Brand book v2.1

Vortex IQ Brand Guidelines

The single source of truth for how Vortex IQ looks and sounds, across the marketing site, the help docs, and the in-app product surfaces. Anyone producing customer-facing work reads this first.

Updated July 2026 Owned by marketing and product vortexiq.ai/branding
Contents
  1. The North Star
  2. Logo
  3. Colour
  4. Typography
  5. Design tokens
  6. Components
  7. The four pillars
  8. Voice pillars
  9. Tone by surface
  10. The nine triggers
  11. Vocabulary
  12. Structural patterns
  13. Channel playbook
  14. Worked rewrites
  15. How to use this document

If another document contradicts this one, this one wins. Update this document; do not fork the brand in your channel. Questions, corrections, and asset requests: hey@vortexiq.ai.

01

Start with the promise.

Every design and every sentence exists to make one claim believable. If a decision does not serve this line, it is the wrong decision.

Vortex IQ is the world's first AI Operating System for e-commerce.

One command centre that detects what's wrong, explains why, and helps you fix it safely, across every platform you run.

AI OS and AI Operating System are the public umbrella. Use them. This is the brand promise, not internal lingo.

AI

Not analytics, not dashboards. Active, not passive. The system does the watching so your team does the deciding.

Operating System

The thing your stack runs on, not another tool you bolt on beside it. That distinction carries the whole positioning.

For e-commerce

A narrow category, named in the first line. Not for businesses. Not for retailers. Specifically e-commerce.

One loop, five steps
01Detectwatch every KPI live
02Diagnosefind the root cause
03Actturn findings into work
04Deployapproval-gated, reversible
05Learnremember and compound

Four pillars run this loop. When both numbers appear together, keep them reconciled: four pillars, five steps.

03

Purple leads. Everything else supports.

These are the exact tokens the product and the website run on. Status colours carry meaning, so they never appear as decoration.

Brand
--brand-purple#5529d6Primary, buttons, links
--brand-purple-mid#392bd5Hover, secondary
--brand-purple-light#a58af3Soft accent, gradient stop
--brand-purple-deep#0c061fDark backgrounds, footer
--brand-blue#004794Secondary accent, sparing
Surfaces
--white#ffffffBase canvas
--surface-soft#f6f5f3Alternating sections
--surface-tint#f3f0fcBrand wash, callouts
--neutral-2#e8e6e3Warm panel
Text
--primary#222325Headings and ink
--text-bodyrgba(0,0,0,.60)Body copy
--text-fadedrgba(0,0,0,.40)Labels and metadata
--border-darkrgba(0,0,0,.10)Hairline borders

Pure black is never used.

Status
--success#1f9e54Healthy, fixed, live
--danger#d23f31Incident, revenue at risk
--warning#c47d12Watching, anomaly
Gradients
--brand-gradientlinear-gradient(135deg,#5529d6,#0c061f 50%,#5529d6 75%)Brand cards, icon tiles, the banner above the footer
--brand-gradient-softlinear-gradient(135deg,#a58af3,#5529d6)Gradient text, underline sweeps, progress states
Contrast rule. Purple text sits on white or the purple tint, never on the mid purple. White text sits on purple or purple-deep. Every text and background pair we ship clears WCAG AA at body size.
04

Geist, end to end.

Geist sets every headline and paragraph. Geist Mono handles eyebrows, labels, metadata, and code: the small, precise type that gives the brand its technical edge.

Aa
Geist
Display, headings, and running text. Weights 400, 500, 600, 700.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789
Aa
Geist Mono
Eyebrows, labels, metadata, and code. Weights 400, 500.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789

Stylistic sets ss01, ss03 and ss04 are enabled site-wide via font-feature-settings.

The scale
TokenSizeWeightUse
display / h1clamp(2.6rem, 6vw, 4.6rem)500Page hero, one per page
h2clamp(2rem, 3.8vw, 3.1rem)500Section headings
h31.18rem600Card titles, sub-headings
lede1.22rem400The paragraph under a heading
body1.0625rem400Running text
eyebrow0.72rem mono500Section label above a heading
label0.72rem mono500Chips, metadata, step numbers
05

The rest of the system.

Radius, layout rhythm, elevation, and motion. Four small sets that do most of the work of making a new page look like it belongs.

Radius
--radius10pxCards, panels, inputs
--radius-pill200pxEvery button and chip
product visuals14px to 18pxFloating console cards
Elevation
--shadow-smChips, small tiles
--shadow-mdRaised cards
--shadow-lgHover state, floating visuals
--shadow-brandPrimary button hover
Layout
--max1180pxContainer width
--bento-gap30pxGrid gap, every bento
.section7.5rem 0Vertical section rhythm
nav height4.5remFixed header
Motion
--easecubic-bezier(.16,1,.3,1)Every transition
hover lift-1px to -3pxButtons and cards
reveal600ms, 22pxScroll-in sections
reduced motionoffAlways honoured
06

The parts we build pages from.

Buttons are always pills. Cards are always 10px. Nothing here needs inventing twice. Everything below is built from the tokens in sections 03 to 05.

Buttons

Verb-led labels, one to three words. One primary CTA per section. The ghost variant is always the secondary of a pair, never on its own.

Chips, badges, and status
Default AI OS Live, 200+ connectors Revenue at risk Anomaly

Status colour always maps to state, never to decoration. Green is healthy or recovered, red is revenue at risk, amber is watching.

Cards and building blocks
Feature

Nerve Centre

Watches every KPI live across 200+ connectors.

Tint

Vortex Mind

The memory graph that compounds, per store.

Brand gradient

Ask Viq™

Conversational agent, cited back to the graph.

icongradient tile
3step number
65% increase in operational efficiency, reported by merchants on the platform for 12 months or more.
Signature product visuals

Two visuals carry the product story and should appear on any surface that needs to show the loop.

07

Name the mechanism, every time.

Do not just say what we do, name how. A sceptic who can file the how away stops asking. These four nouns are the how, and they are always title-case and never paraphrased.

PillarMetaphorWhat it isHow to write it
Nerve CentreEyesThe detection layer. Every KPI, live, across 200+ connectors.Always title-case. Always paired with real-time or continuous.
Vortex MindJudgementThe diagnostic and memory layer. It investigates the finding, returns the root cause, and remembers every signal, fix, and decision, per store.Always paired with explains why or root cause. Its memory graph learns and gets sharper over time.
Ask ViqVoiceThe conversational interface, cited back to the graph it answered from.Ask Viq™ on the first prominent mention of a page. Bare Ask Viq after that.
Vortex AgentsHandsBuild and manage the AI agents that monitor, analyse, and act across the stack, with staging, backup, and one-click rollback around every change.Always paired with AI agents or act safely. Staging, backup, and rollback are the harness they run inside. Agent Hub is retired.
Say four pillars, not four modules. The four run one continuous five-step loop, so when both numbers appear together, keep them reconciled: four pillars, five steps. AI OS is the umbrella over all four, and it always takes a noun: the AI OS for commerce, not a bare AI OS. The Eyes, Voice, Hands metaphor is approved shorthand for a marketing surface. Use it sparingly, and not in docs.
08

Four qualities, testable line by line.

Voice is what stays constant everywhere we write. Run any sentence against these four. If it fails one, it is not finished.

PILLAR 01

Confident, not arrogant

We have built this for global brands. We know the chaos because we have fixed it. Write from that authority, but never lecture, never condescend, never imply the reader is failing.

YESWe've lived the chaos, fixed the chaos, and built the AI system that stops the chaos.
NOMost e-commerce teams get this completely wrong.
PILLAR 02

Anti-chaos, action-led

The brand exists because running e-commerce should not feel like fighting fires. Every line should imply less work, less anxiety, more control. Lead with verbs. Stop X, start Y is on-brand and repeatable.

YESStop fighting fires. Protect revenue and automate ops.
NOOur advanced platform uses cutting-edge AI to deliver insights.
PILLAR 03

Concrete over abstract

Numbers, names, mechanisms. If a sentence could appear on any SaaS landing page, rewrite it until it could only appear on ours.

YESReduced quote turnaround by 96% for an Adobe Commerce B2B merchant.
NOPowerful AI-driven insights for the modern merchant.
PILLAR 04

Warm, not corporate

Vortex IQ is built by people who lived the problem. The voice should feel like a senior peer pulling up a chair, not a vendor pitching from a stage. Contractions, second person, plain words.

YESYour store is already generating signals every second. It's time those signals worked for you, not against you.
NOVortex IQ enables organisations to optimise their digital commerce operations.
09

Voice stays. Tone shifts.

Same brand, dialled differently for the surface. A hero rallies. A docs page explains. An error message apologises softly and names the next step.

SurfaceDial upDial downAnchor
Marketing heroAnti-chaosConcrete, concision beats numbers hereStop fighting fires. Protect revenue and automate ops.
Product pagesConcrete, name mechanisms and proofNothing, all four run highFour pillars, one platform. Eyes, Voice, Hands.
Help docsConcrete plus ConfidentAnti-chaos, less rallying and more explainingThe Shopify connector is one of 200+ feeding the Nerve Centre.
In-app labelsConcrete, short and specificWarm, no chatter inside buttonsRun Audit, not Get started with your audit journey.
Empty states and errorsWarmConfident, apologise softly when something is wrongWe couldn't reach Shopify just now. Reconnecting in 30s.
SocialAll four, the format demands voice densityNothing, but keep it shortOne mechanism named per post. One proof point per post.
10

Nine triggers, mapped to the funnel.

Where the reader stands changes what they need to hear. Use this as a checklist before anything ships.

TOFU: "Am I in the right place?"

The reader has never heard of us. They scan in half a second. One job: make them feel named, seen, and at ease.

Trigger 01: Frame the specific category

Name the exact bucket the reader sits in. A specific role plus a specific pain, never a general audience.

YESFor e-commerce ops leads who can't see across their stack.
NOBusiness intelligence for everyone.

Trigger 02: Identity matching, not identity attacking

Mirror who they already think they are. Never open with "you're doing it wrong". That wakes the defensive brain and they are gone.

YESYou've already built a smart stack. Vortex IQ makes it work as one.
NOMost teams have set up their stack completely wrong.

Trigger 03: Fluency

Short sentences. Familiar words. Predictable rhythm. Read every top-of-funnel paragraph out loud, and wherever you stumble, rewrite. Non-negotiable on the homepage hero.

YESYour store is talking. Until now, no one's been listening.
NOVortex IQ uses multi-modal anomaly detection across heterogeneous commerce platforms to surface latent operational signals.

MOFU: "Will it actually work for me?"

The reader is interested and is now testing plausibility. We are not asking for the sale, we are earning the right to.

Trigger 04: Name the unique mechanism

Don't just say what we do, name how. Give it a noun so a sceptic can file the how away and stop asking. Our nouns are the four pillars.

YESThe Nerve Centre watches it. Vortex Mind explains it. Vortex Agents ship the fix behind staging.
NOOur platform monitors your data and provides recommendations.

Trigger 05: Typically atypical

Strong claims need calibrating language so the brain does not reject them. Add time frames. Add ratios. Prefer "more than half" to an exact multiple that sounds invented.

YESIn one Adobe Commerce B2B engagement, quote turnaround dropped 96% over the first quarter.
NO100x faster quotes.

Trigger 06: Boring by design

Kill objections in monotone. Flat, factual prose signals this is not a big deal. Drama signals the opposite. Two or three lines per objection, no exclamation marks.

ObjectionAnswer
Will AI replace my team?Vortex IQ does the watching. Your team makes the calls. Every action ships through human approval unless you say otherwise.
Will I lose control of my store?Every change runs through staging first. Backup runs continuously. Rollback is one click.
How is this different from analytics tools?Analytics tells you what happened. The AI OS tells you what's wrong, why, and helps you fix it.
Do I need a developer?No. Connect your stack from the UI. The AI OS handles the rest.

BOFU: "Should I buy?"

The reader believes. Now they need to feel safe saying yes.

Trigger 07: Choice framing

Three options, ours in the middle. The brain pattern-matches on three. Make the other two real, not strawmen, so the choice reads as honest.

YESThree ways to start: keep firefighting in your current stack, hire a contractor at £4k a month to watch it, or start your free 14-day Vortex IQ trial in 10 minutes.
NOVortex IQ has many ways to start.

Trigger 08: Transparent trade-offs

Name what is not included. Result, but limitation. Stating the limit builds trust faster than any feature list.

YESVortex Agents catch most regressions before they hit production, but they can't catch what your theme partner pushes outside our staging.
NOTotal protection across every change.

Trigger 09: Big proof, small bite

One boulder, not a wall. A grid of twelve logos triggers suspicion. One specific, credible, named proof point lets both the fast and the slow brain sign off. Pick the one that fits the audience, and show one, never all four.

11

The words we use, and the ones we never do.

Half of brand consistency is vocabulary discipline. Run any draft through this table before it ships.

UseNot
AI OS, AI Operating Systemplatform, tool, app, software
commerce, e-commerceonline retail, e-tail, digital commerce
merchantclient, customer, user, end-user
ops lead, growth lead, founderstakeholder, decision-maker, executive
connectorintegration, plugin, app
Nerve Centre, Vortex Mind, Ask Viq, Vortex Agentsany paraphrase, any lower-case version
Ask Viq™ on first prominent mentionAskViq, Ask VIQ, ask viq
detect, explain, fixmonitor, analyse, recommend
safe, predictable, controlledbulletproof, guaranteed, foolproof
over 200 connectors, in the AI OS cataloguemany, all the major, 215+, 70+
catalogue, mappedsupported, integrated
14-day free trial, free for 14 daysfree forever, freemium
four pillarsfour modules, four products

On "catalogue" versus "supported": the catalogue has manifests, cards, and audits ready to light up. Production coverage is broadest where merchants connect first. "Supported" implies production-tested for all, which is not the claim we are making.

Banned phrases
PhraseWhy
powered by AIWe are AI. This is filler.
leverage, leveragingSay use.
best-in-class, world-class, industry-leadingUnfalsifiable, so it reads as noise.
seamless, frictionless, effortlessEvery vendor says it, so it says nothing.
transform your business overnightFails the calibration test in Trigger 05.
unlock insightsOverworked past the point of meaning.
robust, powerful, scalableEmpty without a specific number beside them.
synergy, ecosystem play, holisticConsultant language, not merchant language.
most teams get this wrongBreaks Voice Pillar 01 and Trigger 02.
free foreverRetired June 2026. The offer is a 14-day free trial.

"Start free" stays valid as a CTA, because the trial does start free.

Punctuation
House rule

Never use an em dash. Never use an en dash either.

Not in marketing copy, not in docs, not in CMS content, not in a social post. The em dash is overused, it reads as machine-written to a lot of readers, and the voice prefers shorter, more declarative sentences anyway. A hyphen covers every legitimate compound case.

Where you would reach for oneUse insteadExample
Parenthetical asidecomma, commaVortex IQ, the AI OS for commerce, runs on every connector you have.
Emphasis or summary clausecolon or full stopOne operating system. Detect, explain, fix.
Strong aside or clarificationparenthesesConnect your stack (10 minutes max). The Nerve Centre does the rest.
Range or span"to", or a hyphen5 to 15 minutes. Q2-Q3.
Compound modifierhyphenAI-driven, 24-7, top-quartile.
Owned hooks

House style. Repeat them, they build recall.

Stop fighting fires.The anti-chaos opener. Also: stop flying blind, stop chasing problems.
Connect. Activate. Optimise.The three-step process.
Detect. Explain. Fix.The product loop.
Eyes, Voice, Hands.The pillar metaphor. Marketing surfaces only, not docs.
The AI OS for commerce.The elevator line.
Built for merchants, agencies, and tech partners.The audience triad.
12

Four structures that carry most of our writing.

When you are staring at a blank page, pick the pattern that matches the format and fill it in. The structure is already approved, so you only have to be good at the sentences.

Pattern A

StoryBrand

Long-form: landing pages, sales decks, video scripts

  1. Character: name the merchant and what they want
  2. Problem: external (fragmented tools), internal (overwhelmed team), philosophical (this shouldn't feel like firefighting)
  3. Guide: empathy (we've lived it) plus authority (the logos, the case studies)
  4. Plan: Connect, Activate, Optimise
  5. Call to action: direct (start free) plus transitional (see a sample report)
  6. Success: what life looks like running Vortex IQ
  7. Failure: what it costs to keep doing it the old way
Pattern B

PEACE soundbite

Short-form: social, ads, opening paragraphs

  1. Problem: the one most readers nod at
  2. Empathy: we know how this feels
  3. Authority: one credible proof point
  4. CTA: one clear next step
  5. Evidence: one quantified outcome
Pattern C

Three-option close

Bottom-of-funnel CTAs and pricing

  1. Always offer exactly three
  2. Position ours as the middle
  3. Make the other two real options, not strawmen
  4. Mark the middle one, the way pricing marks Growth as most popular
Pattern D

Card body

KPI and connector cards in the docs

  1. Card class line, category, tier
  2. At a glance
  3. Calculation
  4. Worked example
  5. Sibling cards
  6. Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard
  7. Known limitations and merchant FAQs
  8. Tracked live in Nerve Centre, the closing CTA
13

What changes, surface by surface.

The rules below sit on top of everything above. Where a channel carries extra legal or trust risk, the voice gets tighter, not louder.

Marketing site

vortexiq.ai

  • Lead every page with the AI OS framing.
  • The hero must pass the half-second scan test.
  • One big proof point per page, never a wall of logos.
  • One headline price per pricing tier, with the annual maths in small print.
  • Keep Growth as the marked middle of the self-serve path.

Comparison hub

/vs and /vs/{competitor}

  • Facts only. Every competitor claim sourced to their own public pages and cited on the page.
  • No disparagement. Describe accurately what they do well.
  • Complementary, not superior. They own one slice, we are the cross-stack operating layer.
  • One clear CTA at the end, the free audit.

Limits and guardrails

/trust/limits

  • Boring by design. State the hard rules in flat prose. The calm tone is the message.
  • Transparent trade-offs. Ranges not guarantees, live connector counts not roadmap totals.
  • Keep safety mechanics scoped. Staging and one-click rollback are BigCommerce, Shopify, and Adobe Commerce. Approval-gating is universal.

Help docs

docs.vortexiq.ai

  • Open each connector landing with the AI OS connection: this connector is one of 200+ feeding the Nerve Centre.
  • Merchant-friendly does not mean stripping the brand frame. Keep the pillar names.
  • Avoid jargon the merchant will not recognise. Never avoid our own product names.
  • Worked examples stay concrete and merchant-readable.

In-app

app.vortexiq.ai

  • Buttons: one to three words, verb-led. Run Audit, Connect, View finding.
  • Empty states: warm and specific. "No findings yet. Connect your first source to put the Nerve Centre to work."
  • Errors: monotone and factual, and always name the next step.
  • Alerts: lead with impact in plain English. "Catalogue drift on 14 SKUs. £8,400 at risk."
  • Onboarding: name the AI OS on the first screen and set the frame.

Social

LinkedIn and X

  • All four voice pillars run high. The format rewards voice density.
  • One mechanism named per post.
  • One proof point per post.
  • Short. If it needs a scroll, it needs a cut.
14

The rules, applied.

Five real edits from our own surfaces. Use them as anchors when you are unsure whether a draft is on brand.

Homepage hero
Before

The AI Operating System That Runs Your Entire eCommerce Operation. Deploy a 24/7 Digital Workforce that connects every app in your stack. We give your business the Eyes to monitor every KPI, the Voice to strategize, and the Hands to execute tasks automatically.

After

The AI Operating System for E-Commerce. Detect what's broken. Understand why. Fix it safely. Across every platform you run.

The original is strong on authority and specifics, but the subhead is one long sentence that fails the fluency test. Eyes, Voice, Hands belongs in the next section, not the hero.
KPI card opener
Before

Active Subscribers (Est.) is a customer lifecycle metric tracked from ActiveCampaign data.

After

The Nerve Centre tracks Active Subscribers (Est.) from your ActiveCampaign account in real time. When the number moves, Vortex Mind investigates why, and Ask Viq acts on the finding.

Same merchant-readable explanation, but it now ships the brand frame and chains three pillars. Costs nothing in clarity.
In-app empty state
Before

You don't have any findings yet. To get started, please connect your first data source by going to the Connectors page in your Settings.

After

No findings yet. Connect your first source to put the Nerve Centre to work.

Shorter, names the mechanism, one CTA.
Email subject line
Before

Vortex IQ: your weekly performance report is ready

After

What the Nerve Centre found in your store this week

Names the mechanism, leads with the value, no brand-stuffing.
Pricing display
Before

Starter £39/month. Save 20%. £199/month.

After

Growth $1,199/mo, most popular. Billed annually at $14,388. Save 20% a year.

One headline figure carries the card. The toggle switches monthly and annual, and the total lives in small print. Never two prices competing for the eye.
15

How to use this document.

Five ways in, depending on what you are about to make.

Writing for any surface

Read section 08 (voice pillars), section 09 (the tone modifier for your channel), section 11 (vocabulary), and the relevant example in section 14.

Designing a page or screen

Read sections 03 to 06. If a component already exists, use it. If it does not, build it from the tokens rather than inventing new ones.

Editing existing copy

Run it through the vocabulary table in section 11, then check the trigger relevant to its funnel position in section 10.

Using an AI writing assistant

Give it the Markdown version of this file as the house style. The em dash rule and the banned phrase list are the two it most often needs told twice.

Disagree with something here? Update this document. Do not fork the brand in your channel. Spotted drift on the live product? Flag it at hey@vortexiq.ai. The cost of an inconsistent voice is trust. The cost of one fix is ten minutes.