ashling.tech · Brand & Style Guide · v1 · August 2026
The design system behind the personal brand of Ashling Struve: creative marketing operations. One idea drives everything — creative warmth × systems precision — and every choice below encodes one side of that pairing or the other.
Ashling's positioning is "develop the idea, build the campaign, prove it worked" — a creative who builds systems. The brand expresses that duality typographically and chromatically: a warm serif and a marigold spark carry the creative side; petrol teal, monospace labels, and grid motifs carry the operations side. When making any new asset, ask: does this element belong to the warm half or the precise half? Give it that half's tools.
Two palettes, one system. Petrol is the workhorse (links, labels, data); marigold is the spark — spend it sparingly, one accent moment per view. Neutrals are teal-biased, never pure grey. This page renders in whichever theme your device prefers; both palettes are documented below.
#F4F6F5Page background — cool paper#FDFEFDCards and panels#16303BHeadings and body text#5E7178Secondary text#D8E0DFBorders, rules, grid motif#14555EPrimary — links, labels, data#E3ECEBHighlight panel fill#D98A20The spark — accents only#9A5F0EAccent-colored small text#0E1F26Deep petrol night#142932Cards and panels#E9EFEEHeadings and body text#93A7ACSecondary text#24404ABorders, rules, grid motif#6FB4B0Primary on dark grounds#1A333DHighlight panel fill#E8A13DWarmed for dark grounds#EFB868Accent-colored small textMarigold appears once per screen as a deliberate moment — the period after the name, a tag, a border. If it's everywhere, it's nowhere.
Anything functional (links, labels, data callouts) is petrol. Anything expressive (the spark, "also true" flourishes) is marigold.
Every neutral carries a slight teal bias so the whole page feels chosen, not defaulted.
Never ship an asset that only works in light mode. Dark mode lifts petrol to #6FB4B0 and warms marigold — don't naively invert.
Three faces, three jobs. The pairing itself is the brand: a soft serif (creative) set against a technical mono (systems), with a clean sans doing the everyday work between them. All three are on Google Fonts.
Headlines, section titles, card titles. The warmth of the brand lives here. Hero scale: clamp(44px, 7vw, 76px). Section scale: 28–38px. Card scale: 20–24px.
Runs marketing as a department of one across three service brands — combining brand storytelling and campaign execution with the CRM administration, automation, and reporting systems that turn a marketing push into measurable pipeline.
All running text at 15–17px. Keep measure near 65 characters. Bold sparingly, for thesis statements only.
Tags, eyebrows, metadata, contact lines, footers. 12–14px, uppercase, letterspaced. This is the "systems voice" — anything that reads like data gets the mono.
Content aligns left in a 920–960px container with 24px side padding. Nothing is centered except within components.
Every section opens with a Fraunces title and a 1px line running to the right margin — the signature structural device.
A faint 48px grid (line color at 35% opacity, radially masked) sits behind hero areas only — a quiet nod to the spreadsheet roots.
10px radius, 1px line border, surface fill, 24–28px padding. Metadata footers separated by a dashed rule.
Mono eyebrow labels (ANALYTICS, AUTOMATION, LIVE PROJECT) classify content honestly — never decorative numbering.
One orchestrated page-load rise (staggered 80ms), nothing scroll-jacked, and everything respects reduced-motion.
Body copy in muted Instrument Sans: problem, what was built, what changed — three beats, no filler.
First person, confident, concrete. The voice does the same job as the type pairing: warm delivery, precise content. Puns are welcome when they're earned ("Donut know what you want? Roll for it") — one per piece, never forced.
"Develop the idea. Build the campaign. Prove it worked."Three-beat thesis statements with periods.
"Sometimes the best marketing fix isn't a campaign."Insight framed as a small twist.
"An idea born the day a tree fell through my house."Real stories, told plainly, with humor intact.
"Results-driven marketing professional leveraging synergies…"No résumé-speak, no leverage, no synergy.
"Passionate about delivering best-in-class solutions!"No exclamation-point enthusiasm; let specifics carry it.
Unverifiable claims and inflated metrics.Every claim on the site maps to something real.
ASHLING STRUVE in Fraunces 700 with +0.03em tracking, or the domain "Ashling.tech" — always with a marigold period/spark.
Google Fonts: Fraunces, Instrument+Sans, Spline+Sans+Mono.
10px radius, 1px solid line for cards; 999px radius for chips and buttons; dashed line for metadata separators.
Mono, uppercase, letterspaced: ASHLING STRUVE · LAKE BLUFF, ILLINOIS