What does a brand look like when it's telling the truth?

The rules

1. Open with a question. Every video, post, email, page, and talk. Before his name. Before the point. He does this on stage because a question is talking with you, not at you. Asking tells people you want to know what they think. It's the one device that makes this brand sound like him and nobody else.
2. Second person. You. Your zip. Your next page. He's talking to one person, even in a room of a thousand.
3. Short declaratives. One idea per sentence. Let the line sit. He speaks in lines that people repeat back, so write lines people can repeat back.
4. Not advice. Direction. He won't tell you what to do. He'll tell you what he did, what it cost, and ask what you're going to do. When copy drifts toward counsel, say this line out loud and rewrite.
5. Witness, not guru. He is the expert on what he lived. That's the only authority the copy claims. No credentials, no frameworks with trademark symbols, no secrets.
6. Keep the grammar. "If it don't apply, let it fly." Don't fix it. The whole point is that it sounds like a real person who sat at the table with his family and didn't sit at the table with his family.
7. Faith is in the voice, not on the sign. God first is his belief. It shows up as gratitude and as the word "anointing" when he says it. It doesn't show up as a religious brand.
8. Warm, plain, no softening. Sincerity reads as editorial when the type is sharp and the words are plain. Don't add adjectives to make it feel more.

How it's built

The wordmark is type, not a drawing. Instrument Serif, regular weight, tracking at minus 2 percent. The word Still is set in italic. The word Here is roman. The period is set in grass. That's the whole mark.

The italic on Still is the pause. It leans, it slows down, it's the quiet one. Here stands straight. The period ends the sentence: this is a statement, not a question, and it's the one time the brand doesn't ask.

The period

The period is the icon. On its own it is a grass-green circle on paper. It's the favicon, the app icon, the hat embroidery on the back, the stamp on the inside of a guide, the end of every Portrait caption. When there's only room for one mark, use the period.

Clear space and minimum size

• Clear space on all sides equals the height of the capital H in Here.
• Minimum size on screen: 18 pixels cap height. On print: 6 millimeters cap height. Below that, use the period alone.
• The period alone has no minimum. It's a dot.

Misuse

• Don't set it in any other typeface, including the sans.
• Don't make the period any color but grass, or ink when grass isn't available in one-color print.
• Don't drop the period. Still Here without a full stop is a different brand.
• Don't add a tagline under it as a lockup. The line lives in copy, not glued to the mark.
• Don't put it in a box, a circle, or a shield. Don't outline it.
• Don't stack it unless the width is under 160 pixels, and then stack Still over Here with the period staying on Here.
• Don't add gradients, shadows, textures, or motion to the mark. The paper has grain; the mark doesn't.
• Don't set it in all caps on screen. All caps is allowed only on embroidery and screen print, where it reads as STILL HERE. with the period.

The zip lockup

The participation mark. Two words, a period, and five digits, all in the mono, all lowercase except the digits. This is what people post, and what goes on the personalized merch.

The zip is always set in grass. The period is always set in grass. Everything else is ink.

Ratios

Paper, ink, and a little grass. On any screen or page, paper is the background, ink does all the work, and grass shows up in exactly the places where something is alive: the period, a hovered link, a zip code, the rule next to a pull quote. If you can see grass from across the room, there's too much of it.

Rust is for merch and print only. It gives the hat and the hoodie a second colorway and gives Youngstown a color on the shirt. It never appears in the website interface.

There is no dark mode. The site is a newspaper. It's paper.

Accessibility

Never put grass text on rust or rust text on grass. Never put the muted gray on anything but paper.

The site and every printed piece are laid out like a newspaper that someone cared about. A masthead, a dateline, hairline rules between things, columns that line up, big type at the top and small type in the gutters. It's trending because it's old. It's sincere because paper doesn't try to impress you.

The grid

• Twelve columns, maximum width 1240 pixels, gutters that scale from 16 pixels on a phone to 48 on a desktop.
• Side gutter is never less than 16 pixels. No horizontal scroll, ever.
• On a phone, everything stacks to one column. The rules stay.

Rules

• Hairline, 1 pixel at 18 percent ink: between sections, under kickers, between table rows.
• Strong, 2 pixels at 90 percent ink: under the masthead dateline, above the footer.
• Double, 3 pixels: the top of the footer and the top of a printed guide. Once per page at most.
• Pull quotes get a 3 pixel grass rule on the left. Nothing else gets a grass rule.

Datelines and issue numbers

Every page carries a dateline at the top in the mono: the date, the two zips, and the three pillars. Every thought, letter, and portrait carries an issue number and a dateline where it was written. The numbers start at 001 and never reset. The archive is the record of the brand.

The masthead

• Dateline above, strong rule, wordmark left, navigation right, hairline below. That order, always.
• The wordmark in the masthead is between 1.6 and 2.2rem. It never gets bigger in the header; the big one lives in the footer and on the homepage.
• Navigation is six items. Where I'm From, Book Antoine, Read, Watch, Shop, Subscribe. Don't add a seventh. Contact and Brand live in the footer.

Kickers

Every section opens with a numbered kicker in the mono, the number in grass, then a hairline that runs to the edge. Then the question in the serif. Then the body. That rhythm is the page.

Motion

Almost none. Links change color. Buttons fill. Type can reveal on load if it's subtle. No parallax, no gradients, no glass, no cards floating with shadows. Reduced motion preferences are respected.

Direction

• Black and white by default. Muted color when the grass is literally in the frame.
• Natural light only. No studio, no ring light, no backdrop.
• Film grain. The site already has grain on the paper; the photos should match.
• He is thinking, listening, or mid-sentence. Never posing. Never pointing at the camera. Never arms crossed.
• Environmental. The place matters as much as the face. Youngstown, Grand Rapids, a kitchen table, a stage with hands up.
• Hands. His hands when he talks, other people's hands when they listen.
• The contrast pair: concrete, broken glass, a broken-down car, then bright green grass. Shoot both. Run them side by side.

Never

• Stock photography. Not once, not as a placeholder on a live page.
• Anyone in 49507 or any program without written consent, and never anyone's face in a moment of crisis.
• Filters, HDR, teeth whitening, skin smoothing.
• Motivational-speaker tropes: the mic point, the jump, the arms-wide stage shot from below.
• His kids' faces, unless the family decides otherwise and says so in writing.

Shot list, Youngstown

1. The block he grew up on. Wide, him small in the frame, walking.
2. The front door. What you see when you walk outside.
3. A porch portrait, seated, thinking. This is the Where I'm From hero.
4. Any grass. A yard, a field, a park. Him standing in it.
5. Rust. A mill, a bridge, a fence. For the merch colorway reference.
6. His mom, if she's willing. Her hands.

Shot list, Grand Rapids

1. The campsite walk, reshot in daylight. The Peace Looks Different hero.
2. The kitchen table, with the family, backs to camera or hands only.
3. Him at a table with people in suits, then him on a curb with people who aren't. Same lens, same light, same day if possible.
4. A stage. From behind him, looking out at hands up.
5. The notebook. He writes on paper. Shoot the paper.
6. A straight-on portrait, eye level, no smile, no frown. The one for the one-sheet.

The participation hook

People post two words, a period, and their zip. still here. 48205 That's it. It's the lowest-effort identity statement there is, and it's personal to everyone who sees it, because everyone has a zip. The hashtag is #StillHere and the zip is the caption. The brand reposts the best ones as Portraits, with consent, first name only.

It works because it isn't about Antoine. He's the first one to say it, not the only one. The brand grows every time someone says it about themselves.

Cadence

• The Question: one a day when possible, five a week minimum. Shot on a phone, twice a day while together.
• Peace Looks Different: one a week. Quiet.
• Thought for the Week: Sunday night, as a carousel of the first three lines and a link.
• Portraits: three a week once the form is live.
• Wrong Bus: every other week.
• Letters: monthly, posted as a long caption with a portrait.

Platforms

Vertical video first, everywhere it plays. Facebook stays, because that's where the people who already know him are and where someone just told him they used "if it don't apply" at work last week. Everything is captioned. Every post ends with a link to The First Stop.

Trademark

Still Here is a common phrase. Before printing a single hat, run a search at the trademark office in the apparel class and the education and entertainment services class. If someone holds it in apparel, the merch moves to the zip lockup and the period, which are ours, and the wordmark stays on the site. Check the domains and the social handles at the same time, and take the same handle everywhere.

The zip motif

A zip code can read as territory. Ours never does. It is origin and pride, where you're from and nothing else. We never post a zip next to another zip in a way that reads as sides. We never use a zip as a name for a group of people. If a zip starts showing up in a way that reads as a claim on a block, we stop using that one.

Not a clinician

He is not a therapist, a counselor, or a doctor, and the brand never implies it. Recovery is real is a belief, not a treatment. The line that protects him is also the line that sounds like him: not advice, direction. It goes in the footer, on the guides, and at the top of the Ask Antoine form. If someone writes in from a crisis, the response points to real help first and him second.

The only Black leader at the table

It's true. It's powerful. A friend told him so and it stuck. It is his line to say on a stage when he decides to, and it is not a tagline, a headline, or a bio line. The brand doesn't lead with it. The brand leads with the question and lets who he is come out, which is exactly what he does when they hand him the mic.

Family

His siblings' struggles are told as his experience of them, never as their story. No names, no diagnoses, no details that would identify a person who hasn't agreed. His kids appear only as the family decides, in writing. His mom's story of him as an angry kid is his to tell and hers to approve.

The people he's helped

The dads who came home, the people who got housing, the young people with apartments their parents moved into. Those are testimonials when they write them in their own words and say we can use them. They are never case studies, never composites, and never shown with a face unless that person asked to be seen. Program names and employers appear only with permission.

The employer

He sits at a university's table. That's part of the story and the booker wants to know it. Until he says otherwise, the site says what he does, not where. When he's ready, we name it once on Where I'm From and nowhere else.