DevPulse Brand guidelines

Tech, in person.

DevPulse is a tech community for the start-up and tech scene. We run evening meetups: talks, food and drinks, for people who build.

Founders, developers, designers and everyone else making things in start-ups and tech companies come to learn, meet their peers and be seen. Speakers bring the talks; host companies open their doors for an evening.

Zwolle is home today, and the events happen in and around the city. The identity is built to travel: nothing in it depends on one place. One day there may be a conference, and every part of this system is made to scale to it.

One word. A pulse runs through it.

what

The logo is devpulse in JetBrains Mono ExtraBold, lowercase. Nothing else: no symbol, no caret.

when

Everywhere the brand signs: posters, feeds, slides, badges, the site.

how

On screen a pulse of colour runs through the word, letter by letter, every 2.8 seconds. In print, in PDFs and wherever motion is off, use the still.

Room to breathe. Never too small.

what

One cell of clear space, a minimum size per version, and a rule for when the pulse moves.

when

Every time you place the wordmark.

how

Measure clear space in cells of the word itself: one cell is about the width of one letter. Nothing enters it, not even a partner logo.

Two primary grounds. One colour for the rest.

what

The ramp on paper and on ink. A single colour everywhere else.

when

Paper and ink grounds take the ramp. Cobalt, apricot and signal grounds, and one-colour print (stamps, receipts, embroidery, engraving), take one colour.

how

On ink, the ramp flips: dev turns paper and the pulse starts in warm light.

downloadevery version · zip

SVG and PNG are transparent, JPEG carries its ground. Every file holds one cell of clear space around the word. Made by tools/wordmark.

Colour is depth.

what

Nine steps per ground. A density value sets the glyph, its weight and its colour together.

when

Anything drawn in characters: shapes, numerals, the pulse graphic.

how

Let the renderer pick. A ramp colour is never chosen by hand.

• Colour is depth. A ramp colour comes only from a density value or a pulse step, never from a wish for emphasis.
• Information is ink. Text that informs stays ink on paper or paper on ink; graphite and fog for secondary lines.
• Matched contrast. A density holds the same contrast on both grounds, from 2.4:1 at . to 15.9:1 at @, so a detailed drawing reads as well on paper as on night.
• Signal once. One live or status word per surface. The wordmark never spends it.

Columns are counted, not measured.

what

Every surface is a grid of 1:2 cells, 0.6 by 1.2 em. A cell holds one character, one weight, one colour.

when

Always: text, art and layout share it.

how

Pick a column count for the artwork, then let the box size the type: font-size = box width ÷ columns ÷ 0.6. Text blocks start on a cell; nothing moves by half a cell.

Icons: borrowed, never drawn.

what

Pixelarticons, an open-source set drawn on a strict 24 × 24 pixel grid. The free set, 1,036 icons, is MIT licensed: free, no attribution needed. Source: github.com/halfmage/pixelarticons.

when

Programme rows, wayfinding, the site, slides and feeds: wherever a word needs a quick picture beside it.

how

Take the icon from the set as it is. Never redraw one, never mix in another set. Missing a subject? Use the nearest icon in the set.

• Two cells. An icon is two cells wide and one tall, 1.2 em square, so it sits in a line like two characters. On screen: 24 px or a multiple.
• One colour. Ink on paper; paper or apricot on ink. Never ramp colours, never signal.

Every event gets its own shape.

what

A lit form written in characters, generated from the event’s key, like devpulse no.14.

when

Behind every speaker on that evening’s posters and posts, large on the programme, small on the badge and the pin.

how

Make it in the shape lab from the key. Never draw one by hand: the same key always gives the same shape, so everything for one night belongs together.

• Six families, chosen by the meetup number: torus, terraces, superformula, lissajous, rings, polygon. A conference stacks two.
• Behind a speaker photo the shape is one cool hue. The cut-out stands in front of it; every text block knocks it out.

The real photo, as it was taken.

what

The speaker’s own photo in full colour, untouched apart from the cut-out.

when

Wherever people need to recognise the person: talk posters, speaker announcements, the event page, the slide before a talk.

how

Place it one of two ways, full frame or cut out on a flat brand ground. Speakers are never drawn in characters.

• As shot. Full colour. No tints, duotones, filters or blur.
• Square edges. No circles, no rounded corners, no shadows or outlines.
• Eyes on the upper third, the face looking into the page, toward the text.
• Cut by the bottom edge. A cut-out stands on the edge of the frame; it never floats.
• Text never crosses a face.

Anatomy of a talk poster.

1. Wordmark corner. The still, top left, 1.8% of the width.
2. Edition. Meetup number and poster count, top right.
3. Event shape. That night’s shape in one cool hue, cropped by the edge.
4. Photo. The speaker cut out, standing on the bottom edge, in front of the shape.
5. Title. The talk as the speaker wrote it, sentence case, full stop.
6. Meta. Speaker · time under the title; date and venue bottom left, lowercase.

A2 portrait, 420 × 594 mm. Side inset 6% of the width. The same layout scales to A3 and A4 without changes.

One square, cropped round.

what

Three avatars made of the broadcast pulse: the pulse with the word beneath, the pulse alone, and the word sending the rings.

when

Every profile picture: social accounts, the meetup page, GitHub, the newsletter sender. Workspace and server icons take the round icon, p.--.

how

Export from tools/avatar at 1,024 px on ink and upload the square. The platform crops it round; every cut stays inside the circle.

• Pulse + word by default. Broadcast where the name already sits beside the picture. Word + rings for the main accounts, where the avatar is shown large.
• Use the file as it is. Never crop tighter, recolour, add a frame, a ring or a badge.
• Only the avatar. The word and the pulse meet here as a picture. Never place an avatar beside the wordmark or use it as the logo on a layout.

downloadevery avatar · zip

The pulse, held still in a square.

what

The icon is the ripple: rings of characters leave the middle of the left edge and fill the tile, each a step further down the ramp, @ % # * + =.

when

Where the word cannot fit: the browser tab, the home screen, workspace and server icons, the sticker and the pin.

how

Use the files in brand/icon as they are. tools/icon makes them; never export the icon by hand.

• One drawing. 32 × 16 cells, the rings 3.4 em apart; the font’s own characters, at the weight their density sets.
• Solid where a cell is too small. At 48 px and below, and on the pin, the rings are bands in the same colours, wider apart as the tile shrinks.
• Never the logo. On a poster, slide or page the wordmark signs. The icon never stands beside it.

downloadevery file · zip

The same rings, round.

what

The icon on an ink disc: a square for platforms that crop it round, a file that is already round, and the printed mark, a sticker and a pin.

when

Slack and Discord workspace icons, app integrations, any small circle. An account’s own picture is an avatar, p.--.

how

Upload the square icon-square file and let the platform cut the circle, or mask it yourself to any shape. Use the round icon-round file where you place a circle yourself: slides, documents, lists.

• The source on the edge. The rings start at the middle of the left edge, which every circle keeps. On the maskable icon the source moves in to the safe zone.
• Ink first. Paper only where the page around it is dark.
• Nothing around it. No badge, frame or outline. The pin’s rim is its metal, not a frame.

downloadevery file · zip

Say less. Mean it.

Confident, plain, specific. Facts over adjectives. Write the way a good commit message reads.

1. Titles are sentence case and end with a full stop. Tech, in person.
2. Meta lines are lowercase log style. thu 12.11.2026 · spoorzone, zwolle
3. Calls to act are commands. $ rsvp devpulse.nl/rsvp
4. Talk titles stay exactly as the speaker wrote them.
5. Say what happens and when, never how amazing it will be.

Hosts and partners, named plainly.

what

How a host venue or a partner appears next to DevPulse.

when

Posters, slides, the event page, the conference.

how

Name the role in log style, hosted at or with, then the logo. Keep it apart from the wordmark. Questions or files: jeroen@devpulse.nl.

• One colour. Partner logos in ink on paper, paper on ink. Never on the ramp.
• Never bigger. A partner logo is at most one cell of the wordmark tall.
• Clear space. One cell around each logo, and a hairline between them and the wordmark.
• Never a lockup. No shared box, no plus sign, no merged mark.

A meetup poster in six steps.

1. [ ]
   Collect the facts.

   Meetup number, date, venue, doors and talk times, speakers and their talk titles, exactly as written.

2. [ ]
   Generate the evening’s shape.

   Enter the key devpulse no.<n> in the shape lab, tools/event-shapes/. Same key, same shape: never redraw it.

3. [ ]
   Get the photos.

   The original and a cut-out, head and shoulders, 1,080 px or more, with the speaker’s consent (p.--).

4. [ ]
   Pick the poster.

   The cut-out on paper or apricot; on ink for the night version. Turn the speaker toward the text (p.--).

5. [ ]
   Write it.

   Title in sentence case with a full stop. Meta lowercase. One call to act: devpulse.nl/rsvp sample.

6. [ ]
   Check before export.

   Wordmark is the still, top left. Information is ink. Signal once. Sample content labelled. Export A2, 1:1 and 9:16.