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Benali · podcast identity · Patina
Ratified direction — handover document

The Operating Layer.

A Benali podcast. It keeps the Atlas spine (one font, cream-and-slate neutrals) but owns its own accent — Patina, a desaturated blue-green — and its own texture: the operating layer, drawn as stacked strata. Dark-primary, feed-first.

The system The cover At every size Per-episode Type · palette · lockup Minimal variant Quick reference Production
Brand architecture

A Benali podcast — endorsed sub-brand.

The show has its own name, wordmark, and accent, carried by a quiet A Benali podcast endorsement. The audience sees Benali; Atlas is our internal name for the design system it inherits.

Hold constant — the spine

What makes it read as Benali

  • Hanken Grotesk only — bold 700 lockups, light body, hairline-300 figures
  • Cream / bone / slate neutrals — the same restrained palette
  • The travelling-light hairline; motion at breath cadence; quiet-luxury voice
  • The endorsement lockup: "A Benali podcast" — always present
Vary — the show's identity

What makes it the show

  • Patina accent — #58968c / #8ac2b8 — the show's own muted blue-green, distinct from Benali's Majorelle
  • Drops Atlas's grid — the stacked layer lines are the show's own texture
  • The strata motif — one layer live in Patina (the word LAYER is it)
  • A dark-primary ground (#1a1e25) — feed-optimized; a light variant for on-light use
  • A wordmark → layer-mark rule so it survives the feed thumbnail
On color

The show owns its own accent — Patina, a desaturated blue-green that reads as weathered copper, old book cloth. Muted enough to stay premium, warm enough to welcome. This gives the podcast a color identity distinct from Benali's Majorelle while maintaining the same restrained, ink-not-paint philosophy. The accent whispers; the structure does the talking.

The cover.

Strata · Patina

One wordmark, set big and confident. The word LAYER is the live surface; beneath it the strata recede into depth, the top one lit and travelling. Committed left alignment, hard to the edge.

The Operating Layer — show cover

Primary · dark · 3000x3000

The idea

The engineering grid turned on its side. Fine hairlines stack into layers; the wordmark rests on the top one; a single layer is live in Patina — the operating layer, drawn. The layers are the show's texture, in place of the Atlas grid.

The moving parts

Fixed: the wordmark, the layer field, the endorsement. Per episode: which layer is live, and the guest slot.

Motif · stacked layers 1 live Patina layer Grid replaced by the layers Wordmark hard-left
Patina on dark vs light

On dark ground: use #8ac2b8 (Patina-soft) for the live layer and accents — lighter, enough contrast against the deep ground. On light ground: use #58968c (Patina) — the darker value, so it reads against ivory.

The squint test

At every size.

The layer lines are the show's texture — they fill the frame so they read at any size, abstract but present. The wordmark holds at every size, 72px included, hard-left with room above it. Shown on the white app UI they sit in.

~300px ~300 px · Apple
~160px ~160 px · Spotify
~72px ~72 px · feed
The rule

Wordmark hard-left with room above it at every size; the layer lines fill the field beneath so the texture always reads. Keep the wordmark out of the bottom 15% (playback UI) and inside a ~10-12% margin. (At a true 16px favicon, where no text can render, the layer lines alone stand in.)

Per-episode system

One frame. Two moving parts.

The show cover stays clean (no episode data — best practice, and it keeps the feed art timeless). Episode art adds only the guest portrait (duotone-mapped to slate/bone so 50 headshots read as one series) and the episode number + short title. Solo episodes drop the portrait.

Episode cover — clean

Clean · no guest · 3000x3000

Episode cover — with guest

With guest · 3000x3000

Duotone + two crops

Guest photos are desaturated then mapped shadows->ground (#1a1e25), highlights->bone (#fcfaf4) via SVG feColorMatrix / gradient-map so a varied set reads as one series. Ship two crops: a clean one (no guest) for Apple/Spotify episode art, and a loaded one (with guest portrait) for YouTube/social.

Foundations

Type, palette, lockup.

Typography — Hanken Grotesk, one family

Show wordmark · 700
The Operating Layer
Episode title · 400 light
Mapping the first workflow
Endorsement · 600 · tracked caps
A Benali podcast
Figure · 300 · hairline
Ep 04 · 52 min

Palette — Patina direction

Ground
#1a1e25 · cover bg
Slate
#2e333b · lift
Ivory
#f0ebe0 · type (dark)
Bone
#fcfaf4 · duotone hi
Patina-soft
#8ac2b8 · live (dark)
Patina
#58968c · live (light)
Export specs

Cover: 3000x3000 master (1400 min), square, sRGB JPG under 512 KB — no transparency, no CMYK (Apple rejects both). Preview every export at 55x55. Social: 2:1 (1200x600) + 1:1.

Endorsement lockups

Stacked lockup
Horizontal lockup

Stacked (cover / feed) · horizontal (site, footers, video lower-third). Ship as locked artwork.

Same engine, no motif

The minimal cut.

Just the wordmark — frame-filling, one live word, a short tagline, no strata. The show's restraint mode: video end-cards, merch, or a plain-text cover when the layers aren't wanted. Same type as the primary, minus the strata.

Minimal variant
Tagline

Drawn from Benali's voice — "Conversations on the new operating layer for business." · "How companies evolve into AI-native operations." · "The operating layer, one workflow at a time."

For the production team

Quick reference.

Everything your podcast manager needs at a glance.

TokenValueUsage
Patina #58968c Primary accent on light backgrounds (light variant cover, page chrome, print)
Patina-soft #8ac2b8 Primary accent on dark backgrounds (cover art, episode art, social cards). The word "Layer" in the wordmark, the live strata line, episode numbers
Ground #1a1e25 Cover art background, episode art background, social card background
Ivory #f0ebe0 Type color on dark backgrounds — wordmark, episode titles, body text on covers
Bone #fcfaf4 Duotone highlight — map guest photo highlights to this value
Slate #2e333b Text color on light backgrounds, secondary dark
Slate-mid #5b626d Secondary text, metadata, muted labels
Page ivory #f7f3ea Page/deck background (the tray the covers sit on), light variant cover background

Font stack

RoleWeightDetails
Show wordmark700 BoldAll caps, tight tracking (-0.012em), line-height 0.94
Episode title400 RegularSentence case, natural tracking, line-height 1.15
Endorsement600 SemiAll caps, wide tracking (0.22em), ~9.5px on covers
Figures / metadata300 LightEpisode numbers, durations — hairline weight
Episode number600 SemiAll caps, tracked (0.18em), in Patina-soft on dark

Export checklist

Cover art
  • 3000 x 3000 px master — minimum 1400x1400
  • sRGB color space — no CMYK (Apple rejects it)
  • JPG under 512 KB — no transparency (Apple rejects PNG alpha)
  • No episode data on the show cover — timeless, clean
  • Preview every export at 55x55 (the squint test)
Episode + social art
  • Episode art: 3000x3000 (1:1) — same specs as cover
  • Social card: 1200x600 (2:1) — for Twitter/LinkedIn/OG
  • Two crops per episode: clean (no wordmark) for Apple/Spotify, loaded (with wordmark) for YouTube/social
  • Guest photos: desaturate, then gradient-map shadows->#1a1e25, highlights->#fcfaf4
Where this goes

Production kit.

What gets built to ship the show.

Artwork
  • SVG wordmark, the layer-mark, and the app icon / favicon
  • Cover masters — dark + light, 3000x3000
  • Duotone guest portraits + the feColorMatrix filter
  • The episode-cover generator (Figma variants -> batch)
System
  • Hosted by Khalil & Nick — the "with" line on episode art
  • The endorsement lockups as locked artwork — stacked + horizontal
  • A sub-brand addendum to the brand guidelines — "own accent + own motif, shared spine"
  • Patina token set: #58968c (on light), #8ac2b8 (on dark), #1a1e25 (ground)