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Kiln
An identity for a ceramics studio that feels handmade and rigorous at once — warm clay, exacting grid.
- Year
- 2025
- Disciplines
- Brand Systems
- Platform
- Brand
- Brief
- Sample client
01Context
Kiln makes quiet, beautiful objects and had a loud, borrowed logo. We built a full identity that matches the work — tactile, precise, unmistakably theirs.
02Problem
Craft brands drift into cliché fast. We needed warmth without the usual rustic costume, and rigour without going cold.
- An identity that feels made by hand
- A system that survives real-world use
- Type and marks that scale to a stamp
- Guidelines the studio can actually follow
03Strategy
We drew the marks from the process itself — the wheel, the glaze line, the kiln — then set them on a strict grid.
- A primary mark plus a working set
- A type and colour system with room to breathe
- Physical applications, tested on real objects
- A short, usable set of guidelines
04Design
05Engineering
Design tokens live in Figma, export through Style Dictionary into CSS variables and a typed React kit documented in Storybook; Chromatic gates every visual diff in CI.
- Single token source compiled to web, iOS, print
- Storybook as the contract between design and build
- Chromatic visual regression on every PR
- Versioned brand releases with changelogs
Also considered. A static PDF guideline — rejected because brands drift; pipelines don't.
06Details
The mechanism underneath, as a working model. Press the buttons.
lab / design systems / token pipeline
One source of truth compiles to CSS, iOS and print. Every visual diff gates a pull request.
Loading the model
Figures inside a model are simulated to show how the mechanism behaves. They are not production measurements.
07What shipped
9 modules are in the build below. Each one works.
- 01Palette with a WCAG contrast checker
- 02Type scale slider
- 03Mark variants
- 04A radius token that redraws components
- 05CSS, JSON and Swift export
- 06Changelog and publish
- 07Component gallery and icon set
- 08Motion tokens
- 09Token change reviews: propose, approve, decline
08Technology
This is the kind of work we do under Brand Systems.
Now use it.
This is Kiln, the whole application. Continue as the sample user, change things, reload. Your data stays in this browser and resets from Settings, then Data.
A full application, not a recording. Sign in as the sample user; your data stays in this browser.
