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DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0001: Public Brand Adopted — Devonside Labs

Status

approved — decided by the Founder on 2026-07-11 and formally ratified on 2026-07-17, alongside confirmation that Devonside Labs may still reference Devonshire Digital LLC as its parent company where it makes sense (see Consequences). Amended 2026-07-27 to record the venture's legal registration (see Amendment below).

Date

2026-07-11

Context

This venture (slug digital-products) operated under an internal working name only, with no public-facing brand chosen. A public brand name was needed before customer-facing work (product packaging, marketplace listings, marketing assets) could proceed.

Decision

This venture's public-facing, customer-facing brand is "Devonside Labs." This is a venture-level record of the company-level decision made in docs/decisions/ADR-0009, kept here per the requirement in docs/company/brand-architecture.md that each venture record its own brand-architecture decision in its own directory. See ADR-0009 for full context, alternatives considered, and consequences — this file intentionally does not duplicate that reasoning.

The repository slug digital-products is unchanged.

Consequences

See ADR-0009. In short: this venture's product packaging, marketplace listings (Etsy or otherwise), and marketing assets should be developed under "Devonside Labs," not "Digital Products." Visual identity (logo, logotype lockups, favicons, etc.) is not yet finalized and is tracked separately.

Parent-company references (confirmed 2026-07-17): "Devonside Labs" is the customer-facing brand — it is not renamed to or merged with "Devonshire Digital." That said, customer-facing copy may still reference Devonshire Digital LLC as the parent company where it makes sense (e.g. "a venture of Devonshire Digital LLC" in a footer, About page, or legal/ownership disclosure), consistent with DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002's already-approved decision to deliberately share visual DNA (the "D" glyph) between the two brands. This does not make Devonside Labs a sub-brand or umbrella extension of Devonshire Digital — the two names, and their independent public identities, remain distinct per ADR-0009 and docs/company/brand-architecture.md's naming-family prohibition.

Alternatives Considered

See ADR-0009 (company-level record holds the full alternatives analysis).

"Devonside Labs" is also the venture's legal trade name — it is registered in the State of Michigan as a d/b/a ("doing business as") of Devonshire Digital LLC, not a separate legal entity. This was stated directly by the Founder in response to the open question (tracked in ventures/digital-products/docs/strategy/brand-and-positioning.md's "What is explicitly not decided yet") of whether the legal trade name differs from the public brand name. It does not — the same name is used for both, which is what the d/b/a registration exists to enable ("so it can stand on its own" — the Founder's framing).

This resolves the "Legal trade name" gap from that list and is consistent with, not a change to, this ADR's existing "Parent-company references" consequence above: Devonside Labs is confirmed as legally part of Devonshire Digital LLC (a d/b/a, not an independently incorporated company), and the Founder has explicitly confirmed it is acceptable to state this publicly — e.g. "Devonside Labs is part of Devonshire Digital" — in customer-facing contexts (legal notices, marketplace seller/developer fields, About pages, footers), consistent with docs/company/brand-architecture.md's existing guidance that legal notices and marketplace listings typically need to name the operating legal entity regardless of venture branding.

This amendment is scoped to the legal-name/entity-structure fact only — it does not change anything about visual identity (still tracked separately, see Follow-up Actions below) or the brand-independence framing in ADR-0009/brand-architecture.md.

Follow-up Actions

  • Track visual-identity requirements (logo, logotype lockups, favicons, Etsy shop assets) as a separate work item. As of 2026-07-17, the "B3" mark, its square badge, and its wordmark lockup (horizontal + stacked) are all approved (see ventures/digital-products/docs/brand-assets.md); color palette and any typography beyond the wordmark lockup's Montserrat Medium remain undecided for Devonside Labs specifically — the same gap also remains open at the company level for Devonshire Digital LLC (see docs/company/brand-assets.md's Still open section for both).
  • If a marketplace listing (Etsy or otherwise) or a legal notice (privacy policy, terms of service) needs the legal seller/entity name, use "Devonside Labs, a d/b/a of Devonshire Digital LLC" (or equivalent phrasing) rather than inventing a different legal-entity presentation.

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