Nebula Fund · Brand Refresh

● Before we choose · settled

What's already decided.

So we spend this round on the open questions, not the closed ones.

✓

Gradients stay, but they have a specific role.

The cosmic gradients are part of Nebula's identity and will continue to be. Full-bleed gradients are reserved for high-impact pieces: posters, covers, email banners, and social. Day-to-day communication uses them only as subtle accents.

✓

The new palette connects to the existing one.

The colors evolve but stay recognizable.

✓

No figurative forms or photographs of people.

The visual language stays abstract and organic. We don't use human-like shapes or photos of people.

✓

The lowercase wordmark stays.

“nebula fund” remains the anchor of the system.

Principles

Design principles.

Every decision in this presentation is grounded in these principles.

01

Legibility.

Type must be readable for low vision, dyslexia, non-native readers and low-quality screens. For Nebula, this is also a mission alignment: materials that are hard to read exclude the people the fund works to support.

02

The system works in every language.

Nebula communicates in five languages. Typefaces and layouts must hold across all of them.

03

Built for the team and any tool.

The system must be operable by anyone on the team, on any platform: PowerPoint, Google Slides, Canva or a custom template.

04

Consistent, not rigid.

The same system must work across a donor report, a Save the Date, a social post and a multi-slide deck.

Origin

Where we come from.

The current system already has pieces and empirical decisions. We listen to them before proposing.

The current Nebula Fund website — Our approach page

The identity we’re building on — the site running today, and the wordmark it grew from.

Origin

What we've learned.

01

The palette needs boundaries.

Color usage has been intuitive and expansive, which created richness but also inconsistency across pieces.

02

A defined light-background line.

Most of Nebula's work lives on dark or cosmos backgrounds. The system needs an equally considered light-surface version.

03

Consistency without a designer in the loop.

Without a defined system, every new piece requires a design decision from scratch.

04

Faster production.

A system with ready templates and clear rules reduces the time it takes to produce any piece, from a deck to a social post.

05

A common language.

The team, external collaborators, and partners need to be able to refer to the same visual references.

Part two · the proposal

The proposal.

Everything from here on is a proposal — open to your input, and a few points are yours to decide.

Type
Wordmark
Symbol
Streams
Shapes

The proposal · body type · your call

Type that speaks every language we do.

The body face has to hold Latin (FR, DE), Cyrillic (RU) and Arabic. Compare the two candidates — the same sentence, live.

We resource movements for gender justice.

Inter covers Latin + Cyrillic; Archivo has more character. Your pick is saved for Decide.

The proposal · wordmark · your call

Which typeface carries the wordmark?

Tap to compare — the mark updates here. Saved for Decide.

The proposal · symbol · your call

The form that accompanies “nebula fund”.

Four directions for the symbol. Pick the one that feels most Nebula.

Selected option is saved for Decide.

Stream system · placeholder names

A signature for every stream.

Each stream keeps the cosmic theme, gets one line-glyph identifier and one accent drawn from the master palette. Same skeleton, infinitely repeatable — drop in the real streams and colors follow.

Shape language

Shapes that hold space — not bodies.

We keep the organic, gradient-filled forms. We drop anything that reads as a human figure.

● Keep

Organic blobs

Soft, gradient-filled forms that frame photos and headings.