# Kintsu — brand guide

> Machine-readable catalogue: https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/manifest.json
> Human page: https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand
> Catalogue schema 1, updated 2026-09-12 — 41 published assets (+ 2 deprecated, still served), 3 scene recipes.

## The one rule

**Fetch the file. Never redraw the mark.** Not traced, not re-typeset, not regenerated by an image model, not rebuilt "close enough" in SVG. A redrawn logo is a wrong logo even when it looks right — and it is wrong in a way that gets published. Every asset below is at a stable, unauthenticated, non-expiring URL precisely so that fetching is always easier than drawing. If what you need is not in the catalogue, say so and stop.

## What Kintsu is

Kintsu builds private markets for productive capital. Liquid staking turns locked stake into an asset that keeps working — stake MON, hold sMON, and the position stays collateral you can lend against; alongside it sit permissioned lending markets, curated vaults, and DAO governance, running across Canton, Monad and Hyperliquid. The name is from *kintsugi*, the repair that is shown rather than hidden: the brand is built on that idea, which is why the visual language is structural and unornamented — square corners, hairline rules, a dither field, and one cyan seam holding it together.

## The mark

The Kintsu mark comes in a logomark (the symbol alone), a wordmark (the letters), and lockups of the two. Pick by ground, not by taste: `transparent` composites onto anything, `dark`/`light` are drawn for one theme only, `any` carries its own contrast.

| id | name | variant | ground | format | url |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `kintsu-mark-cyan` | Kintsu mark (cyan) | full-color | any | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/generated/kintsu-mark-cyan.svg |
| `kintsu-mark-mono-light` | Kintsu mark (white) | mono-light | dark | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/generated/kintsu-mark-mono-light.svg |
| `kintsu-mark-mono-dark` | Kintsu mark (ink) | mono-dark | light | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/generated/kintsu-mark-mono-dark.svg |
| `kintsu-lockup-duotone-dark` | Kintsu lockup (duotone, on dark) | duotone | dark | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/generated/kintsu-lockup-duotone-dark.svg |
| `kintsu-lockup-duotone-light` | Kintsu lockup (duotone, on light) | duotone | light | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/generated/kintsu-lockup-duotone-light.svg |
| `kintsu-lockup-mono-light` | Kintsu lockup (white) | mono-light | dark | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/generated/kintsu-lockup-mono-light.svg |
| `kintsu-lockup-mono-dark` | Kintsu lockup (ink) | mono-dark | light | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/generated/kintsu-lockup-mono-dark.svg |
| `kintsu-wordmark-mono-light` | Kintsu wordmark (white) | mono-light | dark | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/generated/kintsu-wordmark-mono-light.svg |
| `kintsu-wordmark-mono-dark` | Kintsu wordmark (ink) | mono-dark | light | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/generated/kintsu-wordmark-mono-dark.svg |

### Clearspace and minimum size

Keep clearspace of at least one blade-width (a quarter of the mark’s height) on every side, and do not render the mark below 24px or the lockup below 120px wide — the blades close up and read as a blob. Never re-color the mark outside the variants in this catalogue, never add effects, and never rebuild the letters in a substitute typeface.

*Applies to every mark above.*

## Two cyans, and confusing them is the most common error

| token | dark | light | what it is |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `--logo-cyan` | `#18f3e6` | `#18f3e6` | **The mark.** Identical in both themes on purpose — the logo is one color everywhere, the way a printed mark is. Never theme it. |
| `--accent` | `#35e0e8` | `#0ca8b8` | **The UI cyan.** Links, focus rings, active states, the scan line. It *flips* between themes, because it has to stay readable on an off-white page. |
| `--accent2` | `#1b8c96` | `#6fbec7` | The UI cyan's quieter partner — gradients, secondary strokes. |

If you take one thing from this file: `--logo-cyan` (`#18f3e6`) is the logo and does not change; `--accent` is the interface and does. Painting the mark in `#35e0e8` is the mistake everyone makes — the two are four hex digits apart and look identical on a dark screen, and then the light-theme export comes out teal (`#0ca8b8`) and the logo is simply the wrong color. Do not sample a cyan off a screenshot; read the token, or better, fetch the file and change nothing.

### The rest of the ground

| token | dark | light | role |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `--bg` | `#101418` | `#f6f5f1` | Page ground |
| `--panel` | `#14191f` | `#fdfcfa` | Panel / card ground |
| `--ink` | `#edf1f4` | `#0e1114` | Primary text |
| `--hair` | `rgba(237, 241, 244, 0.14)` | `rgba(14, 17, 20, 0.14)` | Hairline rule — the only divider |

Dark is the default. Light is the same system on off-white, set by `body[data-theme="light"]` — not a separate brand.

## Typography

- **Geist** — everything that reads as language: headlines, body, buttons.
- **Geist Mono** — every numeral, label, chip, ticker, axis and code fragment. No exceptions. A balance, an APY, a token symbol or an ALL-CAPS tracked label is always mono; a proportional numeral in a Kintsu layout is a bug.
- Labels are small, uppercase and widely tracked (~11px, 0.16em). Display type is tight (-0.03em) and set in medium, not bold.
- Both are Google fonts, loaded via `next/font`. Substituting Inter or a system stack changes the brand; if neither is available, use a neutral grotesk for text and a true monospace for numerals rather than mixing one family into both roles.

## Square corners

**No border-radius. Anywhere.** Not on buttons, cards, inputs, avatars, chips, modals or images. It is the single most recognisable rule in the system and the easiest one to break by reflex — every generic component library ships rounded, so a pasted component arrives wrong. Corners are square, dividers are hairlines, and emphasis comes from a rule, a ground change or the cyan seam, never from a shadow or a pill.

## Who owns what

The catalogue holds **12 Kintsu-owned** assets and **29 third-party** marks, and the distinction decides what you may do.

- **`owner: "kintsu"`** — ours. Use as supplied, within the clearspace and minimum-size rules above. You may place them on our grounds, at any size above the minimum, in the variant that fits the ground.
- **`owner: "third-party"`** — other companies' marks, redistributed here so integrations render correctly. We do not hold, and cannot grant, rights in them. Use them to identify that thing and nothing else: never restyle, recolor, rotate, crop, animate or lock them up with ours. Every third-party row carries `restrictions` — read it before you publish, and go to the owner for anything beyond plain identification.

## The rest of the catalogue

Full rows — aliases, tags, usage, restrictions, rasters — are in `/brand/manifest.json`. This is the index.

### Token artwork (20)

| id | name | variant | ground | format | url |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `token-ausd` | AUSD (AUSD) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=AUSD |
| `token-avax` | Avalanche (AVAX) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=AVAX |
| `token-benji` | Franklin Templeton BENJI (BENJI) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=BENJI |
| `token-btc` | Bitcoin (BTC) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=BTC |
| `token-cc` | Canton (CC) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=CC |
| `token-eth` | Ethereum (ETH) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=ETH |
| `token-hype` | Hyperliquid (HYPE) | full-color | any | webp | https://www.kintsu.xyz/tokens/hype-token.webp |
| `token-mon` | Monad (MON) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=MON |
| `token-shype` | Kintsu Staked Hype (SHYPE) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=SHYPE |
| `token-smon` | Kintsu Staked Monad (SMON) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=SMON |
| `token-supermon` | SuperMON (SUPERMON) | full-color | any | webp | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=SUPERMON |
| `token-susds` | sUSDS (SUSDS) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=SUSDS |
| `token-usd1` | USD1 (USD1) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=USD1 |
| `token-usdc` | USDC (USDC) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=USDC |
| `token-usdcx` | USDCx (USDCX) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=USDCX |
| `token-usde` | Ethena USDe (USDE) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=USDE |
| `token-usds` | USDS (USDS) | full-color | any | webp | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=USDS |
| `token-usdt` | Tether (USDT) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=USDT |
| `token-wmon` | Wrapped MON (WMON) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=WMON |
| `token-wsteth` | Wrapped stETH (WSTETH) | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=WSTETH |

### Networks & protocols (7)

| id | name | variant | ground | format | url |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `network-monad` | Monad network mark | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=MON |
| `network-hyperliquid` | Hyperliquid network mark | full-color | any | webp | https://www.kintsu.xyz/tokens/hype-token.webp |
| `network-ethereum` | Ethereum network mark | full-color | any | png | https://www.kintsu.xyz/api/tokens/art?symbol=ETH |
| `canton-mark` | Canton mark | mono-light | dark | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/canton.svg |
| `canton-mark-lime` | Canton mark (lime) | full-color | dark | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/canton-lime.svg |
| `canton-network-wordmark` | Canton Network lockup | full-color | dark | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/canton-network-wordmark.svg |
| `chainlink-mark-simplified` | Chainlink mark | full-color | any | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/oracles/chainlink.svg |

### Partners (1)

| id | name | variant | ground | format | url |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `canton-foundation-lockup` | Canton Foundation lockup | mono-light | dark | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/canton-foundation.svg |

### Wallets (4)

| id | name | variant | ground | format | url |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `wallet-metamask` | MetaMask | full-color | any | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/wallets/metamask.svg |
| `wallet-phantom` | Phantom | full-color | any | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/wallets/phantom.svg |
| `wallet-walletconnect` | WalletConnect | full-color | any | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/wallets/walletconnect.svg |
| `wallet-rabby` | Rabby | full-color | any | svg | https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/wallets/rabby.svg |

## Deprecated, still served

These keep returning bytes on purpose — a 404 would break content that already shipped. Do not use them in anything new.

| id | name | use instead |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `kintsu-logomark-square` | Kintsu logomark (legacy export) | `kintsu-mark-cyan` |
| `kintsu-wordmark-text` | Kintsu wordmark (legacy) | `kintsu-wordmark-mono-light` |

## Scene recipes

Composed 3D scenes with real asset files slotted into named roles. Every recipe is **illustrative**: a depicted market is a picture, never a statement that the pair is live or the product is available. Do not infer availability from artwork.

**The focal plate — CC collateral, USDC loan** — `scene-focal-market-plate`

The hero shot. The `focal` market block on the waterfront row at scale 1.34, plating `cc-usdc`: post Canton Coin, draw dollars. It is the nearest and largest market in the city and the only plate a visitor is meant to be able to READ, which is why this pair sits on it — Canton is what the product is about, and the most prominent slot should say so. Behind it the `crown-quay` tower and the named skyline cluster stand as scenery, at the lighter ink depth gives them.

**The avenue plate — BTC collateral, USDC loan** — `scene-avenue-market-btc`

The `west` market block, the one building in the district turned a quarter east so it fronts the grand avenue’s mouth rather than the promenade. It plates `btc-usdc`: the safest collateral on the ladder and the cheapest borrow, at scale 0.9. The turn is the point of this frame — the walk up to it ends heading north along a different road, and the avenue behind gives the shot a vanishing line the waterfront row has not got.

**The counter row — sMON collateral beside Kintsu Prime** — `scene-counter-row-smon`

The `midtown` market block plating `smon-usdc` — Kintsu’s own LST posted as collateral against a dollar loan — on the counter row it shares with the `slab-e` tower and, at the row’s east end, the Kintsu Prime vault. This is the frame that shows the product’s two halves in one picture: a market that takes sMON, and the vault that deploys into markets like it. Prime’s entablature carries the KINTSU wordmark, which is the only place in the district our own type appears on a building.

## How to retrieve an asset

1. `GET /brand/manifest.json` — one unauthenticated request, no key, no expiry, CORS open to any origin.
2. Lowercase what you were asked for and match it against each row's `id`, `name`, `aliases` and `tags`. `aliases` exists for exactly this and is already lowercased, so "smon", "staked mon" and "sMON" all resolve to one row.
3. On several hits, prefer `status: "approved"`, then the `background` that matches your ground.
4. Read `usage` before placing it and `restrictions` before publishing it.
5. `GET` the row's `url`. The manifest returns absolute URLs resolved against the host you fetched it from; the catalogue itself stores them site-relative.
6. No match? Check the manifest's `missing` list — those are gaps we know about. Do not substitute a lookalike, and do not draw one.

```sh
curl -s https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/manifest.json \
  | jq -r '.assets[] | select(.id == "kintsu-mark-cyan") | .url' \
  | xargs curl -sO
```

That fetches `kintsu-mark-cyan` — The four-blade origami mark in brand cyan, square at 188×188 with the blades filling the box edge to edge.

---

Anything this file does not cover is on the human page — https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand — alongside the downloads. The full rows, with aliases, tags and every restriction in full, are in https://www.kintsu.xyz/brand/manifest.json.