Brand guidelines · for partners

Build it here.

Everything a partner needs to put KILN on a page, a slide, a stage or a screen: the logo files, the colours, the type and the few rules that keep them right.

Download the logo pack ZIP · 1.0 MB Guidelines as a PDF 723 KB

Version: 1.0
Approved: 31 October 2026
Questions: Contact the KILN team

The brand

A kiln does in hours what the earth needs centuries to do. You put in raw clay and apply extreme, controlled heat for a short, precise window. What comes out is hard, permanent and useful, and it can never go back to being clay. That is the claim KILN makes: not a networking weekend, a phase change.

The tagline

Build it here.

ابنِه هنا

Under the mark in the tagline lockup, in capitals with +20% tracking
As a standalone headline in sentence case, with the full stop: Build it here.
As the last line of a pitch, a page or a closing slide
In Arabic as ابنِه هنا, never transliterated

Never extend it ("Build it here, build it now"), conjugate it ("Building it here"), run it in the same block as a descriptor, or set it larger than the mark.

How to write the name

KILN is always in capitals, in headlines and in body copy. Never "Kiln" or "kiln".
KILN Hackathon 2026 for the event, year-stamped when precision matters. Never "the KILN" on its own.
Bootcamp · Firing · Finale for the three stages.
HealthTech · Biotech · AgriTech · FinTech · Open for the tracks: single capitalised words, no space.
The hosts are organising partners, not sub-brands. They appear beside KILN in a co-branded lockup, never inside the mark.

Four messages

Everything written about KILN should trace back to one of these. If a sentence serves none of them, cut it.

Continental, not national

Algiers is the venue, not the ceiling. Founders from Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa make this a continental programme.

Pressure, not participation

Selection is real, the bootcamp qualifies teams out, and the finale is judged by people who write cheques. Turning up is not the achievement.

Sovereignty through deep tech

HealthTech, Biotech, AgriTech and FinTech, because that is where Africa's dependency is most expensive. Food sovereignty, not food apps.

Built, not pitched

Prototypes, proofs of concept and running code. The output of KILN is working artefacts.

Voice

Specific over superlative. "48 hours" beats "intensive". If you can't put a number on it, ask whether it's true.
Continental, never charitable. An investment story, not an aid story. Never "empowering", "giving back" or "untapped potential".
Short sentences. Hard verbs. Build, fire, qualify, ship, fund.
Never call KILN "the African [anything else]". It makes the continent sound derivative.

Campaign lines and hashtags

The tagline is permanent. These lines can change by edition and audience: use them as headlines, never in a lockup, and never more than one per surface.

Nobody fires a kiln alone.
Not another app.
48 hours to prove it.

#KILN2026 first, #KILNafrica second.

Describing KILN in one line

KILN is Africa's AI and deep tech hackathon: a four-week virtual bootcamp, then five days in Algiers, 3–7 December 2026, three of them inside the African Startup Conference.

Logo

The mark is Split Fire: one square, cut corner to corner. Raw clay above the line, fired below it. Always use the supplied files; never redraw or retype the mark.

The primary mark. A true square. The diagonal runs from the top-right corner to the bottom-left corner, at 45° and no other angle. KI sits in the Clay half and LN in the Ember half, centred as one stacked word.

It carries its own ground. The square is opaque, so the mark works unchanged on light, dark and photographic backgrounds. There is no light or dark version of the mark itself, and nothing to recolour.

Colours inside the mark

Part	Colour
Upper triangle	Clay #B4472A
Lower triangle	Ember #E8622A
KI	#F5F1EA
LN	Ink #141110

Clay and the KI white exist only inside the mark. Never use them for fills, buttons or text. If a layout needs a second warm tone, use Flame #FC8337.

The ember full stop

When KILN is set as type rather than drawn as the square (the horizontal lockup, a site header, a document title), it takes a full stop in Ember #E8622A: KILN.

The stop belongs to the typographic wordmark only, never inside the square. It is always Ember, never Clay, Flame or Ink. In a one-colour job, the stop takes the same colour as the word.

Lockups

Horizontal lockup. For headers, email signatures, letterheads and strips where a square is the wrong shape. The mark's height equals the wordmark's cap height, and the gap between them is a quarter of the mark's width. The wordmark carries the ember full stop.

Tagline lockup. The tagline sits centred beneath the mark, a sixth of the mark's width below it, in the display face at regular weight with +20% tracking. It never runs wider than the mark. In Arabic layouts it becomes ابنِه هنا; the mark does not change.

Clear space. Keep a margin of one-sixth of the mark's width on all four sides. Nothing enters it: no partner logos, photo edges, text or page trim.

Minimum sizes

Use	Mark	With tagline
Screen	40px square	120px square
Print	12mm square	34mm square
Favicon or avatar	16px, small version	—
Embroidery or etching	20mm square	—

Below 40px the two lines of letters stop resolving. The small version keeps the diagonal and a single K, for favicons and app icons.

Production versions

Use these only when the two-tone mark can't be reproduced. All are in the logo pack.

One colour, dark. One ink: a solid square, the letters knocked out, the diagonal as a knockout rule.

One colour, reversed. The same in white, for dark grounds and photography.

Ink on Bone. For one-colour print on light stock: Ink above the line with KI reversed out, LN in Ink below, the diagonal a hairline.

Greyscale. Clay becomes 35% black and Ember 55% black. Never convert by desaturating: the halves end up too close and the diagonal disappears.

Engraving, embossing, laser. An outline square, the diagonal as a deeper cut, the letters as cut letterforms.

Small version. For favicons, app icons and anything under 40px: a single K in the Clay half, the diagonal intact.

Wordmark. KILN set as type with the ember full stop, where the square is impractical.

Social avatar. The mark on Ink with room for circular crops.

Permitted

The two-tone mark unchanged on any ground: Ink, black, Bone, white or photography
The one-colour, greyscale and engraving versions above
The mark alone, without the wordmark, once the audience knows the brand
The wordmark with its ember full stop, where the square is impractical
The 45° diagonal as a layout device for a before-and-after pairing, once per layout, always top-right to bottom-left

Never

Flip, mirror or rotate the diagonal, including in right-to-left layouts
Change the square to a rectangle, circle or rounded square
Swap the halves so KI sits in Ember
Put the full stop inside the square, or drop it from the wordmark
Recolour Clay or Ember, including in seasonal or sponsor colours
Add gradients, glows, bevels, flames, borders, keylines or drop shadows
Set the mark's letters in another typeface, even a close match
Translate or transliterate KILN; it stays in Latin letters in Arabic layouts

Co-branding

KILN rarely appears alone on official material. When logos share a layout, they follow this order, top to bottom.

Tier	Who	Rule
1 · Host brand	KILN	Always largest and first: top left in left-to-right layouts, top right in right-to-left ones.
2 · Organisers	The 2026 hosts: DjazairIA × SNDBX Innovation Centre × Salvy VentureCorp × DMZ	Joined by an Ember ×, at equal optical weight and 60% of KILN's height. No organiser appears without the others.
3 · Patronage	Government patrons	Under an "Under the Sponsorship of" label, bottom left. Monochrome white, never recoloured to Ember. Full names, never abbreviated.
4 · Host event	African Startup Conference	Under a "Side Event of" label, bottom right, in its own colours: the one exception to monochrome partner logos.
5 · Sponsors	Diamond, Gold, Silver, Bronze	On a dedicated sponsor wall only, sized by tier. Never in the same lockup as tiers 1 to 4.

Before it goes out: anything co-branded that will reach a ministry, a fund or the press gets a brand check and a native-language read first. Send it to the KILN team through the contact form.

Colour

KILN is a dark brand: Ink is the default ground and light backgrounds are the exception. Select a swatch to copy its hex code.

Core palette

Ink

#141110

The default ground. A warm black that sits under the ember without going cold.

Ember

#E8622A

The primary. Accents, emphasis, the full stop and key fills. Never a page background.

Lapis

#1B4A8C

The counterweight: structure and institutions. A fill colour only, never text on dark.

Bone

#E5E0DF

Body text on dark. Deliberately not pure white, which glares against Ink.

Extended palette

Flame

#FC8337

Ember's lighter sibling, for small text and links on dark.

Black

#030303

Full-bleed photography and video letterboxing. Not for body backgrounds.

Slate

#94A3B8

Captions, secondary text and metadata.

Mist

#EBEFFF

Reserved for partner and patronage lines.

Proportion

70 Ink · 15 Bone · 10 Ember · 5 Lapis. Ember is a seasoning, not a sauce. The one deliberate exception is a single full Ember panel for a call to action.

Contrast (WCAG 2.1)

Text on ground	Ratio	Use
Bone on Ink	14.37:1	Default body text
Flame on Ink	7.55:1	Links and small accents
Ember on Ink	5.56:1	Passes; prefer Flame below 16px
Ink on Ember	5.56:1	Any text on Ember fills
White on Ember	3.38:1	Headings 24px and up only
Lapis on Ink	2.15:1	Never as text

Typography

Three open-source families, free for commercial use on Google Fonts. They work the same on the web, in Word, in email, in Canva and in Arabic.

Display

Space Grotesk

Headlines, numerals, labels and the letters in the mark. Weights 400–700. Never below 13px.

Body

Inter

Running text, tables, forms and captions. Weights 400–700.

Arabic

IBM Plex Sans Arabic

All Arabic material, matched to Inter. Weights 400–700.

Display · Space Grotesk 700 · −4.5% tracking

Build it here.

Headings · Space Grotesk 600 · −2% tracking

A three-stage programme

Eyebrow · Space Grotesk 600 · 12px · +20% · capitals · Flame

Annual programme

Body · Inter 400 · 15px · 1.65 line height · Bone

Four weeks of qualification, then the build and the finale in Algiers.

Always

Lines of 45 to 75 characters
Tabular figures for columns of numbers, prices or dates
An en dash for ranges: 3–7 December 2026
Sentence case for headlines; capitals only for the mark, the tagline and eyebrows

Never

Italics for emphasis; use weight or Flame
Justified text
More than three type sizes on a slide
Letter-spacing on body copy

Layout, imagery & icons

Cards and radius

Ember-outline cards (1px Ember border, Ink fill) by default. Solid Lapis for programme stages. Solid Ember with Ink text at most once per layout. Radius 14px everywhere; padding 26px on desktop and 20px on mobile; 18px between cards.

Buttons and figures

Primary: Ember fill with an Ink label, one per view. Secondary: Flame outline. Utility: Bone fill. 9px radius, Space Grotesk 600 at 14px. Statistics in Space Grotesk 600 with tabular figures, always in threes.

The split canvas

For slides: a full-bleed image on 37.5% of the width and content on the rest, alternating sides. Content starts 104px from the edge of a 1920px canvas.

Photography first

Real people at real editions are the proof: a warm grade, shadows lifted towards Ink, candid over posed. Use a generated render only where no photograph exists, caption it as a concept, and never place it beside a statistic.

Icons

Line icons only: a 2px stroke with round caps and joins, on a 24px grid, in Ember or Flame on dark. Never filled, multicolour or emoji in official material. Lucide and Phosphor both fit.

The ember field

A sparse, faint scatter of warm particles on Ink, as on this page. The only decorative element in the system: low opacity, never behind running text, never animated behind copy.

Arabic & bilingual

Arabic is a parallel layout with its own rules, not a translation added at the end.

ابنِه هنا

IBM Plex Sans Arabic · 1.9 line height · right aligned · right-to-left

Rule	What to do
Direction	Mirror the whole layout. Set dir="rtl" on the document, not on single elements. The logo moves to the top right.
The mark	Never mirrored. KILN stays in Latin letters, drawn once and used as drawn in both directions.
Line height	1.9 for Arabic body text, against 1.65 for English.
Weight	One step lighter than English: 500 where English uses 600.
Numbers	Western numerals 0–9 throughout; Gregorian dates.
Mixed text	Latin terms (AI, FinTech, KILN, DjazairIA) stay in Latin, left-to-right within the line.
Translation	Never machine-translated. A native speaker writes or reviews anything official.

Downloads

KILN logo pack

Every logo on this page as SVG, PDF, EPS and PNG, with favicons, a social avatar, a README and these guidelines as a PDF. The letters are converted to outlines, so the files look the same on any computer.

Download ZIP · 1.0 MB

Single files

Logo	Vector	Image
Mark	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 256 px · 512 px · 1024 px · 2048 px
Horizontal lockup, on light	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 1200 px wide · 2400 px wide
Horizontal lockup, on dark	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 1200 px wide · 2400 px wide
Tagline lockup, on light	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 600 px wide · 1200 px wide
Tagline lockup, on dark	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 600 px wide · 1200 px wide
Wordmark, on light	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 1200 px wide · 2400 px wide
Wordmark, on dark	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 1200 px wide · 2400 px wide
One colour, Ink	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 1024 px
One colour, white	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 1024 px
Ink on Bone	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 1024 px
Greyscale	SVG · PDF · EPS	PNG 1024 px
Engraving	SVG · PDF · EPS	—
Favicon (small version)	SVG · ICO	PNG 16 px · 32 px · 48 px
App icons	—	PNG 180 px · 192 px · 512 px
Social avatar	—	PNG 800 px

Design tokens for the web

:root {
  --kiln-ink: #141110;    --kiln-black: #030303;
  --kiln-ember: #E8622A;  --kiln-flame: #FC8337;
  --kiln-lapis: #1B4A8C;  --kiln-bone: #E5E0DF;
  --kiln-mist: #EBEFFF;   --kiln-slate: #94A3B8;
  --kiln-hairline: rgba(229,224,223,.14);
  --kiln-display: 'Space Grotesk', system-ui, sans-serif;
  --kiln-body: 'Inter', system-ui, sans-serif;
  --kiln-arabic: 'IBM Plex Sans Arabic', system-ui, sans-serif;
  --kiln-r-sm: 9px; --kiln-r: 14px; --kiln-r-pill: 999px;
  --kiln-spine: 104px;
}

This page is the single source of truth for KILN logo files. Treat any other copy as out of date. Questions or a brand check: contact the KILN team.