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Brand Asset Records and GIMP Production Workflow — Work Plan

Objective

Establish (1) a canonical record of Devonshire Digital LLC's approved brand assets (logo, logotype lockup), (2) a requirements document for Devonside Labs' not-yet-finalized visual identity (logo, logotype lockups, favicons, Etsy shop assets), and (3) a repeatable GIMP-based production workflow that can produce and maintain both of those, plus future "software package" style marketing visuals for Devonside Labs products — without producing final art in this pass.

Scope

  • Recording the Devonside Labs public-brand naming decision (ADR-0009 and its dependents) — complete, see Progress Checklist.
  • A directory/file convention for where brand source files (editable .xcf, etc.) and exported assets (.png, .svg, .ico) live, at both company level (Devonshire Digital LLC) and venture level (Devonside Labs / digital-products).
  • A company-level record of Devonshire Digital LLC's currently approved assets (logo, logotype lockup) — what exists today, where the source lives, and what "approved" means for a visual asset in this repository.
  • A requirements document for Devonside Labs' visual identity: logo, logotype lockups, favicons, and the specific asset set needed to set up an Etsy shop (shop banner/icon, listing image templates, etc.) — requirements only, not the final designs.
  • A GIMP automation/tooling scaffold (batch Script-Fu or Python-Fu invoked from scripts/) that can apply a template (e.g., a "software package box" mockup) to per-product screenshots for Devonside Labs marketplace listings.
  • Any ADR needed if the GIMP tooling choice turns out to be a material, hard-to-reverse dependency decision (per docs/standards/dependency-and-tooling-standard.md) — likely a work-log-level justification rather than a full ADR, to be confirmed during execution.

Out of scope

  • Actually designing/finalizing the Devonside Labs logo, color, or typography — that is creative/decision work for a human (or a follow-on task once requirements exist), not something this plan resolves.
  • Creating or publishing the actual Etsy shop.
  • Producing final marketing screenshots for any specific product — marketplace-listing-standard.md requires listing screenshots to reflect the actual, current product, so this can't happen until a product exists to screenshot.
  • Changing the digital-products slug (explicitly out of scope per ADR-0009 and naming-standard.md).

Applicable authority

Files expected to change

  • brand/README.md, brand/company/{README.md,source/README.md,exports/README.md}, brand/ventures/digital-products/{README.md,source/README.md,exports/README.md} — created. Directory convention: top-level brand/ holds asset files only (source/exports), keyed by company/ or ventures/<slug>/ (slug-keyed for stability, not brand-name-keyed). Approval/ requirements records stay in Markdown under docs/ and the venture's own docs tree, not in brand/ itself.
  • docs/company/brand-assets.md (new) — Devonshire Digital LLC's approved-asset record.
  • A Devonside Labs visual-identity requirements doc under ventures/digital-products/docs/ (new; exact filename TBD).
  • docs/governance/open-questions.md — updated: OQ-001 marked Decided (points to ADR-0009); added OQ-016 (possible future reuse of "Devonside" as a naming-family prefix for hypothetical future ventures — not a decision to create them, and not a shared-visual-identity decision, per ADR-0005).
  • docs/company/brand-architecture.md — updated with a forward-looking note on the "Devonside" naming-family question, linked to OQ-016.
  • scripts/ — new GIMP batch-invocation tooling (exact filename TBD).
  • Possibly a short work-log note (or ADR, if it turns out material) justifying GIMP as repository tooling per dependency-and-tooling-standard.md.

This list will be kept current as work proceeds.

Assumptions

  • "Devonside Labs" spelling is confirmed correct by the Founder (confirmed 2026-07-11).
  • GIMP will be invoked via its scripting interfaces (Script-Fu/Python-Fu) in batch mode from scripts/, not interactively, so the workflow is repeatable and reviewable — to be confirmed once the tooling is actually scaffolded.
  • "Approved" for a Devonshire Digital LLC asset means: recorded in docs/company/brand-assets.md with an explicit approval note from the Founder, not merely present as a file in the repository.

Risks

  • Name confusion: "Devonside Labs" and "Devonshire Digital LLC" are phonetically close; documentation and any generated copy must consistently distinguish them (flagged in ADR-0009).
  • Premature asset lock-in: recording "requirements" for Devonside Labs assets could drift into looking like approved designs if not clearly labeled as requirements/draft. All Devonside Labs visual files produced under this plan should be marked draft/proposed until a human explicitly approves them, consistent with CLAUDE.md's rule that agents draft/propose but never set a document's status to approved.
  • Marketplace-listing risk: any tempting shortcut to mock up "nicer than real" product screenshots using GIMP templates would violate marketplace-listing-standard.md. The GIMP workflow's role is framing/branding real screenshots, not fabricating feature depictions.

Validation plan

  • python scripts/check.py after any new/changed document, to catch front-matter/schema issues.
  • Manual review of new brand-record and requirements documents against docs/company/brand-architecture.md and the marketplace/packaging standards above.
  • No unittest discover tests impact expected unless GIMP tooling adds testable Python logic to scripts/.

Progress checklist

  • [x] Confirm "Devonside Labs" spelling with the Founder.
  • [x] Record the naming decision: ADR-0009 (company-level).
  • [x] Record the venture-level decision pointer: ventures/digital-products/docs/decisions/DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0001-public-brand-devonside-labs.md.
  • [x] Update docs/company/brand-architecture.md Digital Products section.
  • [x] Update ventures/digital-products/venture.json.
  • [x] Decide and document the brand-asset directory convention: top-level brand/ with company/ and ventures/<slug>/ subfolders, each split into source/ and exports/. Scaffolded with README-per-directory.
  • [x] Record the "Devonside" naming-family flag as OQ-016 (open question, not a venture decision) and note it in brand-architecture.md; marked OQ-001 Decided.
  • [x] Create docs/company/brand-assets.md — establishes the approval-register format.
  • [x] Produce a candidate high-quality standalone "D" mark: traced from the Founder-supplied ChatGPT mockup (native resolution, not the lower-res siteinfra/assets/favicon.png) using GIMP 3.2 (plug-in-sel2path via Python-Fu batch mode — GIMP 2.10 was tried first and abandoned per Founder direction to use the installed GIMP 3.2). Produced: a currentColor master SVG, navy/white colorway SVGs, and transparent PNG exports at 256/1024px. Verified both colorways render correctly (navy on white, white on navy) in docs/company/brand-assets.md. Flagged two open issues there: a navy-color mismatch between the mockup/favicon and the site's actual brand hex, and that siteinfra/assets/logo.png is a broken outline-only file.
  • [x] Navy color reconciliation: resolved to #0D1B2A (the site's already-live, deliberately documented value) as canonical, treating the mockup/favicon's slightly different navy as raster/generation noise rather than a distinct intended color. Documented in docs/company/brand-assets.md.
  • [x] Fixed siteinfra/assets/logo.png (was broken outline-only) and siteinfra/assets/favicon.png (was the slightly-off navy) — both regenerated from the new vector master via GIMP, deployed, and verified with a real mkdocs build viewed in-browser (header renders a crisp white mark on navy).
  • [x] Formalized the ad hoc GIMP Python-Fu scripts into reusable, checked-in tooling under scripts/: _gimp_common.py (shared GIMP-invocation helper), gimp_trace_mark.py, gimp_render_svg.py, gimp_compose_badge.py. Along the way, discovered and fixed a real bug in the ad hoc approach: gimp-console-3.2 does not reliably self-terminate after a batch script finishes on this machine, which had left dozens of orphaned gimp-console-3.2.exe processes running from this session's earlier manual invocations (killed via taskkill). _gimp_common.run_gimp_python() now streams output for a completion sentinel and kills the process itself instead of blocking on process exit. All three tools were re-run end-to-end against the real inputs and verified to reproduce the exact same output as the manual session work (byte-identical SVG trace, matching favicon composite, matching PNG render). Documented in scripts/README.md with the required dependency note (GIMP 3, not a Python package).
  • [x] Font selection for the wordmark lockup, decided by the Founder (2026-07-11): Montserrat Medium for the primary wordmark/logotype (matches what the ChatGPT mockup itself suggested), Montserrat Regular for small captions/UI, Inter Regular for business-card-style contact information. Documented in docs/company/brand-assets.md (Typography section). This is a selection only — no wordmark lockup file has been produced with these fonts yet (explicitly out of scope for this pass; no further graphics work requested).
  • [ ] Create the "D" + wordmark lockup using the fonts above — not started, tracked as a follow-up graphics task.
  • [ ] Create a Devonside Labs visual-identity requirements document (logo, logotype lockups, favicons, Etsy shop asset set) under ventures/digital-products/.
  • [x] Run python scripts/check.py — passes.
  • [ ] Archive or close this plan once the above is done; further work (actual logo/wordmark approval, Etsy shop setup, per-product marketing assets) becomes its own follow-on plan(s).

Decisions required

  • What counts as "approved" for the Devonshire Digital LLC logo/logotype lockup today — does an approved asset already exist, or does this task also need to surface that nothing is currently formally approved?
  • GIMP tooling shape — resolved: three focused scripts (gimp_trace_mark.py, gimp_render_svg.py, gimp_compose_badge.py) rather than one monolithic config-driven script, since the three operations (trace, rasterize, composite) are independently useful.
  • OQ-016 (Devonside naming-family reuse) is intentionally left open — no action needed from this plan beyond having recorded it.

Handoff notes

Complete: naming decision (ADR-0009 + dependents), the brand/ directory convention, the OQ-016 naming-family flag, docs/company/brand-assets.md, a candidate "D" mark (vector master + navy/white SVG and PNG exports), the navy-color reconciliation (#0D1B2A canonical), regenerated siteinfra/assets/logo.png + favicon.png (verified in a real mkdocs build viewed in-browser), and reusable GIMP tooling under scripts/ (gimp_trace_mark.py, gimp_render_svg.py, gimp_compose_badge.py, _gimp_common.py), documented in scripts/README.md. None of this is committed to git yet (awaiting explicit commit instruction per this repository's git-safety protocol).

Remaining: the "D" + wordmark lockup (font now decided — Montserrat Medium/Regular + Inter Regular, see docs/company/brand-assets.md — but the file itself is not built); the Devonside Labs visual-identity requirements document. No further graphics work was requested this session. Note that the "D" mark itself is still an unapproved candidate even though its derivatives (logo.png, favicon.png) are now live on the docs site — flagged explicitly in docs/company/brand-assets.md so this isn't mistaken for a Founder-approved asset. Also note for whoever runs the gimp_*.py tools next: if gimp-console-3.2.exe processes are ever seen lingering in the process list after a run, that's the known self-termination quirk being handled correctly by _gimp_common.py (which kills the process itself); it is not expected to require manual cleanup going forward.

2026-07-27 update (this note added retroactively, work done outside this plan's original session): everything flagged above as "remaining" is now done — the "D" + wordmark lockup was built and approved 2026-07-17 (docs/company/brand-assets.md), and the Devonside Labs ("B3" mark) equivalent — standalone mark, square badge/favicon composite, and wordmark lockup (horizontal + stacked) — was also built and approved 2026-07-17 (ventures/digital-products/docs/brand-assets.md). Domain (devonsidelabs.com) was registered and connected 2026-07-20. None of that landed as an update to this plan at the time, which left ventures/digital-products/docs/strategy/brand-and-positioning.md stating "no Devonside Labs logotype/wordmark file exists yet" as of its own 2026-07-20 last_reviewed date — contradicting brand-assets.md's 2026-07-17 approval it should have picked up. Corrected brand-and-positioning.md to match brand-assets.md (version 0.3.0 → 0.4.0) while investigating a devonside-labs open question that claimed the Devonside Labs logo was still undecided at the governance level — it wasn't; the open question there was stale for the same reason. Genuinely still open: color palette, tagline/brand voice, legal trade name (all listed in brand-and-positioning.md's "What is explicitly not decided yet"). This plan itself remains stale beyond this one correction (the Progress checklist above still shows the lockup task unchecked) — leaving it as-is rather than rewriting the whole plan, since that's a larger cleanup than this task called for; whoever picks this plan up next should reconcile the checklist against current reality or archive it.

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