The identity of an independent financial publication: quiet, exact, expensive. Everything below is generated from one set of tokens — the same values that render the site, the newsletter and the reports.
Tokens v1.0 · active mark: Ledger
01
The mark — three directions
LedgerIn use
app icon · favicon · avatar
Editorial. Serif “After”, grotesque “TAX”, the gold rule of a ledger line. Reads as a century-old financial paper.
Seal
app icon · favicon · avatar
Institutional. A seal with the AT monogram, small-caps wordmark. Reads as an authority that certifies numbers.
Slash
app icon · favicon · avatar
Modern. Two-line grotesque with a gold slash — the line between before and after tax. Reads as a fintech-era publication.
Switch the site to any direction by setting BRAND_VARIANT to ledger, seal or slash. Clear space around the mark equals the height of the letter T; minimum wordmark width is 120 px; never recolor outside the palette, never stretch, never add effects.
02
Palette
Brand#0f2a22
Brand 2#174034
Accent gold#b8862b
Gold soft#d9b36c
Ink#111614
Ink 2#3a423e
Ink 3#6b736f
Paper#fbf9f4
Paper 2#f3efe5
Line#e2dccd
Positive#1f6b4a
Negative#9b2c2c
ink#ece7da · dark
ink2#c9c2b2 · dark
ink3#8f978f · dark
paper#101815 · dark
paper2#16211d · dark
line#26332d · dark
brand#0b1f19 · dark
brand2#153a2f · dark
Gold is a rule, a kicker or a single number — never a background for text blocks. Green is the ground of the masthead, footer and data bands. Positive and negative appear only next to a number.
03
Typography
NewsreaderWhat you keep is what counts.
Inter$15,000,000 · 37% · 2026
Style
Spec
Use
display
56/1.05 serif 600
Article title, page title
h1
40/1.1 serif 600
Section title
h2
30/1.15 serif 600
Block title
h3
21/1.22 serif 600
Card title
lead
22/1.45 serif 400
Dek, intro
body
19.5/1.7 serif 400
Article body
ui
16/1.55 sans 400
Interface text
meta
12/1.4 sans 500
Dates, captions
label
11/1 sans 700 +.14em caps
Kickers, rail heads
Serif for everything a reader reads; sans for everything a reader scans. Numbers are tabular. No italics in headlines, no exclamation marks anywhere.
04
Spacing, grid, shape
4
8
12
16
24
32
48
64
12 columns, 24 px gutters, 1320 px maximum width. Corners 2 px: the shape of a printed page, not an app. Rules are 1 px; section rules 3 px in ink; the double rule under the navigation is the masthead of the paper.
05
Posters and covers
Every story carries a poster generated from its key number and rubric colour. Posters are the face of the archive in cards; a video, when one exists, plays inside the story header and on hover — it never replaces the poster in the grid. Rubric colours:
Tax Law#12324a
Income Tax#1d4d3a
Retirement#5a3a12
Estate#4a1d3a
Investing#1f3b5c
Equity Comp#3b2a5c
Real Estate#5c3b1f
Business#2a4a1d
Giving#5c1f2a
States#23403f
06
Voice
Newsroom register: the IRS said, Bloomberg reported. Never the first person, never advice.
Headlines carry the number: “$15 Million Exemption”, not “Big Changes for Estates”.
Every figure links to the document it came from. Where a figure is not yet official, the story says so.
Byline is always the After TAX Desk. There are no invented people, quotes or surveys.