01 · The Name

SoulStakes — one word, two capitals. A staked asset representing the soul of an artist’s work: not the art itself, and never the artist.

The name carries the brand’s creed inside it. SOUL spells the four things a patron does:

• Stake — back an artist you believe in by buying their tokens. That purchase is the artist’s income.
• Own — hold the artist’s tokens. They are yours: keep them, trade them, pass them on.
• Use — lock your tokens to switch on real rights: art on your wall, a print in your hands, a drawing in the artist’s style.
• Love — the reason for all of it. Patronage is love of the work, made durable.

That is why the mantra is always written Stake. Own. Use. Love. — in that order, with periods: four acts, one SOUL.

02 · The Mark

The mark is a two-part lockup: the § glyph set in Prata, and the wordmark set in Raleway ExtraLight, uppercase. Three lockups exist; never invent a fourth.

• Glyph § — Prata Regular, always #B8860B gold, on light and dark alike.
• Wordmark — Raleway ExtraLight (200), uppercase. #1A1A1A on light, #ECE9E2 reversed.
• Tracking — 0.42em stacked · 0.26em horizontal · 0.22em small.
• Clear space — keep a margin of one glyph-height around every lockup. Nothing enters it.
• Minimum size — stacked 64px tall · horizontal 28px tall · below that, use the § alone.
• The § may stand alone (favicon, avatar, seal, bullet). The wordmark may not appear without tracking.

03 · Misuse

• Don’t recolor the § — it is gold, everywhere, always.
• Don’t set the § in any face but Prata, or the wordmark in any face but Raleway ExtraLight.
• Don’t bold, outline, shadow, gradient, rotate, or distort any part of the mark.
• Don’t set the wordmark in lowercase or mixed case, or remove its letterspacing.
• Don’t place lockups on photographs, patterns, or mid-tone backgrounds.
• Don’t use ® ™ or taglines attached to the mark.

04 · Color

The rule of gold: at any glance, gold should occupy well under a tenth of what you see. When everything is gold, nothing is.

05 · Typography

06 · The Glyph: the Silcrow

The glyph’s official name is the section sign, known to typographers as the silcrow (§, U+00A7). It is the mark of a clause, a right, a rule — precisely what SoulStakes trades in.

It is also a deliberate act of simplicity. The silcrow is built into every font, every keyboard, every operating system on earth. The SoulStakes logo needs no file, no download, no vector package — it can be typed. A brand about giving artists simple, durable ownership carries a mark that is itself simple and indestructible. Simplicity is core to the brand; the logo proves it.

It appears as the logo glyph, the token face, the certificate seal, and the list bullet. Two rules: the token is always drawn with the § (never as a generic coin), and the § is always gold.

07 · Illustration

Thin ink line work on white with gold accents — engraving-adjacent, never clip-art, never gradient-plastic. Diagrams use hairline strokes, mono labels, and one gold focal point. Characters are warm and hand-drawn; machines that threaten artists are never cute.

08 · Voice

• Artist-first, plain language. If an artist wouldn’t say it, rewrite it.
• No crypto jargon. “Open exchange,” not DEX-speak; tokens, not assets.
• Declarative, never instructional. The paper states; it does not command.
• Honest to the model: artists earn when tokens are bought — never claim otherwise.
• Names: SoulStakes (one word, two capitals). Apprentice Agent — always the full name, capitalized.
• The mantra: Stake. Own. Use. Love. — always in this order, always with periods.