BRAND GUIDELINESv2.0 — DRAFT2026-07

Tomatuhs

We’re growers. We like to grow.

Proposed — awaiting lock

01 · Brand Overview

Turn the grow-curious into growers.

Why Tomatuhs exists, who it serves, and the rules of its visual world answered — from the questionnaire.

Tomatuhs exists to compel the grow-curious to grow their own food. We sell grow kits — but the product is the moment someone decides to grow. The brand is fresh, Latin, and simple: a calm, luxurious frame around culture-specific craftsmanship. Rome grew all over the world. Mexico has deep roots in agriculture. Growth is the whole story.

Personality answered

Fresh: Market-morning clean; daylight surfaces; nothing heavy, nothing stale.
Simple: Nothing too complicated — Apple's restraint; the frame never competes with what it holds.
Prideful: Hunt's-style pride in the work; the craft is the credential.
Growing: Everything emphasizes growth — motion, imagery, narrative, even the mascot question.

Audience answered

The grow-curious: People who haven't grown food yet but feel the pull. Every surface is a conversion surface: it should make growing feel possible and near.

Construction principles answered — phrasing drafted

Simple frames, Latin trophies
The Latin bears the trophy — it does not compete. Restraint is the frame; craftsmanship is what's framed.
Culture-specific, never blended
If it's Italian, it's Italian. If it's Mexican, it's Mexican. No pan-cultural mush.
Real over rendered
The imagery is photographed: real soil, real hands, real vines.
Everything grows
Motion grows in, narratives move toward harvest, nothing punches or snaps.
Red, white, green
The entire chromatic identity. Festival accents visit; the tricolor stays.

Proposed — awaiting lock

02 · Logo System

A quiet mark for a proud name.

No drawn mark exists; the typographic wordmark is the draft invented — simple-frame rule applied: one color, set in the display face. The tricolor appears in the world around the mark, not inside it.

Tomatuhs

Primary — Soil ink on light surfaces

Tomatuhs

Reversed — Field White on Deep Field

Tomatuhs

Accent — green “tuhs”, for brand-owned surfaces only

T

Avatar — green field, white T

Protection rules invented — confirm

Clear space on all sides equals the height of the capital T.
Minimum size: 24px on screen, 8mm in print.
One color at a time — ink, white, or the single green accent. Never tricolor letters.

Misuse

Set in the display face, lowercase after the T
On photography, use white with a subtle scrim

No stretching, outlining, or effects
No rainbow or per-letter coloring
No busy backgrounds without a scrim

PLACEHOLDER — no drawn mark exists. If one is commissioned (a vine device, a tomato silhouette), collect the file; never redraw from description.

Proposed — awaiting lock

03 · Color & Seasons

Red, white, green — and the festivals that visit.

The tricolor is yours answered; the exact values are drafted fresh and named plainly invented — scrutinize. Red drives appetite and action; green reads living and calm; the white is clean daylight, not cream.

Primary palette

Vine Red#D2232AThe fruit. Action, appetite, emphasis.

Leaf Green#0E8345The living plant. Growth, labels, structure.

Field White#FAFAF7Clean daylight. The default surface.

Structural set

Soil#1A1A18Text

Linen#F4F2EAWarm surface

Deep Field#0F2A1CDark surface

Stone#6B6B64Secondary text

Mist#E8E8E2Hairlines

Pairing & contrast measured — WCAG, recorded honestly

Text	On surface	Ratio	AA
Soil	Field White	16.67	Pass
Soil	Linen	15.55	Pass
Field White	Deep Field	14.68	Pass
Stone	Field White	5.13	Pass
Vine Red	Field White	5.00	Pass (both ways)
Leaf Green	Field White	4.62	Pass (both ways)
Vine Red	Deep Field	2.93	Fail — banned
Leaf Green	Deep Field	3.18	Fail — banned

Festival colorways festivals answered · accents invented

La TomatinaAugust — the red goes saturated; the one day the frame gets loud.

Día de MuertosNovember — cempasúchil marigold joins the tricolor. Mexican, specifically.

VendemmiaSeptember–October — Italian harvest; oak and linen warm the frame. Italian, specifically.

A festival accent is a guest: time-boxed, one per campaign, never added to the permanent palette.

Proposed — awaiting lock

04 · Typography

Craft or clean — pick the display voice.

Body text is Inter either way — the simple frame. The open call is the display face researched A/B — serif reads craft & heritage in food; sans reads modern & minimal.

Preview site-wide:

A — Fraunces We’re growers.

Soft heritage serif — the Hunt's pride, the canning-label trust. Food-brand research favors serif for honesty and craft.

B — Inter tight We’re growers.

One family everywhere — the Apple frame taken all the way. Cleaner, cooler, gives up the craft signal.

Hierarchy invented — sizes live in tokens.css

Grow

Heroclamp(3rem → 6rem) · 600 · displayCover statements only

First harvest

H1clamp(2.1rem → 3.3rem) · 600 · displaySection statements

The kit on the sill

H2clamp(1.7rem → 2.4rem) · 600 · displaySub-heads

Seeds, soil, patience

H31.3rem · 600 · displayCard titles

Large body carries introductions at a comfortable size.

Body large1.185rem · 400 · bodyIntros, subtitles

Body is Inter at one rem, line height 1.6, never wider than sixty-five characters.

Body1rem · 400 · bodyRunning text

Captions annotate imagery and specimens.

Caption0.8rem · 400 · mutedFigure notes

Label

Label0.72rem · mono · uppercase · 0.18emKickers, block labels

All-caps only at label size, in mono, wide-tracked
Headings balanced; prose ≤ 65ch

No stretching, faux bold, or outlined text
Never more than two families on a surface

Proposed — awaiting lock

05 · Iconography

Fine strokes, kept quiet.

Delegated — the draft: an open library (Lucide) configured fine and light for the luxurious frame invented — 1.5px stroke; custom set is the alternative.

The set, configured

sprout

water

sun

tomato

home

roots

guide

care

Geometry & rules

Property	Value
Grid	24 × 24 (Lucide)
Stroke	1.5px, round caps & joins — fine, quiet
Sizes	16 inline · 20 nav · 24 default · 32 feature
Color	currentColor; Leaf/Vine only as status

Icons support; they never headline. If an icon competes with the photography, remove the icon.

Proposed — awaiting lock

06 · Photography

Real. That was the whole answer.

Real soil, real hands, real vines answered — photographed, not illustrated. Art direction drafted below invented.

Qualities

Natural light: Daylight only — morning market, low sun. No studio strobes, no sterile white.
Hands in frame: The pride is visible: hands planting, tying, harvesting. Work, not lifestyle posing.
Culture on location: Italian is shot Italian; Mexican is shot Mexican. Real places, never a set dressed as "Latin".
Growth visible: Stages matter — seed, sprout, vine, fruit. Series over single shots.

Formats

Kit in use: The grow kit on a real sill, a real balcony — the conversion image.
Grower portraits: Real customers with what they grew. Pride, eye level.
Harvest table: What the growing becomes — the kitchen, the sauce, the meal.
Festival documentary: The seasonal layer, shot on location at the festivals themselves.

PLACEHOLDER — no photo library exists. Each format needs at least one exemplar shoot before this document is final.

Proposed — awaiting lock

07 · Mascots & Characters

Torn — so here are both futures.

The worry: cartoony. The want: growth answered. Two directions, side by side invented.

Lean toward:

A — The Stages

Not a face — a life cycle. One botanical character drawn as four growth stages, rendered like seed-packet engraving, never cartoon. It grows across packaging, email sequences, and the kit instructions themselves.

B — No mascot

The grower is the character. Photography carries all personality (section 06: grower portraits), and the brand never risks cartoony at all. Apple has no mascot; neither does pride.

PLACEHOLDER — if direction A wins, the character is commissioned from a real illustrator in the seed-packet engraving tradition; collect files, never generate a cartoon.

Proposed — awaiting lock

08 · UI Components

Built to sell grow kits.

The storefront is the first surface answered; the set is commerce-first invented.

Buttons

Product card

First-timer friendly

The Sill Kit

Seeds, soil, pot, patience. Everything a first vine needs.

$39

Email field

Barely there, on purpose.

Luxury sits flat — elevation whispers invented — from the simple-frame rule.

Shadow scale

Restcards, tiles

Raisedoverlays, hover

One border weight: 1px Mist hairline. An edge is a border, not a shadow.

Radius scale

sm · 4

md · 10

lg · 18

xl · 28

pill

Level	Used for
sm / md	Inputs, buttons, tags, tiles
lg / xl	Cards, panels, photography
pill	Tags and avatar crops only

Proposed — awaiting lock

10 · Motion

Grow-ins, never punch starts.

Slow growth — subtle rustlings, not too slow answered.

Named patterns

Grow-inentrances rise from the ground — ease-grow, 520ms

Rustleidle life — a degree or two of sway, never a wobble

Ripenstate changes fade like color arriving — no snap

Curves & durations

Token	Value	Job
ease-out	cubic-bezier(.25,1,.4,1)	Settles, exits
ease-grow	cubic-bezier(.3,1.2,.5,1)	Organic entrances
fast	140ms	Feedback
normal	280ms	State changes
grow	520ms	Entrances, reveals

Transform and opacity only; 80ms stagger for lists.
Reduced motion: entrances visible, rustles stop.

Proposed — awaiting lock

11 · Layout

The frame does the framing.

Calm margins, one downward flow, density on desktop invented — from the simple-frame rule.

Containers

Token	Width	Used for
narrow	44rem	Prose, statements
default	64rem	Section content
wide	80rem	Desktop canvas, paired columns

Desktop first (~1280–1680px); mobile is a functional fallback.
One hero per view — the trophy rule applies to layout too.
Chapters divide with the tricolor hairline.

Spacing scale

sp-1 · 0.25

sp-2 · 0.5

sp-3 · 1

sp-4 · 1.5

sp-5 · 2

sp-6 · 3

sp-7 · 4.5

sp-8 · 7

Section rhythm: clamp(4rem → 6.5rem) per chapter.

Proposed — awaiting lock

12 · Voice & Tone

We’re growers. We like to grow.

The voice, verbatim answered — short declaratives, first person plural, pride without volume.

Tone by context

Context	Tone
Storefront	Invitational, concrete — the pot, the season, the price
Kit instructions	Patient, step-by-step, encouraging
Errors	Honest, gentle, no blame
Legal / ops	Clear. The voice steps aside

Vocabulary

grow, tend, harvest, season, home, pride, real

hack, optimize, revolutionary, AI-powered, "last chance"

Sample copy

We’re growers. We like to grow.
The line — verbatim answered

You don’t need a garden. You need a sill, a seed, and a season.
Grow-curious headline invented

That didn’t take. Give it a moment and try again.
Error message invented

Proposed — awaiting lock

13 · Sub-brands

Three futures, one house.

Named but not yet live answered — "down the line, not yet". Coding drafted invented.

Tomatuhs Garden KitsThe core line — grows beyond the sill. Wordmark + plain descriptor, Leaf Green accent.

reserved

Tomatuhs SeedsHeirloom and regional varieties, culture-specific packaging. Wordmark + descriptor, Vine Red accent.

reserved

Tomatuhs Cultural PrideApparel celebrating specific cultures — Italian pieces Italian, Mexican pieces Mexican, per the never-blend rule.

reserved

Endorsed house: always the Tomatuhs wordmark plus a plain descriptor — no sub-line gets its own logo until it earns its own audience.

Proposed — awaiting lock

14 · Naming & Governance

One source, named plainly.

How the system stays alive after this ships invented.

Naming & formats

Pattern	Example
{brand}-{category}-{label}-{variant}.{ext}	tomatuhs-mark-primary-ink.svg
	tomatuhs-photo-sillkit-morning.webp
	tomatuhs-fest-muertos-colorway.css

Governance

`DESIGN.md` in this folder is the single source of truth; this site renders it; when they disagree, the site is wrong.
`tokens.css` is the machine contract — the storefront consumes it, never forks it.
Changes flow one way: spec + tokens here, then outward.

Tomatuhs

Turn the grow-curious into growers.

Simple frames, Latin trophies

Culture-specific, never blended

Real over rendered

Everything grows

Red, white, green

A quiet mark for a proud name.

Red, white, green — and the festivals that visit.

Craft or clean — pick the display voice.

Fine strokes, kept quiet.

Real. That was the whole answer.

Torn — so here are both futures.

Built to sell grow kits.

The Sill Kit

Barely there, on purpose.

Grow-ins, never punch starts.

The frame does the framing.

We’re growers. We like to grow.

Three futures, one house.

One source, named plainly.