# Brand: Niklaus Gerber
The personal brand in one page: what it says, how it looks, how it sounds. Applies to the website, slides, documents, social cards, CVs, and anything else with his name on it.
## 1. Positioning
| | |
|---|---|
| Name | **Niklaus Gerber** (always both names; never “Nik”, never in capitals) |
| Role label | **Digital & Platform Executive** (matches CV and LinkedIn; `Digital & Platform Executive` in HTML) |
| Tagline | **Twenty years making digital stick in organisations not built for it.** Word for word, with its full stop. |
| Scope | “across Europe”, never a number of markets |
| Employer names | Vorwerk Home (never “Vorwerk”), NZZ |
| Domain | niklausgerber.com (no `www`) |
The current-role sentence lives on the home page and is kept current there; the role label and tagline do not change with a job.
## 2. The mark
The **N** of the title over the **5px rule**: the same shape as the home page’s name over its rule. Indigo ground, off-white N, same in light and dark.
| File (`icons/`) | Use |
|---|---|
| `favicon.svg` | Browser tab. Rounded square, N enlarged, no rule (too small to read) |
| `favicon.ico`, `favicon-16/32/48` | Legacy tabs and crawlers |
| `apple-touch-icon.png` (180) | iOS home screen. Full bleed, iOS rounds it |
| `android-chrome-192/512` | Android, “any” and “maskable”; N and rule inside the 80% safe zone |
| `safari-pinned-tab.svg` | One colour; tinted `#26357A` by `mask-icon` |
| `site.webmanifest` | Name, theme, and background `#F5F3EF` |
In slides and documents the mark is set as type: Instrument Sans 500 **N** with a rule under it as wide as the letter (3px at 26px). Never redraw it, outline it, or put it in a circle.
Head snippet for any page on the domain:
```html
```
## 3. Colour and type
Indigo `#26357A` is the only colour; everything else is warm neutral (canvas `#F5F3EF`, ink `#141414`, secondary `#5A564F`, hairline `#E0DDD8`). Instrument Sans for anything you navigate or scan, Newsreader for anything you read. Full values in `../tokens/`.
**Fonts** (`fonts/`, both SIL Open Font License, free to install and share):
- `static/`: install these for PowerPoint, Keynote, Word, and Pages: Instrument Sans (Regular), Instrument Sans Medium, Newsreader (Regular, Italic, and SemiBold, which Office lists as Newsreader Bold). Install the static files only, never the variable ones as well.
- The variable `.ttf` files: for Figma and design tools.
- Where the fonts cannot be installed (someone else’s laptop), the fallbacks are Arial and Georgia. Send PDFs to people outside.
## 4. Share card
1200 × 630, one per page, rendered by the site’s `make-share-cards.sh`. Indigo ground, name top left, role label top right, title bottom-anchored in off-white Instrument Sans 500, the URL under a rule. Same card in light and dark. Example: `share-card-home.png`.
**Person image** (`person-image.png`, 800 × 800, served as `/niklaus-gerber-card.png`): the picture search engines and the home page’s JSON-LD use for him. Indigo, name in Instrument Sans Medium over the rule, role label in lavender. Replace it with a portrait only by decision.
## 5. Imagery
Only images that carry information: real screens, real covers, real diagrams. No stock photos, no decorative headers, no AI illustrations. Devices carry their own real frame. In dark mode photos dim to 88%.
## 6. Voice and house style
The voice: direct, calm, concrete. A claim, then the reason. No hype, no hedges.
- **British spelling** (organisation, programme, behaviour). **Full forms** in prose (“it is”, “do not”); contractions only in quotations and spoken prompts.
- **Serial comma.** “and”, not “&”, in running text. Curly quotes and apostrophes. “one-on-one”, never “1:1”.
- **No em dashes** in own text. Quotations stay word for word.
- **Full stops:** sentences end with one (ledes, descriptions, captions, list descriptors). Labels, titles, buttons, tile names, slide labels, and section headings take none. A statement headline (a full sentence set large) keeps its full stop.
- **Case:** page, article, and deck titles in Title Case; everything else in sentence case. No capitals for emphasis, no letter-spaced capitals.
- **Facts:** never add a fact, number, or anecdote that is not in the source. Never “helped” or “contributed to” for his own work.
- **Public safety:** stories from work never name an employer’s internal systems, colleagues, products, prices, issue counts, site defects, or a number of markets.
- **No availability language** (“open to roles”) on public surfaces.
- **Trust wording:** “no cookies, no third-party trackers”, never “no analytics”.
## 7. Surfaces at a glance
| Surface | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Website | `../web/` |
| Slides for web and PowerPoint | `../presentation/` |
| Spreadsheets | `../tokens/sheets-theme.csv` |
| Documents | Headings Instrument Sans Medium, text Newsreader 11/16pt, indigo for links only, rules instead of boxes |
| Social and share cards | Section 4 |