# Brand typography — Branching Skies

Two typefaces. Cinzel for the ritual register that the cathedral imagery calls for. Geist for clean readable body. Both are open-source under the SIL Open Font License, both load via Google Fonts, both work everywhere editorial press tooling supports web fonts.

## Display: Cinzel

A serif inspired by Roman inscriptions, designed by Natanael Gama. We use it for wordmarks, section headings, eyebrow labels, and pull-quotes. The capitals and proportions match the cathedral aesthetic of the painted brand world.

| Property       | Value                                                                                       |
| -------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Family         | Cinzel                                                                                      |
| Weights used   | 500 (medium), 600 (semibold)                                                                |
| Letter-spacing | 0.02em to 0.36em depending on register (heading, eyebrow, wordmark)                         |
| Case           | Uppercase by default; sentence case rare                                                    |
| Source         | Google Fonts ([fonts.google.com/specimen/Cinzel](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cinzel)) |
| License        | SIL Open Font License 1.1                                                                   |

**Where we use it:** the BRANCHING SKIES wordmark, all H1/H2/H3 section headings on landing + blog + press surfaces, eyebrow labels in uppercase tracked-gold, pull-quote bodies (italic), call-to-action button labels.

## Body: Geist

A modern geometric sans designed by Vercel, designed for readability at small sizes and clean rendering across operating systems. We use it for body copy, UI text, captions, and form fields.

| Property       | Value                                                                                     |
| -------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Family         | Geist Sans                                                                                |
| Weights used   | 400 (regular), 600 (semibold)                                                             |
| Letter-spacing | Default (0)                                                                               |
| Case           | Sentence case                                                                             |
| Line-height    | 1.6 to 1.7 for body; 1.4 for tighter captions                                             |
| Source         | Google Fonts ([fonts.google.com/specimen/Geist](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Geist)) |
| License        | SIL Open Font License 1.1                                                                 |

**Where we use it:** all body paragraphs, table cells, form labels and inputs, captions under images, microcopy beneath CTAs.

## Fallback stack

When the brand fonts aren't available (offline rendering, restrictive email clients, screen readers reading without web fonts), our application falls back to:

```css
font-family:
  var(--font-geist-sans),
  -apple-system,
  BlinkMacSystemFont,
  'Segoe UI',
  Roboto,
  sans-serif;
```

For Cinzel, the Times New Roman fallback approximates the serif register adequately.

## Pairing rationale

Cinzel and Geist sit at opposite ends of the typographic register: Cinzel evokes ritual, permanence, and the painted-cathedral world the brand lives in; Geist reads as modern, clean, and trustworthy for the technical claims the studio makes about its memory architecture. The contrast is the pairing's strength. Readers see the cathedral in the headlines and the engineering in the body.

## How to use these in your editorial design

Both fonts work in any modern web context via Google Fonts CSS import. For print, both are downloadable as TTF / WOFF / WOFF2 under the SIL Open Font License (commercial use permitted; modification permitted; redistribution permitted with the same license).