variation
16:9 — interface fills the right two-thirds, type on the left. The strongest YouTube thumbnail geerd has.
The proof and closing formats. 05 and 07 carry evidence; 06 explains a process; 08 is the whole announcement system, deliberately kept to one line.
4:5 · 1080 × 1350
Layout
Two numbers stacked and joined by a vertical rule. The result is the largest object on the canvas.
Typography
Before Outfit 500 · 108 px in Neutral 400. After Outfit 500 · 168 px in Teal 600. Tabular numerals.
Image
None.
Colour
White. Teal on the resulting number only. ≤ 8%.
Graphic elements
The vertical rule. No chart, no arc, no progress ring.
Do
Name the institution and the process underneath.
Let scale carry the change — the result is bigger because it is better.
Don’t
Bar charts, donuts, percentage rings, confetti.
Teal on the starting number.
A number you cannot source.
Variation
1:1 — the two numbers side by side, rule vertical between them.
4:5 · 1080 × 1350
Layout
One horizontal axis, five nodes, labels beneath, statement above.
Typography
Statement Outfit 500 · 76 px. Node labels JetBrains Mono 500 · 19 px uppercase.
Image
None.
Colour
White, Neutral 400 nodes, Neutral 200 axis. Final node teal inside a ring. ≤ 5%.
Graphic elements
Dot × 5, Line × 1, Ring × 1 — on the last node only.
Do
Use the institution’s own stage names.
Five stages maximum. Six means the process has not been understood yet.
Don’t
Swimlanes, or arrowheads at every step.
Curved or diagonal connectors.
An icon for each stage.
Variation
9:16 — the axis runs top to bottom, which suits a Reel’s reading direction.
4:5 · 1080 × 1350
Layout
Statement in the upper middle, attribution below a teal rule. Never centred.
Typography
Quote Outfit 500 · 86 px. Name Manrope 600 · 34 px, role Manrope 400 · 28 px.
Image
Optional, and documentary per 1.0 §10 — at work, natural light. Never a headshot on white.
Colour
Neutral 50 field. A 1.5 px teal rule above the attribution. ≤ 2%.
Graphic elements
The rule. Nothing else.
Do
Give the role. The role is what makes it credible.
One sentence. Cut to the clause that means something.
Don’t
Quotation marks, five-star graphics, or a rounded card with a coloured left border.
The words “success story”, “journey” or “partner”.
A logo wall of customers underneath.
Variation
4:5 with a documentary portrait bleeding off the left edge, quote on the right.
4:5 · 1080 × 1350
Layout
Label and date at the top, then the mark and one line, optically centred.
Typography
Outfit 500 · 84 px. Nothing else on the canvas above 32 px.
Image
None.
Colour
Ink field, mark in teal. ≤ 10%.
Graphic elements
The mark at 96 px. The only format where the mark itself is the graphic.
Do
State the fact, in the present tense.
Put the date in the label so it is findable later.
Don’t
“We’re excited to announce”. Emoji. Ribbons.
A feature list, or a second sentence.
Stretching one fact across a carousel.
Variation
1:1 for X. For a partnership, two marks separated by a 1.5 px vertical rule.
Choosing between them
Work back from the formula in chapter 21. A problem step is format 01 or 06. A resolution step is 02 or 05. Proof is 04, 05 or 07. If a post is only news, it is 08 and it is one line.
Rotate. Four format-03 insights in a row makes an account that looks like a quote generator, however good each one is.
When none of them fit
Use 03 with a smaller statement, or 04 with more type. Those two absorb almost anything.
Do not invent a ninth format for one post. If the same gap appears three times, that is a real format — write it up, add it here, and give it a teal budget like the rest.
Six posts as they would ship, caption included. The creative and the copy are one piece of work — a good format with a hyped caption is still a hyped post.
Format 03 · Thought leadership
Caption
A registrar’s office should not be the place where four systems are reconciled by hand. In most institutions, it is. Someone exports from the SIS, exports from the LMS, matches them in a spreadsheet, and carries the risk personally. AlmaHub keeps one record. The export stops being a decision.
Format 05 · Proof
Caption
Document issuance at a 12,000-student university: 9 days to 2 days. Nothing about the workload changed. What changed is that the transcript is generated from the record instead of assembled from four exports. The seven days were reconciliation.
Format 07 · Customer story
Caption
Fatima-Zahra Cherkaoui runs admissions for 4,200 applications a year. “I used to know where every file was because I remembered. Now I don’t have to remember.” That is the change we are actually selling. Not a dashboard — the end of holding an institution in your head.
Format 04 · Product feature
Caption
Grade calculation, defined once at the programme level. Every transcript in the programme is produced the same way, because there is only one definition of the calculation. No per-cohort spreadsheet. No formula that drifted in 2023 and was never caught. EasyClass. Define the rules once.
Format 01 · The problem
Caption
Every August, the same three weeks. 3,000 transcripts. Four spreadsheets. One person who knows how it all fits together — and who therefore cannot take leave in August. We build for that person.
Format 08 · Announcement
Caption
AlmaHub now writes back to your SIS. Until this release the connection was read-only. From today, a corrected record in AlmaHub updates the source system directly. One fewer export. One fewer place for the two to disagree.
The first two lines
LinkedIn truncates at roughly 140 characters. The problem has to be stated before “…see more”, or the post is a headline nobody opened.
Every caption above states its problem in sentence one.
Rhythm across a month
Roughly: two problem or insight posts, one proof, one customer, one product, one announcement. Complexity outnumbers resolution, as it does in the work.
Never two consecutive posts in the same format.
Links and tagging
One link, in the first comment or the last line — never mid-caption. Tag the institution only with their written agreement, and name the role, not the person, unless they have approved the quote.
No hashtag stacks. Three at most, lowercase.
The same eight formats, with the caption doing less work — an Instagram reader is scrolling, not reading. The image has to hold the whole idea.
Feed · 4:5
Format 03
Format 06
Format 07
Format 02
Four posts, four formats. Seen together in a profile grid they still read as one account, because the margin, the type ramp and the teal budget do not change between them — not because they share a template.
Stories and Reels · 9:16 · the safe area is not optional
Teal = platform UI
220 top, 420 bottom, 88 sides. What is left is 904 × 1280.
Format 01 · 9:16
Statement sits low, where the eye lands and the thumb does not.
Rules for vertical
One idea per story. If it needs two, it needs two stories.
Type never smaller than 32 px at 1080 — it is read at arm’s length on a phone.
The logo goes inside the safe box, bottom-left, like every other canvas.
A link sticker counts as part of the bottom keep-out — leave the space empty for it.
Reels: the first frame is a still of the resolved state. Autoplay means frame one is the thumbnail.
What Instagram is for
The work, and the thinking behind it. Insight, workflow, the occasional documentary photograph of an institution per 1.0 §10.
Not a second LinkedIn. Announcements and metrics belong there; here they read as noise.
Never, on any platform
Stock photographs of students, graduation caps, classrooms, or anyone pointing at a laptop. Illustrated mascots. Emoji in the artwork.
Education is the domain. Software is the product — chapter 33.
Six slides, one per step of the formula in chapter 21. A carousel is the only place geerd runs the whole argument — so it is the one place all five steps appear.
Cover
Stops the scroll. States the situation, not the product.
Problem
The counts, in the institution’s own numbers. Still no product.
Friction
Why it costs something. This is the slide most decks skip.
Resolution
What changes. One sentence, and the first teal in the set.
Proof
The metric. The claim stops being a claim.
Signal
Close in the brand’s own language. One action, no feature list.
Length
Five to seven
Six is the shape above. Below five the argument is missing a step; above seven it is a document, not a carousel.
Teal across the set
Slides 4–6 only
Nothing is teal until something has been resolved. Swiping through, the colour arriving is the argument landing.
Consistency
Margin and counter
Same 88 px margin, same counter position on all six. Backgrounds and type sizes change; the frame never does.
Don’t
A “swipe →” prompt on slide 1.
The logo on every slide — first and last only.
A slide that only says “The problem”.
Stretching one fact across six slides.
Every geerd film has the same spine: complexity, tension, transformation, resolution, geerd. What changes between a 15-second reel and a 90-second brand film is which beats are dropped — never the order.
The structure
Complexity → tension → transformation → resolution → geerd
Five beats · share of the running time
01
10%
Opening
Open inside the problem. A real screen, a real number, a real desk — never the logo.
02
25%
Problem
Complexity accumulates. Counts rise, fragments arrive, systems fail to line up.
03
35%
Transformation
The turn. Information connects, then organises. This is the longest beat because it is the argument.
04
20%
Resolution
Many become one. The product appears, or the mark does — one of the two, never both.
05
10%
Ending
The logo, one line, one action. Still. Held long enough to read twice.
The opening rule
Never open on the logo
A logo at second zero asks for attention before earning it. geerd opens inside somebody’s problem and arrives at the mark. The logo is the last thing on screen, and it is the only place it appears.
The ending rule
One action, held
The end card carries the mark, one line, and one thing to do. It holds for at least two seconds — long enough to read twice — and nothing on it animates.
By type
| Type | Length | Beats used | Ratio | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand film | 60–90 s | All five | 16:9 + 9:16 cut | Voiceover |
| Product video | 45–60 s | 01 02 04 05 | 16:9 | Voiceover |
| Product demo | 2–4 min | 01 04 05 | 16:9 | Screen + voice |
| Social reel | 15–30 s | 02 03 04 | 9:16 | Captions only |
| LinkedIn video | 30–45 s | 01 03 04 05 | 1:1 or 4:5 | Captions only |
| Explainer | 60–120 s | All five | 16:9 | Voiceover |
| Feature announcement | 10–15 s | 04 05 | 1:1 · 9:16 | Captions only |
| Event screen | Loop, 20 s+ | 03 04 | 16:9 | Silent |
Sound
Sparse and low. Room tone, a single soft mark at Collapse, another as the ring closes.
No swooshes, risers, stingers or library “corporate uplift”. If the film only works with music, it does not work.
Voice
One person, unhurried, at a normal speaking pace. Written to chapter 32 — short sentences, specific numbers.
Silence over filler. A held frame with nothing said is a legitimate beat.
Length discipline
If a film runs long, cut beat 03, not beat 02. Losing the problem to keep the transformation leaves an answer to a question nobody asked.
Six seconds. The eight verbs of chapter 19, read in order as a single sentence — which is why it is the ident and not just an animation: it is the company’s argument, performed by the mark.
Running
Twenty grey points appear with no order to them. Paths draw between a few — a system, but not a resolved one. The paths fade, the points settle onto one axis, and the row collapses to a single point at the centre. It turns teal. The ring closes around it, and the wordmark arrives.
The dot that survives is not a new element. It is one of the twenty — the same record, now the only one you need to look at.
Six phases
0.0 – 0.9 s
Multiply
Grey points appear on an ink field, staggered, in no order.
0.9 – 1.8 s
Scatter
Twenty points, none aligned. This is the institution today.
1.8 – 2.6 s
Connect
Orthogonal paths draw between five pairs. A system, but an untidy one.
2.6 – 3.7 s
Align
The paths fade. Every point settles onto one axis, arriving together.
3.7 – 4.0 s
Collapse
The row converges. Twenty become one.
4.0 – 6.0 s
Resolve
The point turns teal. The ring closes around it. The wordmark arrives.
Fixed, and not to be re-cut
Twenty points. Not twelve, not fifty.
Ink field. The ident is never on white.
One teal point, appearing at 3.7 s and not before.
The ring closes clockwise to 270°, flat terminals, opening top-right.
The wordmark is supplied artwork — never typed.
Never
Speed it up to “feel more energetic”.
Add a swoosh, a riser, or a light sweep.
Let the points bounce or overshoot as they land.
Rotate the ring, or draw it anticlockwise.
Put the ident at the start of a film. It closes.
Deliverables to hold centrally
ProRes 4444 with alpha — 6.0 s and 3.0 s, 1920×1080 and 1080×1920.
MP4 H.264 on ink, for anything that cannot take alpha.
Lottie JSON, for web and product splash.
An After Effects project with the twenty points as one controller.
A single PNG of the final frame, for thumbnails and slides.
Everything an editor who has never met us needs, in one page. If a question is not answered here, the answer is the plainer of the two options.
Safe areas
16:9 — keep type inside 90% of the frame. 9:16 — 220 px top, 420 px bottom, 88 px sides at 1080 wide. 1:1 and 4:5 — 8% all round. Assume the bottom of a vertical frame will be covered.
Typography
Outfit 500 for statements, Manrope 400/600 for everything else, JetBrains Mono 500 for labels. Minimum 32 px at 1080 — video is read at arm’s length, and compression eats thin type. Never bold 700 in Outfit.
Captions
Burned in, always — most viewers have sound off. Manrope 500, 40–44 px at 1080, white on ink or ink on white, no box, no outline, no drop shadow. Two lines maximum, breaking on sense. Bottom of the safe area, never centred over a face.
Lower thirds
Name in Manrope 600 40 px, role in Manrope 400 30 px, on one 1.5 px teal rule. Enters by fade plus 8 px rise, holds 3 s, exits by fade. Left aligned to the margin. No card, no panel, no logo.
Transitions
Cut. That is the default and usually the answer. A 250 ms cross-dissolve is permitted between two beats of the same idea. No wipes, no slides, no zoom transitions, no whip pans, no light leaks.
UI animation
Inside a product shot the interface animates at product speed — 150 / 250 / 400 ms, per chapter 20. Never re-time a screen recording to look snappier; a real interface at real speed is the proof.
Screen recordings
Record at 2× the delivery resolution, 60 fps, on a clean profile with real data. Hide personal data by changing the record, not by blurring it. No browser chrome unless the browser is the point.
Product highlighting
The product’s own focus treatment: 1.5 px teal border plus a 3 px Teal 100 ring. Everything else drops to 25% opacity. One highlight at a time. Never draw arrows, circles or hand-drawn rings on a screen.
Cursor
A real OS cursor at 24 px. Orthogonal paths, ease-out, and a 400 ms pause before each click so the eye arrives first. Never a giant stylised hand, never a click ripple, never a trail.
Zoom
Push in to 1.2× at most, over 900 ms or slower, and only to move attention. No snap zooms, no zoom transitions between scenes, no continuous slow drift on a static frame.
Backgrounds
Ink #0B1215, white, or Neutral 50. Flat. No gradients, no vignettes, no bokeh, no drifting particles, no blurred office footage behind type.
Logo placement
The logo appears once, on the end card. Not a bug in the corner, not a watermark, not on every frame. The exception is a looping event screen, where the mark may sit bottom-left throughout.
End cards
Ink field. Mark, one line, one action, and the URL. Held 2 s minimum with nothing moving. The last frame of every geerd film is the same frame.
By tool
After Effects
Ease out ~80 / ease in ~20 on every keyframe pair. Build the ident’s twenty points as one controller layer. Export ProRes 4444 with alpha.
Premiere
Cut on the beat, not on the bar. Use the supplied caption style preset; do not re-type it. Match the sequence to 30 or 60 fps and stay there.
Figma
For frames and end cards, not motion. Export at 2×. Use the shared type styles — do not hand-set sizes.
CapCut
Turn off every default: no auto-captions styling, no transitions, no “trending” effects, no stickers. Set text to Manrope and the caption size to 40 px at 1080.
AI video tools
Use them for b-roll of environments and hands, never for people’s faces, screens, or anything presented as a real institution. Never generate a fake interface — use a real screen recording. Grade the output flat and neutral per 1.0 §10.
The delivery checklist
Captions burned in, and a separate .srt.
Every ratio the piece will actually run in — not just 16:9 letterboxed.
Audio peaking at −3 dB, dialogue at −16 LUFS.
The end card held for a full two seconds.
A still of the final frame, exported as PNG.
No temp music, no watermark, no “final_v3_FINAL”.
The one thing to get right
A geerd film is quiet. If a cut, an effect or a music bed is there to hold attention rather than to carry meaning, it comes out — and the film gets better, every time.
The measure is not whether it looks impressive. It is whether someone who runs a registrar’s office would recognise their own week in it.
Specific beats impressive — 1.0 §12, and it applies to pictures as much as to sentences.
Twenty-four seconds, 9:16, captions only. The five beats of chapter 28 and six of the eight verbs, in order — a whole argument in the time it takes to decide whether to keep scrolling.
00:00 – 00:03
Reveal
Opens on nothing but the sentence. No logo, no music yet — just the problem, stated.
00:03 – 00:06
Multiply
Points appear behind the caption, staggered 40 ms. The count is spoken and shown.
00:06 – 00:09
Scatter
Twenty points now, none aligned. The frame is deliberately uncomfortable.
00:09 – 00:12
Connect
Orthogonal paths draw between three pairs — connected, but not reconciled.
00:12 – 00:16
Align
The paths fade. Every point settles onto one axis and arrives together. The longest beat.
00:16 – 00:19
Collapse
The row converges to a single point at the centre. Still grey — not resolved yet.
00:19 – 00:22
Focus
Cut to the real product. One teal action, everything else at 25%. This is the proof.
00:22 – 00:24
Resolve
The point turns teal, the ring closes, the wordmark arrives. Held two seconds. Cut.
Why it works with sound off
Every statement is on the frame. The voiceover adds tone, never information. Read the eight captions in order and the argument is complete.
Where the teal is
Shots 7 and 8 only — nineteen of the twenty-four seconds have none. The colour arriving is the point landing.
Cutting it shorter
For 15 s, drop shots 4 and 6 and shorten 5. Never drop 1, 2 or 7 — the problem and the proof are the film.
Don’t
A hook card that says “WAIT FOR IT”.
Trending audio.
Text that appears word by word.
A face reacting to the product.
1.0 §12 set the principles and they are unchanged. This chapter makes them usable: what good looks like, why it is good, and what to do with a sentence that has gone wrong.
Eight qualities
Clear
One idea per sentence. If a sentence needs a comma to survive, it needs a full stop instead.
Precise
“24 hours”, not “fast”. “37 files”, not “several”. The number is the credibility.
Intelligent
Assume the reader runs an institution. Never explain what a transcript is.
Calm
No exclamation marks, no urgency, no countdowns. The work is serious; the tone is level.
Direct
Say the thing. “Enrolment closed.” not “Enrolment has now been successfully closed.”
Confident
State it and stop. No hedging, and no arguing that technology is important.
Human
Someone is on the other end of every workflow. Name them: the registrar, the coordinator.
Specific
Name the institution, the process, the term. Generic praise reads as having no customers.
Five lines that work, and why
Your registrar shouldn’t be the integration layer.
Names a specific role and a specific job that role should never have had. The reader either recognises their own office or is not the buyer — either way the sentence has done its work.
Five systems shouldn’t require five exports.
The argument is arithmetic. There is no adjective to disagree with, and the reader can check it against their own week in about two seconds.
Complexity is expensive.
Three words that reframe complexity from a fact of institutional life into a cost with a number attached. It opens a conversation instead of closing one.
One source of truth.
Borrowed from engineering, understood by administrators. It states the outcome without describing a single feature.
Less reconciliation. More control.
Names the task people actually spend their week doing. “Data management” is a category; reconciliation is a Tuesday.
Captions
State the problem in sentence one. LinkedIn cuts at ~140 characters.
Five short paragraphs at most. One line each is fine.
Numerals, always: 37, not thirty-seven.
One link — last line or first comment, never mid-caption.
No emoji, no hashtag stacks, no “👇”.
Never open with “In today’s fast-paced educational landscape”.
The test
Could a competitor put their name on this sentence?
If yes, it is not geerd copy yet. Add the number, the role or the institution that only we would know to mention.
Rewrites
What arrives from the internet
What ships
Revolutionising education management with AI-powered insights
Grades are calculated once, the same way, for every transcript.
Empowering institutions to unlock their full potential
Your registrar stops typing the same student in twice.
A seamless, end-to-end platform experience
Admissions, grades and documents on one record.
Get started today — book your free demo!
Show us the process that hurts.
We are thrilled to announce an exciting new partnership
AlmaHub now writes back to your SIS.
Never
revolutionary · game-changing · disruptive · seamless · empower · leverage · next-generation · AI-powered (as a headline) · unlock · supercharge · 10× · cutting-edge · robust · holistic · best-in-class · world-class · journey · “excited to announce” · “thrilled” · “reimagine” · transform (as a claim about the customer)
Prefer
simpler · clear · connected · reliable · in one place · without the spreadsheet · built for · takes minutes · once · the same way · agree · stops · fewer · one · defined · issued · reconciled · on the record
Six pairs, both sides drawn. The wrong versions are not strawmen — each one is a real thing that gets made when a rule is only written down.
Whitespace is the layout
Do
Don’t
One idea, and the room around it. Not four cards, a chart and two buttons competing for the same two seconds.
Teal is a signal
Do
Don’t
Teal marks the one thing that resolved. Applied to the whole surface it marks nothing at all — and the brand loses its only accent.
One idea per surface
Do
Don’t
Three claims on one canvas is zero claims remembered. If all three matter, that is three posts — or a carousel.
Complexity is grey
Do
Don’t
Grey says “unresolved”. Colour says “categorised” — which is the opposite of the point, and semantic colour is reserved for real product states.
The product is the illustration
Do
Don’t
A real cropped interface at high resolution is the strongest graphic geerd owns. A mortarboard says “education sector”; the screen says “we built this”.
Lines are orthogonal
Do
Don’t
Orthogonal paths read as a system someone designed. A diagonal mesh reads as “network graphic”, which every technology company on earth already has.
Education is the domain. Software is the product.
geerd is a technology company that happens to understand education deeply — not an education company that happens to make software. Every image decision follows from that.
The distinction is commercial, not aesthetic. The buyer is a registrar, a director of admissions, a CIO. They have seen a hundred brochures with a mortarboard on the cover, and none of them were about the work.
If an image would look at home in a university prospectus, it is wrong for geerd.
Never show
Graduation caps and mortarboards
Students smiling at laptops
Classrooms and lecture halls
A teacher pointing at a screen
Handshakes and posed groups
Illustrated characters and mascots
Books, apples, blackboards, pencils
Campus drone footage
Show instead
Systems and infrastructure
Data, records, and where they disagree
Workflows and their stages
Decisions and who has to make them
Operations — the August week
Institutions as organisations, not buildings
People doing real administrative work
The product, cropped, at high resolution
Do
Use whitespace as the layout.
Carry one strong idea per surface.
Use teal only as the signal.
Let the product prove the claim.
Use motion to communicate transformation.
Use grey for complexity, ink for emphasis.
Name the institution, the role, the number.
Don’t
Fill every space because it looks empty.
Make everything teal.
Add gradients, glows or glass.
Use generic AI imagery or stock education photos.
Over-animate, or animate after the resolution.
Make every post look identical.
Add any effect that does not carry meaning.
Eight places where part two sharpens a rule from part one. None of them change the identity. Each was found by trying to make something real and discovering the rule did not say enough — or said too much.
1.0 said
“The ring closing is the only branded animation; everything else is functional.” Plus: no auto-playing loops.
2.0 says
That governs the product, unchanged. Communication surfaces — film, social, events — are a second tier with the eight verbs of chapter 19. Loops are allowed there, at 4 s or longer.
Why
1.0 was written from the product outwards, and read as a ban on all brand motion. It left film and social with no system, so each piece invented one.
1.0 said
“Teal is roughly 5% of any surface.”
2.0 says
A per-format budget, from 0% to 25%, set by how much of the piece is the resolution. Chapter 22.
Why
5% could not be measured, so it was quietly ignored. The budget is checkable and follows from what teal already means — the resolved state.
1.0 said
“Max one device per composition.” “Don’t combine devices.”
2.0 says
One subject per composition. Grid behind and Signal inside are supporting elements and do not count as a second device.
Why
Read literally, the rule forbade putting a dot inside a ring — which is the logo. The intent was about competing subjects, not about all combination.
1.0 said
“150 / 250 / 400 ms. Nothing longer in the product.”
2.0 says
Unchanged for the product. Narrative work adds 600 / 900 / 1400 ms, with a full arc of 2.5–4 s. Chapter 20 gives both in frames.
Why
A 400 ms ceiling makes film impossible. The ceiling was always a product rule; now it says so.
1.0 said
Notes that white on Teal 500 is 3.6:1 — “large / UI”.
2.0 says
A rule: white on Teal 500 only at 24 px and above, or 19 px at weight 600. Below that, ink on Teal 100.
Why
Social layouts put body copy on teal panels, where 3.6:1 fails. Stating the threshold removes the judgement call.
1.0 said
“Editorial, not stock.” Correct, and unchanged.
2.0 says
Adds an explicit never-show / show-instead table. Chapter 33.
Why
“Editorial, not stock” is a judgement a freelancer cannot reliably make. A list of eight things not to photograph is one they can.
1.0 said
“One logo per surface. Top-left or bottom-left.”
2.0 says
On social: bottom-left, on the margin. Symbol alone at 40 px on 1:1 and 4:5; full horizontal logo at 96 px minimum on 16:9 and 9:16. A logo inside a screenshot counts as the one.
Why
Posts kept shipping with two marks — one in the layout, one in the product screenshot behind it.
1.0 said
“Never diagonal, never curved.” Unchanged.
2.0 says
Adds the consequence: a connection between two points that share no axis is drawn as an L — two orthogonal segments — never a diagonal.
Why
The rule looked impossible to obey when connecting scattered points, so it was being broken. It was never impossible; it just needed the technique naming.
What has not changed
The logo, its construction and its clear space
Outfit, Manrope, JetBrains Mono
Teal #00968F, ink #0B1215, the cool neutral scale
Teal as signal, not as paint
Sentence case, left alignment, negative tracking at display sizes
The 4 px base and the 12-column grid
One easing curve: cubic-bezier(0.2, 0.8, 0.2, 1)
Lead with the problem. Specific beats impressive.
The product design language in §07, entirely
Complexity in. Simplicity out.
The identity in part one was right. Part two exists because a brand that only defines how it looks will be improvised the first time somebody has to make it move.
Assets to produce next
Carried over from 1.0
Vector logo master (SVG/PDF) with the §03 refinements · favicon and app-icon set · Figma library of §07 · font licence note (all OFL) · deck template · document template
New for 2.0
The ident — ProRes 4444 with alpha at 6.0 s and 3.0 s, 1920×1080 and 1080×1920 · Lottie JSON · After Effects project with the twenty points on one controller
Social
Figma library of the eight formats at 1:1, 4:5, 16:9 and 9:16, with the 8% margin and 9:16 safe area as locked guides
Video
Caption and lower-third presets for Premiere and CapCut · the end card as a 2 s ProRes and a PNG · a one-page brief for external editors, extracted from chapter 30
Motion
The eight verbs as an After Effects preset library, each pre-timed and pre-eased
In one sentence
Make simplicity feel sophisticated.
Part one said it and it still holds. Part two only adds the second half: and make it behave that way in a feed, in a film, and on a Tuesday when nobody has time.
Questions about this system
brand@geerd.ma
Version 2.0 · 2026
Supersedes nothing in 1.0