Brand guidelines

2026

The idea

Coba looks closer.

Surgeons learn to work around a flaw until they stop seeing it. Coba notices, takes it apart, and builds it differently.

01

Logo

The owl alone for small sizes and etching. The lockup everywhere else. Ink on paper, paper on black, etch on steel.

02

Clear space

Clear space

One owl height
on every side

Minimum · screen

Owl 24px
Lockup 130px

Minimum · print

Owl 8mm
Lockup 30mm

03

Never

Recolour, outline or shadow the mark.
Rotate, stretch or condense it.
Place it on a busy crop or inside a shape.
Pair it with a tagline, or animate it.
With Kingfisher Medical: equal weight, a hairline between, roles named underneath. Never an “x”.

04

Typeface · declaration

Archivo

Weights 900 and 800. Tracking −.045em. Conviction, product, refusal.

05

Typeface · observation

Newsreader

Weights 300 and 400, roman and italic. Tracking −.018em. Questions, thought, the surgeon’s own language.

06

Type in use

Declaration

We took the drill apart.

Archivo 900 · 40–118px · 60–220pt

Observation

What would you change?

Newsreader 300 · 34–74px · 40–120pt

Support

Not an advisory role. A working one.

Archivo 800 · 19–28px · 18–30pt

Reading

Kingfisher is in the room and hears it first. Coba builds it.

Newsreader 400 · 15–21px · 10–12pt

07

Colour is light

Paper#F3F1EC

Amber#8E5C24

Mineral#C3CFC7

Black#08090A

Amber is the bench lamp while something is apart. Mineral is the air once it is finished. One temperature per piece, never as a fill, a button or a rule.

08

Photography

Crop closer than is comfortable.

Three worlds: the object, the making, the people. Alternate them.
One light direction. No white sweep, no ring light, no clinical blue.
People are shown working, from behind or beside. Never posed to camera.

09

Motion

Coba doesn’t animate.
Coba observes.

The camera finds something, moves closer, holds, then reveals.
Text rises. Objects travel on one axis. Chapters change hard.
Nothing spins, floats or flies.

10

Voice

Say

There’s always something you’d change.
Most of it, you learned to work around.
Not an advisory role. A working one.
Cut from metal, not from a catalogue.

Never say

World-class. Cutting-edge.
Innovative solutions.
Empowering surgeons.
Revolutionary. Seamless.

Instruments are named for what they let you do. Rebellion. Lift. Burrow. One English word, and one line in present tense.

11

The test

Would this still be Coba with the logo removed?

If the answer is no, the work is not finished.

12

Coba looks closer.

Crop closer than is comfortable.

Coba doesn’t animate.Coba observes.

Coba doesn’t animate.
Coba observes.