Solari.
The calm in your week.
A working manual for designers, copywriters, engineers, partners, and any future hire who wants to make something on behalf of this brand.
Contents.
Brand essence.
Solari is the meal-planning app that turns the cognitive load of “what’s for dinner this week?” into a 90-second Sunday ritual — calmly, quietly, and without trying to fix everything else in your life.
Mission
Take the cognitive load of weekly meal planning off your plate — calmly, quietly, and without trying to fix everything else.
Promise
You’ll feel slightly less stressed about dinner this week — and a little more proud of the family meals (and small moments) you pulled off — without doing more work.
Two ancient roots
| Latin · solari (verb) | To console, comfort, soothe. Same root as solace. This is the Calm pillar named in the language itself. |
| Italian · Solari (surname) | Land exposed to the sun. Sunny disposition. From sole. This is the Quiet Connection pillar — sun-warmed kitchen, family at the table. |
Five things we’ll always be.
Every product, marketing, and design decision should map back to one or more of these. If a feature doesn’t support any of these pillars, it doesn’t belong.
The logo system.
A rising sun cradled in a soup pot — the two etymologies (sun, soothe) drawn in one mark. Sage-and-amber on cream is the master lockup. Single-color variants exist for constrained surfaces.
Master mark
Lockups & variants
Clear space & minimum size
Reserve clear space equal to the height of the “sun” element on all sides. Never use the master mark below 24px tall — drop to the favicon variant instead. Never recolor the mark outside of the approved palette. Never apply effects (drop shadow, glow, outline, gradient).
Production files & downloads
Final, production-ready files for print, embroidery, and swag. The wordmark text is outlined to vector paths, so there is no font to install and every file scales losslessly on a transparent background. Pick the set by the background it sits on. SVG is best for vendors and large format. PNGs are provided at 2048px and 1024px on the long edge.
For cream & light backgrounds
For green & dark backgrounds
Color tokens for print
Keep clear space around any logo of at least the height of the bowl. Don’t recolor, rotate, or add effects. The two color sets already cover light and dark surfaces. Need another size? The SVG re-exports at any resolution, lossless.
The palette.
Cream is our default surface — never pure white. Sage carries primary actions. Amber carries warmth, sun, and moments. Terracotta is reserved. Ink is where text lives.
Primary
Surface & ink
Accents
Section coding
| Use | Color | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Primary meals (DINNER, COOK) | Sage 700 / Sage 50 | The center of the brand promise. |
| Batch / leftover / moment | Amber 500 / Amber 50 | Warm secondary — sun-coded. |
| Takeout / skipped / muted | Cream 200 / Ink 500 | Neutral, never punitive. |
| Year-end cookbook surfaces | Terracotta | Reserved warmth — only here. |
Typography.
Big serif headlines, comfortable body, generous whitespace. The app feels like a thoughtful magazine, not a productivity tool. Italic-serif is our secret weapon — used for emphasis, never for ornament.
Hierarchy at a glance
| Role | Family | Size · weight |
|---|---|---|
| Display headline | DM Serif Display | 56–96px / 400 |
| Section title | DM Serif Display | 32–48px / 400 |
| Subhead | Source Serif 4 | 20–24px / 500 |
| Lead paragraph | Source Serif 4 | 18–20px / 400 |
| Body | Source Serif 4 or Inter | 15–17px / 400 |
| Eyebrow / label | Inter | 11–12px / 600 · 0.16em tracking |
| Meta / caption | Inter | 11–13px / 400 |
Layout & spacing.
Generous whitespace. The product breathes. Density signals overwhelm; we are the opposite of overwhelm.
Spacing scale
Radius
| Token | Px | Use |
|---|---|---|
| r-sm | 8px | Tags, pills (with full radius for chips) |
| r-md | 12px | Cards, inputs, secondary surfaces |
| r-lg | 18px | Hero cards, primary surfaces |
| r-xl | 28px | Pricing card, marquee blocks |
| r-full | 999px | Buttons, chips, tab bar |
Voice & tone.
Warm. Confident. Quietly clever. We sound like Sarah’s smartest mom-friend who happens to know about meal planning. Not a marketer. Not a coach. Not a therapist.
Tone shifts by context
| Context | Example |
|---|---|
| Sunday Setup push | “Your week is ready — review in 90 seconds.” |
| Onboarding welcome | “Welcome. Let’s take dinner off your plate.” |
| AI nudge inline | “You’ve had pasta twice. Try the salmon you saved Tuesday?” |
| Cook log prompt | “How was the chicken katsu? Anyone have notes?” |
| Error | “This one’s on us. Want to try again?” |
| Marketing hero | “The Sunday meal plan, done in 90 seconds. By Sunday at 5pm.” |
| Renewal email | “Your annual subscription renews Friday. No action needed.” |
- “Tonight” / “this week” / “Sunday” — concrete time anchors.
- “Your family” / “your version.”
- “In 90 seconds.” Quantified ease.
- “Try” / “Want to” / “Sound good?” Invitations, never commands.
- “Mason hates mushrooms” — specific, never abstract.
- “Revolutionary,” “game-changing,” “transform.”
- “AI-powered,” “smart,” “intelligent.” (The product IS. We don’t advertise it.)
- “You should” / “Don’t forget!”
- “Streak,” “score,” “rank.”
- “Just tap here.” Minimizes effort dishonestly.
- “Hey there!” Overly casual.
On exclamation points: one per page maximum. Zero in error states.
Tagline system.
Primary first, then variations by surface. Always Solari-specific. Never reach for the obvious meal-app pun.
Anti-patterns.
What we never do. These are non-negotiable. They are the brand.
- One Sunday push, day-of prep notifications, and that’s it.
- Quiet hours on by default.
- Every AI suggestion has Accept / Reject / Modify.
- Recipes flow between connections; behavior stays in households.
- The metric is “nights at home,” framed positively.
- No streaks. Never “you’ve eaten home 5 days in a row.”
- No leaderboards. No “top 10% of families.”
- No social feed.
- No expansion into chores or schedules.
- No notification spam. No 8:42am Tuesday push.
- No guilt copy. Never “you ordered takeout 3 times.”
- Sell the result — a calm Sunday — not the engine.
- Word-of-mouth from real moms over influencers.
- Specific over generic, every time.
- Restrained palette: cream + sage + amber. Hold the line.
- No “AI-powered” front-and-center.
- No “transform your family.”
- No countdown-timer urgency.
- No before/after diet promises.
- No emojis in headlines. Sparingly elsewhere; never in errors.
The name.
Solari · soh-LAR-ee · three syllables, every American gets it right on first read. Pattern-matches to Italian surnames (Ferrari, Maserati) — feels familiar even though it’s distinctive.
Always
- Capitalized: Solari. Not solari, not SOLARI, not solari.
- The brand name typed in DM Serif Display in headlines and lockups.
- The wordmark always paired with a period in marketing surfaces (“Solari.”) — calm, conclusive, intentional.
- Domain: solari.family. Defensive: getsolari.com, hellosolari.com.
Never
- “The Solari app.” It’s just Solari.
- Combined with “app,” “AI,” or “smart” in the wordmark.
- Pronounced soh-LAR-eye. (It’s -ee, not -eye.)
The product is the marketing. The product is the brand.
Make a calm Sunday. The rest follows.
Solari · brand guidelines · v1.0 · April 2026