Brand Manual & System Guidelines

C-GEM

Centre for Grower-centric Eco-value Mechanisms

People-centric Tech-enabled Planetary-scale

01 · Brand Overview & Strategy [FOUNDATION]

C-GEM operates legally as the Eco-Value Empowerment Foundation. It is India's only non-profit accountability partner for smallholder farming communities in carbon and ecosystem markets.

Carbon markets pay landholders for sequestering carbon, restoring ecosystems, and protecting forests — but those markets are complex, opaque, and designed for corporate intermediaries. C-GEM sits between farming communities and that market: reviewing contracts, negotiating terms, ensuring fair benefit-sharing, taking no stake in the credits generated.

Our Mission

Farmers First

To tip the scale in favor of grassroots farming families by shielding them from predatory contracts and enabling direct access to planetary climate finance.

Our Reach

Scale of Impact

Reaching over 2,71,000 farming families across 14 Indian states with zero-brokerage support by 2026.

Our Position

Moral Agency

Taking no commission on grower carbon credits. We act as a pure accountability and legal advisor, not an aggregator.

Voice & Tone Principles

C-GEM's copy never reads like commercial marketing — it reads like an organization that has taken a moral position and is asking stakeholders to join.

Voice Rules We Follow
  • Stewards, not beneficiaries: Farmers are visual and verbal protagonists. They own, steward, and thrive, rather than "receive aid".
  • First-person plural: Use "We" as a collective force. We stand with communities.
  • Specific numbers: Always use the Indian numbering format (e.g. 2,71,000 instead of 271,000).
  • Action verb anchors: Layout titles should use assertive verbs like PROTECT, BUILD, LEVERAGE.
Tone and Words We Avoid
  • No commercial hype: Banish words like "revolutionary", "disruptive", "game-changing", and "unlock the future". Use "verifiable", "rooted", and "rights-based".
  • No Emojis anywhere: Emojis (e.g., 🌱, 🤝, 🌍) degrade the audit-grade seriousness of the brand. Use real icons or typography dots.
  • No lowercase "C-GEM": The brand name is always hyphenated, all caps: C-GEM.
  • No cream backgrounds: The v1 cream color scheme is completely retired. The background is strictly pure white.

03 · Color System [PALETTE]

Our color system enforces strict boundaries between surfaces and ink. Pure white grounds deliver clinical, audit-grade environments, while Leaf Green represents planetary ecosystem restoration.

01. Core Ink & Surface Tokens

--paper
#FFFFFF
Ground Surface
--paper-tonal
#F6F7F2
Section Break
--ink
#0E1410
Primary Ink
--ink-mute
#333333
Body Text

02. Leaf Green Scale (Brand Core)

--leaf-600
#2C7A3D
Brand Primary
--leaf-800
#1F5A2C
Hover / Press
--leaf-100
#D8ECDC
Leaf Accent 100
--leaf-050
#ECF5EE
Leaf Accent 50

03. Program & Interface Accents

--harvest
#C98A1F
Carbon Ready™
--clay-600
#B85829
Beyond Carbon™
--sprout
#C8F47A
Marketing Shock
--lime
#B6F569
Platform Shock

04 · Typography & Casing [TYPE]

Our typography adapts to our audience. The warm **Marketing skin** uses Geist paired with Newsreader Italic for community narratives. The clinical **Platform skin** enforces Space Grotesk + JetBrains Mono for verifiable ledger details.

Marketing Type Roles
  • 01 Display: Geist Normal, 500 weight, -0.04em tracking, tight line-height (0.93)
  • 02 Body: Geist Normal, 400 weight, 14.5–16px / 1.55 line-height, ink-mute color
  • 03 Narrative Voice: Newsreader Italic, 400 weight, warm green color (--leaf-700)
  • 04 Data/Meta: Geist Mono, uppercase, tracked wide for captions and indicators

See also: type-body, type-display, type-pairing preview cards.

Platform Type Roles
  • 01 Display: Space Grotesk, 500 weight, snug line-height (1.05)
  • 02 Technical Voice: JetBrains Mono replaces Newsreader. Set in uppercase or monospace
  • 03 Data/Meta: JetBrains Mono everywhere. Bracketed index numbers (e.g. `[01]`)

Interactive Typography Sandbox

Select a typographic rule to test how the brand variables adapt.

Protecting the Planet · Empowering Communities
Numeral Rules (Non-Negotiable)

Indian Numbering Format & Tabular Figures

All numerical statements representing families, hectares, or carbon credits must use the Indian numbering format (e.g. **2,71,000** or **15,50,000**). In addition, always apply CSS `font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums` to alignment columns to ensure clean auditing layout.

05 · Art & Elements [ART & PHOTOS]

We utilize documentary, warm-graded agricultural photography focusing on growers. When photography is not available, we apply strict vector constraints.

The C-GEM Illustration Library

C-GEM Ambassador Coin Illustration
Flagship Motif

The Ambassador Coin

Our core narrative illustration, representing C-GEM’s model as an integrated micro-economy built on payments for environmental stewardship.

1. Coin Shaped Base

Reflects ecosystem payment flows and tangible asset creation for rural families.

2. Mixed Cropping & Central Lake

Represents structural agroforestry, soil water retention, and diverse crop yields.

3. Shadowed Dollar Sign ($)

Faded in the center of the coin base, symbolizing carbon markets serving as the support system underneath grower livelihoods.

Additional Illustration Assets

Landing Hero
landing-hero.png
Wide flowing agroforestry field scene, used for marketing hero backgrounds.
Handhold
handhold.png
Flat-color partnership illustration depicting community support.
Negotiate
negotiate.png
Flat-color illustration showing grower contracts negotiation.
Onboard
onboard.png
Flat-color onboarding workflow representation.
Female Farmer Sketch
female-farmer-sketch.png
Line art sketch depicting local farming protagonists.
Corner Decoration
corner-decoration.png
Abstract line-art corner graphic for document headers and sliders.

06 · Applied Branding [TEMPLATES]

How the C-GEM identity applies to programmes, carbon project cards, and dual-skin digital layouts.

01. Programme Accent Rules

Each of our trademarked programmes maps to a single, consistent accent color to preserve categorical integrity.

READY™

Carbon Ready™

Feasibility reports & climate portfolios for grassroots organisations. Accent: Harvest (#C98A1F).

BRIDGE™

Carbon Bridge™

Connecting vetted market actors with community projects. Accent: Ink (#0E1410).

LEARN™

Climate Learn™

Workshops, guidebooks, and community trainings. Accent: Leaf Green (#2C7A3D).

BEYOND™

Beyond Carbon™

Community stewardship, new methodologies, blended finance. Accent: Clay (#B85829).

02. Verified Carbon Projects Database

Project ID Region / State Focus Area Hectares (ha) Primary Partners
ID 4458 Gujarat State, India Regenerative Agricultural Practices 45,000 ha Varaha Climate Ag. · Shroffs Foundation Trust
ID 5140 Madhya Pradesh & Uttar Pradesh The Biwal Carbon Project 30,000 ha Fair Climate Fund India · Gram Vikas
ID 4613 Western Region, Gujarat Horticulture-Based Cultivation 12,500 ha AKRSP (India) · Cohesion Foundation Trust
ID 3892 Rural Odisha, India Enriching Private & Community Lands 3,537 ha FES · FES India Partnership Trust

03. Live Interactive Skin Switcher Demo

This demo container will instantly morph its fonts, radii, borders, and color tokens based on the global switcher selection, simulating how C-GEM assets change between public brochures and audit dashboards.

Composition Demo Marketing skin
Methodology Doc · Ref v3.2

Verifiable carbon, grown by 2,71,000 stewards across India.

Our project databases check baseline metrics via satellite telemetry and remote soil sampling, delivering credit ledger auditing to secondary buyers with zero brokerage.

07 · Developer Code & Asset Index [CODE]

Use these quick links to copy asset paths or integrate token-aware structures directly into your components.

01. Asset Paths Quick Copy

Asset Name Relative File Path Action
Primary Stacked Color Logo c-gem-design-system/project/assets/logo-stacked-color.png
Core Brushmark Icon c-gem-design-system/project/assets/logo-brushmark.png
EEF Statutory Stamp c-gem-design-system/project/uploads/EEF Stamp.png
The Ambassador Coin sketch c-gem-design-system/project/assets/illustrations/ambassador-sketch.png
Tokens Stylesheet Path c-gem-design-system/project/colors_and_type.css

02. HTML Boilerplate Integration

To initialize a standard C-GEM project page, pull in the CSS variables and setup the standard layout container.

<!-- Include C-GEM variables stylesheet -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="c-gem-design-system/project/colors_and_type.css">

<!-- Apply .platform-skin class to body for audit/dashboard applications -->
<body class="platform-skin">
  <header>
    <span class="eyebrow">[01] · carbon ready™</span>
    <h1 class="display">Empowering Grassroots Livelihoods</h1>
  </header>
  
  <div class="triplet">
    <span>People-centric</span>
    <span>Tech-enabled</span>
    <span>Planetary-scale</span>
  </div>

  <div class="stat">
    2,71,000 <span class="unit">growers</span>
  </div>
</body>