Brand Guidelines · Direction ① Golden Hour
Life After5 pm

The brand book for a quieter kind of self-improvement.

Everything you need to keep Life After 5 pm consistent, premium, and unmistakably golden-hour — logo, palette, type, voice, and imagery, in one place.

Fraunces + Inter 6-colour evening palette Warm · grounded · aspirational · literary
02

The palette

An evening, from dusk to last light. Sunset Orange leads, deep ink grounds, warm cream breathes underneath, and four accents carry the golden-hour mood from sky to sand.

Primary
Sunset Orange
#E07A3F
CTAs, links, the sun, key accents
Ink / Secondary
Evening Ink
#2B2420
Body text, dark sections, the wordmark
Background
Warm Cream
#FBF3E7
Page background, the published-paper feel
Accent
Golden Hour
#F6B25B
Highlights, stars, gradient top, glow
Accent
Dusk Plum
#6E4A5A
Quiet sections, “not-for-you” notes
Accent
Horizon Sand
#C9B7A4
Rules, borders, captions, the horizon line
Accent
Evening Sky
#3C4A5A
Pre-dusk gradients, depth, cool ballast
Tint
Cream Shade
#F4E7D3
Section banding, cards, soft contrast

Mood comes from dominance, not balance: let cream and ink hold most of the canvas, and let Sunset Orange and Golden Hour arrive like the light through a window — generous but never the whole wall. The full sunset gradient (Evening Sky → Dusk Plum → Sunset Orange → Golden Hour) is the signature; reserve it for heroes and closing moments.

03

The type

A literary serif that feels published, paired with a body face that gets out of the way. Fraunces carries the voice; Inter carries the words.

FrauncesDisplay · headlines · pull-quotes
The best part of your day starts at 5.
Display / 600Eight evenings, yours again
Italic / 500the first hour that's finally yours
Bold / 700Reclaiming the First Hour
Aa Bb Gg Rr 5 & — “ ” 0123456789
InterBody · UI · captions

Semibold 600 — small headings, buttons, labels.

Medium 500 — emphasis within paragraphs and navigation links.

Regular 400 — the workhorse for long-form reading. You gave the office your nine-to-five; this is a quiet, beautifully written guide to getting the evening back, set in Inter so the words breathe and the serif headlines can sing above them.

Body / 17pxPermission, not pressure.
Caption / 13pxInstant digital download · 138 pages · read it tonight
Eyebrow / 12pxA guide for the hours that are yours
04

The voice

Speak like a wise friend who left the rat race and found peace — not a coach screaming at 6am.

warmgroundedaspirationalliterary

Permission, not pressure. Sentences breathe. Invoke the senses of the evening — the light, the quiet, the first hour that's finally yours. Sell the calm of reclaiming your time, not the grind of optimizing it. The promise is meaning, not productivity.

Say this

The best part of your day starts at 5.

You don't have to quit your job to get your life back.

Give it one quiet hour tonight.

Rest, done well, is never wasted.

Never this

RISE AND GRIND — unlock your potential at 5AM!!!

Stop wasting your life and optimize every hour.

Join the 5am club or stay average.

Leverage synergies to crush your evening goals.

✦ Do

  • Let lines breathe — short sentences, generous white space.
  • Use sensory, evening language: light, quiet, exhale, golden.
  • Offer permission and calm; respect the reader's exhaustion.

✕ Don't

  • No hustle-bro yelling, “rise and grind”, or 5am-club guilt.
  • No corporate jargon — synergy, leverage, optimize your life.
  • No fear-shaming, exclamation stacks, ALL-CAPS, or “unlock / unleash / crush it.”
05

The imagery

Golden-hour, desk-to-freedom. Real evening light spilling across a quiet kitchen table; a notebook and a cup of tea after the laptop is closed; long warm shadows; a city window at dusk with the office lights behind, blurred; an empty commuter train seat at sunset. Color-graded amber and dusk-plum, generous negative space, film-grain warmth. The mood is exhale, not adrenaline.

✦ Do

  • Shoot or grade to amber / dusk-plum; keep film-grain warmth.
  • Leave generous negative space for the wordmark and a single line of copy.
  • Favour still lifes and real, unposed moments of exhale.

✕ Don't

  • No clichéd lightbulb-idea or fist-pump silhouettes on mountaintops.
  • No stock smiling-at-laptop people or daytime corporate offices.
  • No neon, garish saturation, or cold blue-grey grades.