Brand guide

How the Resting Sycamore brand looks, sounds, feels, and behaves.

The name

Where does “Resting Sycamore” come from?

You.
You are a Resting Sycamore.
You’re the one we serve.

You’ve been standing a long time. You raised people. You paid into this system for forty years. Nobody needs to tell you that you’re strong or that you know things. Anybody with sense already comes to you to ask.

The resting part is what you earned. You are past the season of proving anything.

But the woods teach a second lesson. Not everything green is good for you. Some plants feed you. Others look almost the same and will make you sick. The only way to tell them apart is to learn the difference, and that usually takes someone who already knows.

Your mailbox works the same way in October. Some of it is real help. Some of it is designed to look like help.

What this guide governs

The working visual and voice standards for Resting Sycamore public materials. It documents the approved brand system; it does not make Medicare coverage or plan claims.

The short version

You’ve been standing a long time. The resting part is what you earned. Sit in the shade, take your time, ask the same question twice.

What follows from it

The reader is already competent. Never explain her own life to her.
Sorting, not selling. The nourishing from the lookalike — that is the service.
Slow is the brand. Nothing here may hurry a reader.

The mark

What makes the Resting Sycamore mark recognizable?

A broad, low, rooted canopy. It carries the whole brand — patient, hand-made, unhurried — and everything else in the system defers to it. The wordmark is set in Newsreader, the same face as every heading we write.

Horizontal · primary

Site header, email signature, business cards, video title cards — any band under about 100px tall.

PNG SVG Transparent PNG

Stacked · primary

Mailers, workbook and guide covers, print — anywhere with vertical room and no competing marks.

PNG SVG Transparent PNG

Reversed

Paper on green. The only alternative colourway there is.

PNG SVG

Mark alone · restricted

Favicon, app icon, social avatar, page footers. Only where the full name already appears nearby.

Green square Paper square White square Transparent SVG

Download the complete logo kit

Horizontal, stacked, square, transparent, green, cream, SVG, and PNG files in one ZIP.

Download all files

Clear space

Clear space on all four sides equals the height of the canopy. Nothing enters it — not a rule, not a nav item, not a phone number.

Minimum sizes

Horizontal, screen	180px
Stacked, screen	120px
Mark alone, screen	32px
Horizontal, print	1.5in

Below the horizontal minimum the wordmark goes before the tree does — switch to the mark alone rather than shrinking further.

Backgrounds

Green on paper, or paper on green. Never on a photograph, never on gold, never on a colour that is not in this guide.

Always

Use the supplied files. Vector above 200px.
Keep it flat, one colour, no shadow.
Pair the mark with the full name somewhere on the same surface.

Never

Circle-crop it. The mask cuts the canopy — use the supplied avatar.
Recolour, outline, gradient, emboss, stretch or rotate.
Rebuild a lockup by hand or retype the wordmark.
Place it beside a carrier logo in a way that implies endorsement.

Where should the brand show up?

One correct lockup per surface. Nobody has to choose.

Surface	Use	Notes
Business cards	Horizontal	Green on paper stock. Mark alone on the reverse, if there is one.
Mailers	Stacked	Top-left or centred, never over a photograph. Body copy 11pt minimum.
LinkedIn	Supplied avatar	Use the avatar file as provided. Never crop another asset to fit.
Workbooks & guides	Stacked, cover only	Interior pages carry the mark in the footer at 32px, nothing more.
Video & webinars	Horizontal	Reversed title card, then mark alone in a corner. Slide type never below 24px.

Colour

Which colors belong to the Resting Sycamore system?

A warm paper background instead of white, because a screen full of white is tiring to read. Contrast ratios are given for every ink; nothing outside this list is used.

Paper

#F3EEE1

Page background, everywhere. Never white.

Surface

#FCFAF4

Cards, tables, raised modules.

Sunk

#EBE4D3

Table headers, inset wells.

Green

#1B3B2E

Header, footer, dark bands, the logo.

Ink

#22312A

Body copy · 11.6:1

Ink strong

#1B3B2E

Headings, emphasis · 12.9:1

Ink muted

#4E5C53

Captions and meta · 7.1:1. Never body copy.

Error

#8A2318

Forms and empty states only · 7.4:1

Gold on green

#D9AF5E

Accent on green.

Gold on paper

#6F5417

Accent on paper.

On green

Primary text — #F3EEE1

Secondary text — #C3D0C4 · 7.4:1

Primary button

Type

Which two typefaces make the system easier to read?

Use the two typefaces below for distinct jobs: one carries the editorial voice and one keeps practical Medicare information easy to read.

Display

Newsreader

Weights 400 and 500. Italic 400 for pull quotes. Never bold, never all-caps, never below 24px.

Headings, pull quotes, the logo. It carries the warmth and does no work in running text.

Body

Atkinson Hyperlegible

Regular and bold. Drawn by the Braille Institute so characters that usually collide — I l 1, O 0, r n — stay distinct.

Everything a reader actually reads. The choice is the audience: people making a consequential decision, often at seventy or older, often on a phone.

The scale, and the floor

21px	Lead paragraph — the first paragraph of a page, and nothing else.
19px	Body — the floor. Nothing a reader has to read goes below it.
16px	Table cells, captions, meta lines. Supporting, never load-bearing.
14px	Legal footnotes and eyebrows only. If a reader needs it to decide, it is not 14px.

Line height 1.62 in body. Line length capped at 68 characters. Tap targets never under 48px. These four numbers are an accessibility commitment, not a style preference.

Layout

How should spacing and layout stay quiet?

Use the measurements below to keep page rhythm consistent without making the structure compete with the message.

1120px

Container. Prose narrows to 840px inside it.

4px base

Spacing steps: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 40, 48, 64, 80.

4px / 8px

Radius. Small on controls, large on cards. Nothing is a pill but a status chip.

1px line

Borders separate things. One barely-there shadow exists; it is used rarely.

Voice

How should Resting Sycamore talk to people?

Use the examples below to keep every sentence clear, direct, and recognizably Peter.

Said on almost every first call

You’re past the season of proving things. My job is to educate and tell you your options, then you choose. That’s your right and you have agency to own your life and control your destiny.

Three things follow, and they govern every word we write: the reader is competent, the agency is hers, and our job ends at understanding — not at persuasion. Copy that decides for the reader is wrong even when it is correct.

We don’t do these

Deadline pressure. Dates are facts a reader can plan around, never a reason to act now.
Fear. No worst-case imagery, no what-if-you-get-sick framing, no bills you didn’t see coming.
Jargon without translation. A term of art appears once, followed immediately by what it means in a sentence a person would say.
“Best-in-class.” It claims a ranking nobody measured, in language nobody speaks.

The standard we hold

We’ve spent years in service of vulnerable populations and we take that same attitude with seniors: we have your back and we want to advocate for you.

Stated plainly and never dressed up. Advocacy is a track record, not an adjective — write what was done, not how much we care.

Does this sentence sound like Peter?

Read the sentence aloud in the voice of the quote above. If it sounds like a brochure, it fails. If it sounds like a man who has explained this a thousand times and is glad to do it again, it ships.

A licensed agent — not a call center

Check whether your doctors and drugs fit before you enroll

Peter Abilla, Licensed Medicare Insurance Sales Agent, NPN 22265186. Licensed in Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Michigan, and Illinois. You reach the same person every call — no transfer queue.

Get free Medicare help Call 938-238-5652