Brand guidelines · for everyone touching the brand
The way NextStep Home looks, sounds, and shows up.
This page is the source of truth. Designers, engineers, partners, funders, anyone publishing under the NextStep Home name — start here.
01 · Identity
The name
NextStep Home. Two words. Both capitalized. Always written together with no space between “Next” and “Step.”
The name carries two meanings. We don't need to explain them every time, but we never use the name in a way that flattens either one:
- The next step toward home — the journey our users are walking.
- A home for your next step — the platform itself.
02 · Mark
The logo
Three ascending circles. Two muted, one amber and larger. The first two are steps; the third is home.
The mark intentionally rhymes with the streak dots in the citizen app — the small circles representing days walked. Brand and product share visual DNA, so the brand never feels external to the product.
03 · Palette
Color
Warm, dignified, calm. The palette deliberately doesn't look like a corrections app, a charity tool, or a SaaS dashboard. It looks like a hopeful consumer product that happens to do serious work.
Headlines, primary buttons, the brand mark's grounded steps
The next step. Hope. The third dot. Use sparingly — when amber appears, it should mean something.
Completed milestones, healthy signals, days walked clean
Crisis path, urgent coordinator flags. Never decoration.
App background. Warmer than white. Never pure #FFFFFF.
Body text. Warmer than pure black; near-charcoal.
Active sidebar items, gentle highlights
The AI briefing card, family invitations
Stable pills, success states
04 · Type system
Typography
Charter
Display · serif · 500 weight
Charter (with Georgia and Iowan Old Style as fallbacks) for headlines, hero text, panel titles. Adds humanity, gravity, and the sense of a thoughtful publication. Letter-spacing tightened slightly (-0.01em to -0.02em on largest sizes).
Inter / system sans
Body · sans-serif · 400/500/600
System sans (-apple-system, Inter as fallback) for body, UI labels, buttons, navigation. Modern, neutral, fast-loading, accessible across every screen size.
A path, a person, a plan.
Need you today
Three days of tired, then numb on the 26th, now back to tired.
Day 87 · East Toledo · last contact 38 hrs ago
AI BRIEFING · GENERATED JUST NOW
05 · How we sound
Voice
NextStep Home sounds like a steady, grounded friend who has read enough to know what they're talking about, and who never makes someone feel small for asking. We are calm. We are concrete. We are warm without being saccharine.
- ·Plain-spoken. Short sentences.
- ·Concrete. Specific. We name actual things.
- ·Honest about what we don't know.
- ·Faith-resonant when invited; neutral when not.
- ·Operational, not aspirational. Less inspiration, more next step.
- ·Therapy-speak (“your journey”, “hold space”) unless the user uses it first.
- ·Corporate (“leverage”, “empower”, “solutions”).
- ·Saccharine (“we believe in you!”, “you got this!”).
- ·Cynical or edgy. We never punch down or smirk.
- ·Surveillance-y. We never describe data as “tracking”.
In practice
“Welcome to your healing journey. We're here to hold space for you as you process the trauma of reentry.”
“Welcome home. Three things today. Tomorrow we'll do three more. That's all.”
“NextStep Home leverages AI to deliver scalable reentry outcomes through best-in-class coordinator workflows.”
“One coach can hold fifty people. The AI clears the friction; the human stays in the relationship. That's the whole bet.”
“You've got this!! 💪 Every step is a victory! Believe in yourself!”
“Two hard days · still walking. A bad day doesn't zero out a month.”
06 · Why we make choices
Design principles
Every flow starts with the returning citizen's experience. Every other role exists to serve theirs. When in doubt, design for Marcus.
Three persistent anchors. We never show the whole mountain at once — always the next 1–3 steps. Restraint is the design.
Sage looks up resources, drafts messages, holds 3am ground. Maria stays the relationship. If we ever ship a flow that says 'you don't need a coach,' we have lost the plot.
A bad day doesn't zero out a month. Recovery realities, not gamified streaks. Relapse is part of the curve, not a failure state.
Every flow that releases information passes through explicit consent. We turn down DOC contracts that require us to be a panopticon.
Someone of no faith is served as well as someone of deep faith. We will not paper over our roots, and we will not impose them.