Brand Book — My French Husband

The logo

The primary mark. Use this unless there is a reason not to.

A photograph of the two of them inside a navy ring, with the wordmark set across the lower third. It carries the whole proposition in one object — a couple, a name, a tone — which is why it beats a symbol nearly everywhere.

logo.png · 560×560 · transparent surround

Variants, and when to reach for them

Primary
logo.png

Monogram — small sizes, nav, stamps
brand/marks/monogram-mfh.svg

Wordmark — where a photo will not sit
brand/marks/wordmark.svg

Favicon — 16px and up
favicon.svg

Clear space and minimum size

Clear space: keep a margin equal to one fifth of the logo’s diameter on every side. Nothing sits inside it — not type, not another mark, not the edge of the page.

Minimum size: 96px on screen, 25mm in print. Below that the wordmark inside the ring fills in and stops reading — use the monogram instead.

Do not

✕Stretch, squash or rotate it. The circle stays a circle.
✕Recolour the rings or the type. Navy and gold, always.
✕Crop the outer navy ring, or sit it flush to an edge.
✕Rebuild the lockup in different type. Use the file.
✕Add a drop shadow, glow, outline or gradient.
✕Place it on a busy photograph. It needs a plain ground.

Seals

Two verdict marks with two different jobs. They never appear together.

Approuvé

MFH Approved — the researched verdict on whether a brand is actually French. Dated, sourced, and never for sale.

Chic or Pas

The series mark. His verdict on American things — fast, opinionated, no research. Corner of every episode, same position.

Colour

Defined once in styles.css under :root. Use the variable, not the hex.

--bg#FCFBF8Page background

--bg-deep#F1EDE2Bands, cards, deeper background

--blue#3E5A78Links, kickers, figures

--blue-deep#2E4457Article banner, shop card, filled buttons

--ink#2B2A27Body text

--dim#6E6A60Secondary text, captions

--hair#E3DDCEHairlines, borders

(gold)#A98E52Seal, verdict stamps, marks

(gold light)#C9A96AGold on dark — CTA, banner rules

(gold pale)#D8BE86Kickers on dark backgrounds

Type

Three families, loaded from Google Fonts. Every weight listed is one already in use — adding another costs load time.

Pinyon Script · Script

An American wife. A French husband.

The “My” in the wordmark. Nothing else, ever.

Cormorant Garamond · 500 / 600 / 500 italic

An American wife. A French husband.

Headlines, H1–H3, big figures, verdict stamps.

Jost · 300 / 400 / 500

An American wife. A French husband.

Body copy, kickers, buttons, labels, tables.

Voice

The hardest thing to hand over, and the easiest to get wrong.

The verdict comes first, the reason second.Nobody is romantic about Cristaline. That is the compliment.Say the judgement, then justify it. Never build up to it.

Short sentences. No exclamation marks.The chair? Pas. The price? Also pas.The humour is in the flatness. Punctuation cannot carry it.

Judge the thing, never the person who owns it.He judges America. America never sees it coming.Playful, not superior. The moment it sneers, it stops being funny.

She narrates. He only has verdicts.An American wife. A French husband who doesn’t know he’s the show.She sets the scene and names the series. He never announces anything.

Never explain the joke.De Paris, malgré lui.If a line needs a second line to land, cut both.

Photography

What the pictures do, and the one rule that is not negotiable.

PortraitsCircular crop. The navy-and-gold ring belongs to the logo lockup only — never add it to an ordinary photograph.

Carousels4:5 portrait, faces in the upper third. A consistent crop across the set matters more than any single frame.

Article heroes3:2 landscape. A still from the reel beats a stock photograph every time, and keep the caption overlay — it is the hook.

ChildrenNever shown. Owen, Harry and Wells appear by first name only, and we ask coverage to follow the same rule.

StockAvoid. A generic marble-countertop shot is the visual signature of content farms, and it undoes the thing the account is built on.

Marks

Fixed elements. These carry their own colour and are not recoloured.

divider-rule
brand/marks/divider-rule.svg

fleur-de-lis
brand/marks/fleur-de-lis.svg

monogram-mfh
brand/marks/monogram-mfh.svg

tricolore-bar
brand/marks/tricolore-bar.svg

wordmark
brand/marks/wordmark.svg

Icons

24×24 grid, 1.6 stroke, round caps, currentColor. Social, interface, MFH Approved categories, and the four verdict marks.

arrow-right
brand/icons/arrow-right.svg

cat-beaute
brand/icons/cat-beaute.svg

cat-boissons
brand/icons/cat-boissons.svg

cat-epicerie
brand/icons/cat-epicerie.svg

cat-hotels
brand/icons/cat-hotels.svg

cat-maison
brand/icons/cat-maison.svg

cat-restaurants
brand/icons/cat-restaurants.svg

chevron-down
brand/icons/chevron-down.svg

close
brand/icons/close.svg

email
brand/icons/email.svg

facebook
brand/icons/facebook.svg

instagram
brand/icons/instagram.svg

link
brand/icons/link.svg

menu
brand/icons/menu.svg

newsletter
brand/icons/newsletter.svg

pinterest
brand/icons/pinterest.svg

play
brand/icons/play.svg

search
brand/icons/search.svg

tiktok
brand/icons/tiktok.svg

verdict-approuve
brand/icons/verdict-approuve.svg

verdict-bof
brand/icons/verdict-bof.svg

verdict-imposteur
brand/icons/verdict-imposteur.svg

verdict-pas
brand/icons/verdict-pas.svg

x-twitter
brand/icons/x-twitter.svg

youtube
brand/icons/youtube.svg

Usage

The parts that are easy to get wrong.

The seal is never sold

The Approuvé seal marks editorial verdicts only. It never appears on an affiliate link, a sponsored placement or a brand’s own packaging. The moment a verdict can be bought, the seal is worth nothing.

Two verdict systems, kept apart

MFH Approved answers “is this actually French?” — researched, dated, sourced. Chic or Pas answers “does he like it?” — fast and opinionated. They never share a mark.

Icons inherit their colour

Every icon is stroked with currentColor, so it takes the colour of whatever contains it. Never edit a colour into an icon file — set it on the parent.

One accent at a time

Gold is the accent. On any given block, one element gets it. Two gold elements competing is the fastest way to make a page look cheap.

Gold on dark, blue on light

Gold text needs a dark ground to pass contrast. On cream, use blue for text and keep gold for rules, borders and stamps.

French for names, English for navigation

Nav and section labels are English. French is kept for proper names — Malgré Lui, Le Bulletin, La Tribune — and for editorial furniture inside articles: En bref, Les faits.

Files

Everything lives in the site root, so paths stay simple.

Asset	Path	Format
Primary logo	`logo.png`	PNG 560×560, transparent
Homepage portrait	`hero-portrait.png`	PNG 300×300
Favicon set	`favicon.svg, favicon-16/32/180/192.png`	SVG + PNG
Approuvé seal	`approuve-seal.png`	PNG 600×600, transparent
Chic or Pas badge	`chic-or-pas-badge.png`	PNG 480×480, transparent
Icon library	`brand/icons/*.svg`	SVG, currentColor
Brand marks	`brand/marks/*.svg`	SVG, brand colour
Article social cards	`og-<slug>.png`	PNG 1200×630
Media kit	`MyFrenchHusband_MediaKit_Sep2026.pdf`	PDF, 11pp
This book	`MyFrenchHusband_BrandBook.pdf`	PDF

Download the brand book (PDF)

Two assets are raster, not vector. The logo and the Approuvé seal are photographic illustrations, so they exist only as PNG. They are fine at current sizes, but cannot be scaled to signage, print or embroidery without an illustrator redrawing them. Everything else here is vector and scales without limit.

To regenerate. make-brand-assets.py writes the SVGs, make-favicons.py the favicon set, make-brand-book.py this page and make-brand-pdf.py the PDF. All read the same source files, so the book cannot drift from the assets.