SlowShield

Brand guide · version 1.0 · October 2026

Safety through patience.

SlowShield's mark is a shield that is solid on the side where things arrive and open on the other. Anything fast, like a release published minutes ago or an attack, hits the solid side and stops there: the chevrons cut into it are what got stopped. Patient, verified packages pass through the open, dotted side.

The SlowShield mark on a light background
The SlowShield mark on a dark background
Download the logo kit tokens.css

The mark

Three parts, one idea.

Anatomy of the mark: solid side, chevrons, dotted side 1 Solid side 2 Chevrons 3 Dotted side

  1. 1 · The solid side

    Faces where things come from. It is the field at full strength: nothing fast gets through.

  2. 2 · The chevrons

    Two fast things that arrived and stopped inside the solid side. They always point into the shield.

  3. 3 · The dotted side

    The open side. The field is there, but it lets patient, verified packages pass.

Construction

The mark on its 64-unit grid
  • Grid: 64 units. The shield is 44 × 56, crown at (32, 4), point at (32, 60).
  • Halves: split exactly on the centre line. The solid half carries an edge stroke of 4.2 units so both halves are equally wide.
  • Chevrons: 6.4 × 17.2 units, stroke 3.4, at x = 14.2 and 21.8, centred on y = 31.
  • Dots: 4.2 units round, 13 equal steps from crown to point (about 6.3 units). The end dots sit under the solid half's corners, so the first and last visible dots mirror each other.
  • Corners: round joins and caps everywhere, no sharp ends.

Clear space and sizes

Clear space: a quarter of the mark's height on every side ¼

Keep clear space of a quarter of the mark's height on every side, measured from the shield. Lockups include their clear space in the file.

48 px and up
The master drawing.
32 px
Heavier chevrons and dots.
16 px
One chevron, and a faint solid line instead of dots.

Below 48 px, use the dedicated drawings (favicon-32.svg, favicon.svg) instead of scaling the master: dots that small blur into grey. Never go below 16 px.

Colourways

Brand blue on light
Night Field blue on dark
One colour (black, or any single ink)
White on brand blue or photos

Don't

Mirror it. The solid side faces left, where things arrive.
Fill the open side. It has to stay open.
Add the old dot or other objects.
Use two colours or gradients.
Stretch, squash or rotate it.
Slow Shield
Retype the wordmark, split the name or change its font.
Add shadows, glows or outlines.
Scale the master below 48 px. Use the small drawings.

Lockups

Mark and name, always from the files.

The wordmark is set in Schibsted Grotesk: Slow at weight 500 in ink, Shield at 750 in brand blue. It is outlined in every file, so it looks the same everywhere. Never retype it.

Horizontal lockup, light
Horizontal: the default. Minimum width 120 px.
Horizontal lockup, dark
Horizontal on dark.
Stacked lockup with tagline, light
Stacked with tagline: square formats, title slides. Minimum width 96 px.
Stacked lockup with tagline, dark
Stacked on dark.
Wordmark
Wordmark only: when the mark is already nearby, as in the product's top bar.

Colour: Night Field

One blue, a calm ground and four colours that mean something.

Brand blue is the only accent. Status colours are for status and nothing else. Every text and status colour clears WCAG AA (4.5:1) on the surface, the page ground and its own badge tint, in both themes.

TokenLightDark
--ss-groundPage background#f2f4fb#060915
--ss-surfaceCards, tables, top bar#ffffff#0d1222
--ss-lineBorders and grid lines#dce1f0#1f2742
--ss-inkText and headings#0a0f2419.0:1 on surface#e6eafb15.6:1 on surface
--ss-mutedSecondary text, captions, axes#56607f6.2:1 on surface#98a2c47.4:1 on surface
--ss-brandThe mark, primary actions, links, focus#2a4bff5.9:1 on surface#7f95ff6.8:1 on surface
--ss-accentGlows and decoration (never text)#8ea2ff#b9c6ff
--ss-availableServed, healthy#1074455.8:1 on surface#4fd48a9.9:1 on surface
--ss-heldHeld back: too new, fail-open#6447d66.2:1 on surface#a99bff7.8:1 on surface
--ss-blockedKnown malware (HTTP 451)#c022386.0:1 on surface#ff6f7e6.9:1 on surface
--ss-tamperedTampering and integrity failures#b4208c6.0:1 on surface#f27bd67.6:1 on surface

Do

  • Use --ss-brand for the mark, primary buttons, links and focus rings.
  • Show status with its colour and a word: “Held”, “Blocked”, never colour alone.
  • Use the soft tints (--ss-*-soft) behind status text in badges.
  • Let the dark theme be the hero: the field glows against the night.

Don't

  • Set text in --ss-accent; it is for glows only.
  • Use a status colour for decoration or for the brand.
  • Bring back teal, moss or amber as brand colours.
  • Hard-code hex values: use the tokens from tokens.css.
AvailableHeld · 4 daysBlockedTampered
AvailableHeld · 4 daysBlockedTampered

Typography

A sturdy grotesk for the voice, the system font for the work.

Aa

Schibsted Grotesk

Headlines, the wordmark, numbers that matter. Weights 500, 700 and 750. SIL Open Font License 1.1, self-hosted (no requests to font services).

Display
New releases wait.
Schibsted 750 · 64 / 1.05 · −0.018em
Heading
Five simple ideas.
Schibsted 700 · 36 / 1.1
Title
Known malware is blocked within the hour.
Schibsted 700 · 20 / 1.25
Body
SlowShield holds brand-new releases back for a few days and verifies every byte.
System UI 400 · 17 / 1.6
Code
pip install requests==2.32.5
System monospace 400 · 14 / 1.6 · package names and versions

The product UI uses only the system fonts: fast, private and allowed by its strict content security policy.

Motif and motion

Fast things stop dead. Slow things drift in.

  • Chevrons stand for speed and direction. They always point into the solid side, and fade with distance: the farthest is faintest. Use them sparingly, as list bullets or a stream of three.
  • Fast things move fast and stop dead at the solid side (ease-in, about 1.5 s), and the field answers with a ripple.
  • Slow things drift through the dotted side at a calm pace (8 to 12 s) and settle.
  • Every animation has a still frame that tells the story on its own, shown when someone prefers reduced motion. Nothing important waits for an animation.
  • No flashing, no shaking, no countdown panic. SlowShield is calm on purpose.

In the product

Quiet surfaces, clear states.

SlowShieldOverview · Packages · Security
Upstream traffic saved3.6 GB▲ 12%
Malware blocked2▲ 2
urllib3Held · 4 daysRelease early
SlowShieldOverview · Packages · Security
Upstream traffic saved3.6 GB▲ 12%
Malware blocked2▲ 2
colouramaBlocked · 451View advisory

Voice

Calm, plain, specific.

Name and tagline

  • SlowShield: one word, two capitals. Not “Slow Shield”, “Slowshield” or “SS”.
  • Tagline: Safety through patience. Sentence case, with the full stop in lockups.
  • Say what it does: “known-bad is blocked, brand-new is held back”, not “next-gen supply-chain security platform”.

How we write

  • Calm, never alarmist. “Held back: unlocks in 2 days”, not “BLOCKED!”.
  • Specific numbers and real examples beat adjectives.
  • Honest about limits: the delay is one layer of defence, not magic.
  • Short sentences, active voice, no jargon a developer would not use.

Downloads

Everything in one place.

SVG masters are generated by brand/build.py, the raster files by scripts/render_brand.py.

Mark

Lockups

Small sizes and icons

Banners, tokens, type