Brand book · second edition

A spoonful. Morning and night.

One ingredient from the sea, prepared cold and kept cold. Seven flavours, one habit, and a jar made to be refilled rather than replaced. This is how the brand is built — and why each decision is the one it is.

Seven frosted jars of sea moss gel in a row against an open sky, each showing a different tint through the glass.
Version 2.0 · 2026 Supersedes v1.0 Once Once Agency

01 · From v1 to v2

The restraint moved inward

There is already a brand book for SEAMOSS PURE. It is good, and it is no longer true. Before anything else, this chapter says plainly what moved — so nobody builds half in one system and half in the other.

v1 — the first book v2 — what is live now
The idea Apothecary minimalism · elegance by subtraction High contrast, botanical, frosted glass against open sky
Palette Cream #F5F1E8 · stone · sage · olive #55603F Olive #1c3a13 · lime #d3fa99 · ochre #ebb057 · cream #fcfcf7
Type on screen Cormorant Garamond Outfit 600 + Montserrat. Cormorant retires to the logotype
Logotype Line droplet + serif wordmark Solid droplet + heavy sans, two inks
Product One jar, two sizes Seven flavours × two formats × three sizes
The ritual A spoonful in the morning A spoonful straight, morning and night
The business One-time purchase Keep the jar, subscribe to the refill
Surfaces Flat sections, thin rules Overlapping sections, nested glass, state layers, audited contrast

Why a second book instead of an edit

Because the first one is not wrong about the brand it describes. It is a complete, coherent system, and it is what every asset made before July 2026 carries — including every photograph, which still shows the serif logotype on the jar. Overwriting it would leave those assets orphaned and would erase the reasoning behind decisions that were correct at the time.

So v1 stays where it is, at its own address, as the record of the first direction. Everything produced from now on follows this book. The two are never mixed.

A hand lifting a heaping spoonful of golden sea moss gel from an open frosted jar.

Nothing to mix. Nothing to decide.

02 · Mission, vision, values

What we're here to do

A supplement brand that does not sell an outcome has to be very clear about what it does sell.

Mission

To make one honest thing, prepare it properly, and make it easy enough to take that people actually keep taking it.

Vision

The brand people name when someone asks which sea moss to trust — earned by what we publish, not by what we promise.

The business

A jar that lives on the counter and a refill that arrives before it runs out. The habit is the product; the gel is how it is delivered.

Four values, and what each one costs us

  • Restraint. We say less than we could. It costs traffic: the disease-claim keywords are roughly forty percent of this category's search volume and we do not chase any of them.
  • Honesty. We publish the caveat with the fact. The iodine chapter of our own science page is a warning, not a benefit.
  • Craft. Cold-prepared, cold-shipped, no preservative. It is the most expensive way to ship food and it is the reason the product is what it says.
  • Legibility. Every colour pair on the site is audited, and the audit can fail a build. In a health category, being readable is part of being trustworthy.

03 · Where we stand

A market that runs on trust

We looked at what people actually type before they buy sea moss. The answer reframed the whole strategy.

Across a corpus of 2,006 keywords in this category, the single largest cluster — 509 terms, a quarter of everything — is not about the product at all. It is brand names. People search for sellers: this one from television, that one from a shop in Los Angeles, another by the founder's name.

That tells us what kind of market this is. Sea moss gel is close to a commodity; what is scarce is a reason to believe one jar over another. The decision is not which product, it is whom do I trust.

Where that leaves us

  • Against the miracle sellers. They win the benefit searches. We are not competing there, and would lose to WebMD and Cleveland Clinic if we tried.
  • Against the commodity sellers. They win on price. We compete on being specific — about origin, about testing, about what we do not know.
  • For the reader who has been disappointed before. They are allergic to hype and are looking for one thing they can repeat without thinking about it.

04 · Naming

A generic name, made ownable

“Sea moss” is the product and “pure” is an adjective. As a name it is almost entirely unownable — which changes what the identity has to do.

The name cannot be trademarked on its own and cannot be won on search: any query containing it is contested by every seller in the category. That is a real constraint, and pretending otherwise would set the client up to fail.

So the ownable assets are built elsewhere:

  • The logotype. A registrable mark is the one piece of the name that can legally belong to us. It is why the logo chapter is the longest in this book.
  • The two inks. Splitting SEAMOSS from PURE in different colours gives an unownable string a shape people recognise before they read it.
  • The published record. Authority accrues to whoever answers the questions properly. That is the content chapter, and it is a multi-year asset, not a campaign.

06 · Palette

Loud surface, quiet claims

A very dark olive against a bright lime, with ochre for warmth. The pale greens that used to carry the brand are now background, not subject.

Level 1 — primitives

Raw values. Never used directly in a component.

Level 2 — semantic

What components actually use. A component never names a colour; it names a role — --color-fill-brand, --color-text-secondary. That indirection is what let the whole palette be replaced in one file when the direction changed, without touching a single component.

Level 3 — state layers

Instead of defining a hover colour per component, a predefined opacity layer is laid over it: an olive button on hover is olive plus eight percent dark. One system, not a hundred decisions.

Both buttons carry no hover rule of their own. Hover and press come entirely from the state layer. The lime button exists because on a dark olive section an olive button disappears into its own background — and it is the only place lime appears at size, so it is not spent.

07 · Type

Two families, one job each

Outfit says the brand's name for it. Montserrat does the work. The serif that used to do both now does neither — it lives in the logotype.

Display · 4rem / 1.05 / -0.035em

A spoonful, morning and night

H1 · 3rem / 1.18 / -0.035em

Buy the jar once

H2 · 2rem / 1.18 / -0.035em

Keep it cold

H3 · 1.5rem / 1.18

What's actually in it

Lead · 1.125rem / 1.6

One ingredient from the sea, prepared cold.

Body · 1rem / 1.6

Keep it refrigerated. Best within three to four weeks of opening.

Small · 0.875rem / 1.6

Contains naturally occurring iodine.

Eyebrow · 0.75rem / 1.6 / 0.16em

THE RITUAL

Outfit — display

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789

Montserrat — body

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789

Two rules that are not preferences

  • The scale has deliberate gaps. There is no 700, no 900, no 1100. The gap forces a choice from the scale instead of inventing a size, which is how type systems stay coherent after the third person touches them.
  • Every number is Montserrat, with tabular figures. Prices, quantities, totals, supplement panels, chapter numbers. Cormorant has old-style figures — its “1” reads as an “I” and its “0” as an “O” — and a supplement panel is not a place for ambiguity.

08 · Surfaces

Overlap, glass, and one shadow

Two mechanisms carry the entire surface language, and one rule keeps the second one honest.

Sections overlap

Section A — carbon

Section B — olive, pulled up by exactly one radius

The negative margin is exactly the corner radius — 64 px pulled up, 64 px rounded. Match them and the overlap covers the curve cleanly; mismatch them and a dead strip appears. Below 600 px the radius drops to 32 px, because a large overlap is the first thing that breaks on a phone.

Glass nests

Glass, 70% dark

Cream text on a 70% dark pane over a 20% scrim holds 8.00:1 even on the lightest photograph in the library.

The nested pane drops to 8% light. The separation between the two levels is made by the border, not the fill.

Glass never sits on flat colour — always on photography, and it nests: a pane inside a pane. The contrast between the two levels is the effect, not the blur.

Hard rule

Glass does not guarantee contrast. A pane with no scrim beneath it is an accessibility trap: it looks beautiful over the reference photograph and is unreadable over half the real ones. Every glass surface carries a scrim, and the composite is audited — not the pane on its own.

One shadow

There is exactly one shadow token in the system, and it is for overlays. Everything else separates with a hairline rule. The brand divides with rules, not with depth.

09 · Accessibility

Legibility is a trust signal

Every pair in the system is measured by a script that can fail a build. These are its real numbers.

Pair Tokens Ratio Grade
Text primary on page carbon / cream 17.48 AAA
Text secondary on page slate / cream 5.51 AA
Brand text on page olive / cream 12.26 AAA
Error text on page brick / cream 6.26 AA
Text on elevated surface carbon / stone 15.74 AAA
Text on cards carbon / white 17.99 AAA
Inverse text on brand cream / olive 12.26 AAA
Inverse text on carbon cream / carbon 17.48 AAA
Text on accent olive / lime 10.76 AAA
Eyebrow on brand ochre / olive 6.54 AA
Cream on dark glass, lightest photo composited 8.00 AAA
Cream on nested glass composited 6.43 AA
Carbon on light glass, darkest photo composited 8.28 AAA

The five vetoes

These must keep failing. The audit treats a vetoed pair that starts passing as a failure — because it means someone changed a colour and the rule needs revisiting. It is the only way a palette this bright stays honest.

Vetoed Ratio Why
Lime as text on cream 1.14 Lime is an accent over dark; over light it is illegible
Lime as text on stone 1.03 Same over stone: lime never carries text
Ochre as text on cream 1.88 Ochre is a warm counterpoint over olive, never text over light
Sage as text on cream 3.64 The greyed green doesn't reach AA over light either
Mist as text on cream 1.15 The pale greens are surface, not ink

Why the glass is audited composited

A pane's effective background is not a token — it is the result of stacking a scrim and a translucent fill over a photograph. So the audit builds that stack numerically against the lightest and darkest images it could ever sit on, and measures the text against the result. That is how the nested pane was caught failing at 4.05:1 and moved down to eight percent light.

A jar of sea moss gel on a kitchen counter beside a coffee cup in morning light.

A habit you can see is a habit you keep.

10 · Tone

The ritual, not the results

We talk about the ritual, not the results. That is a strategic choice before it is a stylistic one — and it is the only position in this category that does not put the payment processor at risk.

We are

  • Calm — unhurried, settled
  • Precise — specific, concrete
  • Honest — plain about what we don't know
  • Warm — human, generous

We are not

  • Sleepy, vague or precious
  • Clinical or cold
  • Falsely modest
  • Chummy or jokey

Words we never use

BannedWhy
cure, treat, heal, prevent, fixDisease claims. Legal exposure and processor risk.
detox, cleanse, flush toxinsPseudo-medical and heavily targeted by regulators.
miracle, superfood, powerhouseHype register — the opposite of the position.
boost, supercharge, skyrocketPhysiological claims dressed as marketing.
“92 of the 102 minerals”The category's most-cited false claim. Absolute veto.
FDA approvedSupplements are not FDA approved. Factually wrong.
hurry, don't miss out, last chanceManufactured urgency. Off-brand and distrust-generating.

Before and after

NeverInstead
“Unlock your body's potential with nature's most powerful superfood!”“Sea moss. One ingredient, taken morning and night.”
“Packed with 92 essential minerals”“Naturally contains iodine, potassium and magnesium.”
“Detox and revitalise from within”“A spoonful, straight. That's the whole routine.”
“Order now and transform your health!”“Keep it in the fridge. It lasts about four weeks once opened.”
Corrected from v1

The first book's tagline was “One ingredient. Every morning.” Both halves have moved: the habit is now morning and night, and with seven flavours “one ingredient” is only literally true of Gold Pure. The flavoured jars add exactly one thing more, and it is named on the label — that is the honest phrasing, and it is what the site uses.

11 · Art direction

Frosted glass, open sky

Frosted glass, a near-black olive lid, and an open sky. The colour of the flavour reads as a tint through the glass — that is the whole system.

A frosted jar beside a stand-up refill pouch against an open sky.
Jar and refill pouch. Both carry the horizontal lockup.
A spoonful of golden sea moss gel.
The spoonful. Hands cropped at the wrist, never a face.
Macro of translucent golden sea moss gel.
Texture. Copy-free, the cheapest pillar to produce.
A jar of sea moss gel on a refrigerator shelf.
The cold chain, shown rather than claimed.

The constants

  • The jar. Frosted semi-matte glass, near-black olive metal lid. Never cork.
  • The light. Soft daylight, single direction, honest shadows.
  • The ground. Pale sand, or an open sky with diffuse cloud.
  • People. Hands only, cropped at the wrist. No faces, no jewellery.
  • Never. Spa props, towels, stacked stones, bright kelly green.
Hard rule — generated imagery

Every generated image must carry exactly the brand logotype. Pass the real logo as a reference, and check each result before it is used — if the generator redraws the letterforms, regenerate. This rule exists because it was broken: an earlier batch shipped with invented logos on the jars, and every one of them had to be redone.

12 · The range

Colour is the difference

Seven flavours across two formats and three sizes. The tint is the identifier — it is the only thing that changes between product photographs.

Gold Pure

Warm amber gold — the original

Purple Purple

Soft lavender purple

Gold Raspberry

Gold with a raspberry blush

Purple Hibiscus

Purple pulled toward magenta

Smokers Blend

Neutral olive-amber

Mango

Orange-gold

Chocolate Pudding

Cocoa — the 4 oz jar only

The seven flavours of sea moss gel in a row.
The range. Constant jar, constant lid, constant light — only the tint moves.
FormatSizesRole
Jar8 oz · 16 ozThe object. Bought once, kept, refilled.
Jar — Chocolate Pudding only4 ozThe small one. A way in.
Refill pouch8 oz · 16 ozThe subscription SKU. Tops the jar back up.
Compliance — Smokers Blend

The name suggests a respiratory benefit. It is described as “an herbal-forward blend” and nothing else. No lung, no quitting, no clearing, no detox — not in copy, not in alt text, not in meta descriptions. The image is a tinted jar like any other.

13 · The refill loop

Buy the jar once

The jar is the object. The pouch is the refill. That relationship is the business model, so it has to be legible in the packaging itself.

Less packaging

A refill pouch uses a fraction of the material of a new jar. Keep the glass, skip the waste.

Better per ounce

Refills cost less than a fresh jar — the jar you already own does the work.

Never run out

Set the cadence and the morning-and-night habit takes care of itself.

Where the line is

The environmental angle is about packaging. It is never about health. “Less material” is a fact about a pouch; anything implying the refill is better for the body is a claim, and we do not make it.

14 · The habit

Two spoonfuls, no preparation

A heaping spoonful, straight from the jar. Once when you wake up, once before bed. No blender, no mixing, no recipe.

Morning

One heaping spoonful, straight. Before coffee, before anything.

Night

One more before bed. Keep the jar where you'll see it, so you don't forget.

Stirring it into cold water, a smoothie, tea or coffee is a footnote, not the method. Most people take it straight, and every piece of copy leads with that.

15 · In use

The system in the world

The same eight colourways, applied. Olive and cream carry the surfaces; lime appears once per piece and never twice.

An open shipping box with a jar nested in cream tissue, a cold pack and a printed card.
Unboxing. Cold pack in olive, tissue in cream, one card.
Letterhead, business cards, stickers and an envelope in olive and cream.
Stationery. Uncoated stock, olive ink, one card reversed.
A deep olive rigid gift box with the stacked logo foil-stamped in lime.
Gift box. Lime foil on olive — the one place the accent is metallic.
A natural cotton tote bag screen-printed with the stacked logo.
Tote. The stacked lockup at size, two inks.
A deep olive heavyweight t-shirt with the horizontal logo printed in lime.
Apparel. Single-ink lime on olive, at a restrained size.

16 · Editorial & commerce

We win on the how, not the cure

The keyword research changed the plan. The biggest search volume in this category is ground we cannot and should not stand on — and the gap nobody occupies is the one our constraint forces us into.

QueryVolume / moDifficultyUs
sea moss benefits90,50069Vetoed — disease-claim territory
sea moss gel60,50022Transactional — ours
sea moss is good for what14,80025A definition question, not a claim
wildcrafted sea moss gel5,40033The best safe commercial door
how to use sea moss gel26027Google has no good answer here

Four pillars

  • The ritual — 40%. How to use it, how much, when, what it tastes like. The anchor.
  • The ingredient — 25%. What it is, where it grows, how it becomes gel.
  • Choosing well — 20%. Honest comparisons. Commercial ground without lying.
  • Straight answers — 15%. Iodine, thyroid, pregnancy. Nobody else does this honestly.

Storefront principles

  • Round prices, not charm prices. $60, not $59.99. Round reads considered; charm reads discounted.
  • Anchor by size. The larger jar makes the smaller one legible as a trial, not a compromise.
  • The ladder. Starter kit → refill subscription → more flavours. Each step is smaller than the last.
  • Say the limitation early. It needs refrigeration, it lasts weeks not months. Honesty about a constraint reads as confidence.

17 · What we never say

The spine

This is not an appendix. It is the constraint every other chapter is built around, and the reason the brand can keep taking payments.

Sea moss gel is a YMYL product — money or health. Nutraceuticals are a restricted category for payment processors, and a single disease claim on a public page is enough to trigger a review. Everything below is non-negotiable and applies to every word anyone publishes for this brand.

Never

  • That the product cures, treats, prevents, diagnoses or mitigates any disease or condition.
  • Any named condition — thyroid, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, anxiety, weight loss, fertility.
  • Detox, cleanse, flush toxins, heal the gut.
  • That it replaces medication, or any comparison to a drug.
  • “FDA approved.” Supplements are not approved by the FDA. A registered facility under cGMP may be stated if true and documented.
  • “92 of the body's 102 minerals.” The category's most-cited false claim, and the one that appears most in warning letters.

Allowed — structure/function, with conditions

Only where there is documented support and the DSHEA disclaimer appears on the same page, tied to the claim. Safe phrasing: supports…, helps maintain…. Never treats…, fixes…, eliminates….

Required on any page carrying a claim

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Iodine — the specific risk of this category

Sea moss is high in iodine and the amount varies by harvest. The content per serving is declared from the batch COA, never estimated. Every page that carries it also carries: contains naturally occurring iodine; if you are pregnant, nursing, or have a thyroid condition, consult your physician before use. The product is never positioned as a thyroid solution — that is the most dangerous claim available to us.

The guard

Four launch blockers are enforced by a script that exits non-zero: fabricated testimonials, placeholder supplement facts, unapproved shipping rates and an unapproved subscription discount. The site cannot go to production while any of them stands. A safety net nobody can see is not a safety net.

A jar of sea moss gel in soft light.

One thing, done properly.

Assets

Take it with you

tokens.css ↓ Horizontal logo ↓ Stacked logo ↓ Isotype ↓

The full logo system — four lockups in eight colourways, plus favicon and avatar, in SVG and PNG — lives in the repository at 02-Marca/logo-v2/, together with the build script that generates it and the guidelines that measure it.

SEAMOSS PURE Brand Book, version 2.0 · 2026 · Once Once Agency.
Supersedes version 1.0, which remains published as the record of the first direction. The two systems are never mixed.
Colour ratios are the output of the project's contrast audit. Logo minimum sizes were tested at real size, not estimated.