Brand Architecture¶
Model: independent-to-hybrid, decided per venture¶
Devonshire Digital LLC uses an independent, hybrid-capable brand architecture. This means:
- Devonshire Digital LLC is the parent legal entity. It is not a customer-facing brand in most contexts.
- Each venture may have its own distinct, customer-facing brand identity, unrelated in look and feel to the parent company or to other ventures.
- Parent-company endorsement is a venture-level decision, made deliberately — not a default. A venture may choose to visibly disclose "by Devonshire Digital LLC" in some contexts (e.g., a privacy policy, an app-store listing's developer field, a legal notice) without that becoming part of its primary customer-facing brand identity.
- Shared company ownership does not require shared visual branding. Two ventures under the same parent can look, sound, and feel completely different if that best serves their respective customers.
Current ventures and their brand status¶
Shelfery¶
Shelfery is a distinct, customer-facing brand for a home food-storage / pantry application. Its provisional visual identity uses a warm terracotta primary color (#A6552E). Shelfery is not branded under any umbrella label referencing the parent company — it does not appear as "Devonshire Digital Shelfery," "DDLabs Shelfery," or similar. Any parent-company disclosure for Shelfery (e.g., in a legal footer or app-store developer field) is handled separately from the primary brand presentation.
This branding is provisional — the color, name, and visual identity have not been finalized and should not be treated as locked. See ventures/shelfery/ for venture-specific detail (maintained by that venture's own documentation, not duplicated here).
Digital Products¶
"Digital Products" is an internal working name, not a finalized public brand. The venture produces digital productivity products (Excel workbooks and similar tools), under the slug digital-products. A public-facing brand name for this venture has not been chosen. Do not present "Digital Products" as a finished consumer-facing brand in any external-facing material — treat it as an internal label until a real name is adopted.
Explicit non-decisions¶
To prevent naming drift through repetition, the following are stated explicitly as things that are not true and should not be assumed, implied, or introduced by anyone (human or AI agent) working in this repository:
- Do not rename the company to "Devonshire Digital Labs." The company's name is Devonshire Digital LLC.
- Do not use "DDLabs" as an umbrella brand for the company or for any venture. No venture, product, or piece of marketing content should reference "DDLabs" as an identity. If this term appears anywhere in draft content, treat it as an error to be corrected, not a shorthand to preserve.
How the parent relationship may surface¶
Because full independence and full endorsement are both valid choices depending on context, the same venture may expose its relationship to the parent company differently across different surfaces:
- Repositories: a venture's own repository (if separate from this one) may or may not mention Devonshire Digital LLC in its README, depending on that venture's decision.
- Legal notices: privacy policies and terms of service typically do need to name the legal entity operating the product (Devonshire Digital LLC), even where the venture brand is otherwise independent.
- App-store / marketplace listings: platforms like the Apple App Store, Google Play, or Etsy often require or display a "developer/seller" field, which may show the legal entity name regardless of the venture's customer-facing brand.
- Websites: a venture's marketing site may choose to omit, understate, or clearly state the parent relationship — this is a venture-level brand decision, not a company-wide mandate either way.
When a new venture is created¶
Each new venture should make an explicit, documented brand-architecture decision (independent brand, hybrid with light parent disclosure, or fully endorsed by the parent) rather than defaulting silently to one option. Record that decision in the venture's own directory under ventures/<slug>/, and reference it from the portfolio entry described in docs/company/portfolio-strategy.md.