# MDC Root Cellar — Brand Brief

> Synced from the Claude Design project ("MDC Root Cellar Design System") on 2026-08-20.
> The full design system — components, guidelines, assets — lives in [system/](./system/readme.md);
> this brief is the short version. Machine-readable tokens: [tokens.json](./tokens.json)
> (DTCG 2023 draft) and [system/tokens/](./system/tokens/colors.css) (canonical CSS).

## Overview

MDC Root Cellar is a deliberately quiet brand. The domain exists mostly as plumbing —
an inbox (`beetkeeper@mdcrootcellar.com`) that aliases other, more public accounts —
plus a Google Business listing and one simple landing page. The brand's job is to be
charming to the few people who ever see it.

**Brand idea:** a root cellar. Open rural fields, a lone stone building off an unpaved
road. Timeless, ruggedly self-sufficient, prudent in effort, planning, and storage.
Root vegetables *as stored* — dusty skins in the dark, never the bright cut-open flesh.
"The beet keeper" is the house persona. Tagline: **"Good things, kept in the dark."**

## Voice & tone

A laconic rural caretaker who finds the whole internet slightly amusing. Playful,
mysterious, irreverent — but dry, never wacky.

- Sentence case everywhere, including headings and button copy. Periods even on short lines.
- Understatement over enthusiasm. No exclamation points. No emoji, ever.
- One pun per surface, maximum ("beet keeper", "answered in season", "kept in the dark, on purpose").
- Say less. A line that can lose a word loses it.

Examples in register: empty state "Nothing down here yet." · success "Stored." ·
error "That didn't take. Try again." · CTA "Knock" · footer "No newsletter, thankfully."

## Logo

A beet inside a double-ring seal — an almanac stamp. Flat shapes, reads down to 24px.

- [system/assets/logo.svg](./system/assets/logo.svg) — primary (beet + sage)
- [logo-ink.svg](./system/assets/logo-ink.svg) / [logo-cream.svg](./system/assets/logo-cream.svg) — one-color for light / dark grounds
- [avatar-parchment-512.png](./system/assets/avatar-parchment-512.png) — for Google Business; [avatar-beet-512.png](./system/assets/avatar-beet-512.png) is the alternate

Keep clear space of at least half the ring's radius. Don't rotate, add gradients,
put text on the ring, or break the rings. On dark grounds use the cream mark.

## Color

Parchment field (`#F1E8D4`) with loam-ink text (`#251A13`). Primary is beet-skin maroon
(`#5F2B3E`) — dusky, never magenta. Supporting "crops": sage (success), dusty carrot
(links), onion-skin amber (focus/warnings), dusk blue-gray (info), clay (danger).
Everything low-chroma and warm; no pure white or black.

## Typography

**Young Serif** for display (one weight, size does the talking). **Alegreya** for body
(16px/1.6; italics for asides). **Space Mono** for the "ledger" layer — labels, buttons,
badges — uppercase and tracked at small sizes. All from Google Fonts.

## Surfaces & motion

Sturdy 1.5px borders. "Stamp" shadows: hard offsets, no blur. Small radii (4–16px);
the signature shape is **the arch** (cellar-door corners), used sparingly. Motion is
cellar-calm: fades and small rises only, 130–420ms. No bounces, spins, or parallax.

## Do / Don't

| Do | Don't |
| --- | --- |
| Flat parchment grounds | Gradients, textures, glassmorphism |
| Dusty, stored-vegetable colors | Cut-open magenta, neon anything |
| One pun per surface | A second pun |
| Whitespace as the mysterious part | Fixed/sticky chrome, dense layouts |
| Lucide icons at stroke 1.75 if needed | Emoji, icon fonts |