Brand base
Blue and pink are the personal-brand base. Monthly theme colors layer over them; they never replace them.
Start here
Brand Guidelines
The @desaraev brand guidelines — my voice, my presence, and how my brand shows up everywhere it appears. The full guidelines document stays here; the design system adds the visual palette, text treatment, social presentation, and rules around it.
Style source
The working palette was sampled from my approved video thumbnails and corroborated by the cartoons of me.
One system
Use these sections together: colors, typography and text style, social media, and rules.
Palette
Colors
Primary values come from the most recent approved thumbnail work. They are flat, designed brand fills — not colors guessed from a photograph.
Navy
#0A2248
Primary background, bands, grid chrome, headers, and label bars.
Source: Turtle thumbnail thumb4-name.jpg, the solid navy lower band.
Pink
#F35A90
Second lines, accents, active details, and Slot A accent lines in feed grids.
Source: Turtle thumbnail thumb4-name.jpg, “SHE CARRIES HER HOME.”
Gold
#ECB93C
Watermark, detail lines, price accents, rules, and Slot B accent lines in feed grids.
Source: Turtle thumbnail thumb4-name.jpg, the @desaraev watermark.
White
#FFFFFF
Headline text on navy and clean graphic space.
Source: Turtle thumbnail headline text.
Black
#000000
Thick text outline and contrast for the watermark and thumbnail headlines.
Source: Turtle thumbnail text outline.
Cartoon-corroborating pink
#CE497E
A hotter supporting pink seen in the cartoon set. It corroborates the family; it does not override primary pink for brand chrome.
Source: cartoon video frame with navy cabinetry and hot-pink trim.
Cartoon corroboration
The cartoons of Desarae also carry navy #0E2652, bright-blue clothing #7EC4E8, soft tag pink #E19CB9, and deep sky blue #014492. They support the navy/pink family; thumbnail values stay primary because they are designed brand fills.
Monthly theme layering
Monthly palettes layer over the brand colors and never replace them. November uses fall / Thanksgiving brown and orange in the artwork and content, while the @desaraev base remains navy and pink with gold details.
Type + graphic text
Typography & Text Style
Portfolio site fonts
Mulish is the site body font. Quintessential is the site heading font, used italic and bold.
These are documented here as the portfolio site's fonts. No separate Desaraev brand-font specification is documented, so this page does not invent one.
Video + thumbnail treatment
- Headline: big, bold, white, all caps.
- Second line: the same bold treatment in pink #F35A90.
- Use a thick black outline where the documented thumbnail treatment calls for it.
- No boxes behind the text; no navy boxed captions.
- No small text and no thin fonts for this treatment.
@desaraev
Why “Turtle”?
She carries her home
FAQ text
How should FAQ questions be styled?
FAQ headers and questions are bold text on her sites and in her documents.
Watermark rule
Put @desaraev in gold #ECB93C with a black outline at the top-left of every video or thumbnail frame.
Profiles + presentation
Social Media
On websites, social media links are icons — never text links. These icons go to my profiles:
Grid design
- No same-type posts touching: never two posts of the same type back-to-back or adjacent on a profile grid; no two Bible verses in a row, no same-pose characters in a row, and no same subject adjacent.
- Alternate types — verse, character, video, product, art, and book — so the grid reads mixed.
- Month feed grids are yearly templates: reuse each month's grid year over year and improve it. Start from last year's grid, refresh dates and content, apply new rules, and keep what worked.
Pacing + products
- Never burst-post. Space posts across the day at separated slots, hours apart, one platform post at a time — even when several were approved in the same message.
- Amazon/product promotion is capped at one product post per day.
- Feeds mix categories, and holiday or dated content stays high priority on its right day.
Links + dated posts
- Every social post carries “See more at” with a deep link to the specific page or post where that content lives — not just the homepage.
- Dated/timely graphics use Facebook Page, Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube as the standard channels — never LinkedIn.
- A dated post must match the actual day. If it goes out late, correct the copy to past tense or skip it; that is Desarae's call.
Captions + channels
- Think like a social media expert, not a scheduler: scroll-stopping first lines, audience-first content, one engagement move per post, platform-native formats, and visual stopping power.
- Captions must be interesting — a hook, a question, a story beat, or a wow-fact that invites comments. Never flat, descriptive catalog copy.
- A weak post — background art, duplicate subject, or off-season content — gets flagged and replaced, not polished.
- On websites, social media links are always icons, never text, and never blue underline links.
Non-negotiables
Rules
Flip books + Bible stories
- The content is the story itself: a flip book post and its caption carry the full story text from the book, verbatim from her files — not a promo blurb about the story.
- Books like this should be read: flip book videos are narrated read-alouds, panel by panel, with the story text verbatim — never music-only.
- If a music bed is used at all, it stays gentle and under the reading. When in doubt, use none.
- No new work in the green style. New Bible flip books and stories are built in the blue night style only; existing green sets stay as they are.
Stretchy is never a man
- Stretchy is a girl. Even when she plays a male Bible character, captions and text must never call her a man or frame her as male.
- Phrase it as “Stretchy Elephant helps tell the story of…” and keep male words attached to the Bible character, never to her.
- She is the storyteller/helper in the story; the Bible character keeps his own identity and words.
Feed curation
- One character per day max anywhere; do not crowd out other categories with a run of character posts.
- No exact duplicates: the same exact content never posts twice in a month or within 90 days on an account. Judge duplicates by subject, not file.
- A flip book posts as one carousel post; its end or verse page never gets its own separate feed post.
Channel separation
- Desarae's personal artwork goes to @desaraev only — never to @stretchyelephant.
- The Iowa Capitol Activity Book is Desarae's personal-brand book. Its social posts belong on her channels, not Stretchy's.
- Keep personal art, personal books, and Stretchy brand content in their own channels.
Website text details
- FAQ headers are bold. FAQ questions render as bold text on her sites and in her documents.
- Buttons read as real filled buttons — never like blue underline links.
- Social media links on websites are icons, never text links.