Auto detailingBranding

A brand built for black on black

Brand identity with its own manual, applications across vehicle, uniforms, signage and product, and a conversion-focused website for an auto detailing company in Des Moines, Iowa.

Client: Blackout Mobile Detailing
Business type: Auto detailing
Service area: Branding
Location: Des Moines, Iowa
Year: 2026

Services delivered

Brand Design
Identity Manual
Brand Applications
Vehicle Wraps & Uniforms
Photographic Art Direction
Web Design
Price Estimator
Booking System
Local SEO
Hosting & Deployment

24manual pages that fix how the brand looks on every surface: vehicle, uniform, signage and screen

The challenge

Blackout was selling a finish you have to see up close to believe, and communicating it with an image that changed from one post to the next. The business was already billing, but its website —an inherited template— never made clear what you buy or what it costs, the ads brought clicks that didn't book, and there wasn't a single written rule about how the brand should look on the van, on the polo or in an ad. A premium service presenting itself like any other.

What we did

We started from the product itself: a black car, glossy, shot in the dark. The mark joins two simplified headlights and a shine star, built on the height of its own “B”, and we documented it in a manual with its seven variants, its clear space, its reductions and the rule that holds the whole system together: copper is the only accent and it is spent sparingly. Then we took it to the street —wrapped van, flag, signage, cap and polo, business card, product line and hanger— and on that same base we built the website: a price estimator so the customer sees their number before writing to anyone, online booking, and a separate door for dealerships and fleets.

The result

A brand that is no longer improvised: whoever prints a polo, wraps a van or publishes an ad opens the manual and finds the color, the typeface and the minimum size written down. And a site that filters before it advertises —the price is visible, the booking is clear and fleets have their own path—, now in its launch phase.

I want a project like this

The brand manual

The manual was delivered to the client in Spanish; the pages shown here are the originals.

Two headlights and a star

The mark doesn't illustrate a car: it implies one. Two headlights reduced to their essential line and, between them, the star that in detailing means one thing only —shine, cleanliness, a flawless finish—. Below, the name in a robust typeface that balances the symbol's thin stroke, with the letter spacing tuned by hand and the whole thing built on the height of its own “B”.

The air, and how small it goes

Around the logo there is a protection zone equal to at least the height of the “B” on all four sides: nothing goes in there. And the brand was tested by shrinking it: at 100% it runs complete, at 60% it keeps the symbol-to-text relationship, and at 30% the name steps aside so the symbol survives on its own in the smallest spaces.

Seven versions, one brand

Logo and wordmark for the main pieces; their simplified versions for when the descriptor gets in the way; the symbol alone for embroidery and small signage; the favicon for the browser tab; and a silver logo held back for the pieces where the brand actually has to shine —the vehicle vinyl, the product label—.

Four typefaces, each with its post

Clarendon Blk BT Black signs the name and the high-impact headlines: it's the one that carries weight and memory. Montserrat SemiBold rides along in the descriptor without competing. And for day-to-day communication, Roboto Condensed Bold for headings and Roboto Medium for paragraphs and technical copy, where the only thing that matters is that it reads.

Photography is brand too

The manual doesn't leave photography to whoever is posting. Dark, clean, high-contrast images, with light working across paint, metal, glass or leather so the finish shows. Controlled backgrounds, no distractions. Out: saturation, light backgrounds and the untidy shop. What's being sold is the reflection, not the car.

Five colors and an accent you earn

White and black as primaries; graphite, gray and copper as secondaries, plus silver for special resources. The split is written down: black and graphite are the base —backgrounds, covers, uniforms, vehicles—, white and gray do the supporting work, and copper is left for lines, numbering and calls to attention. It is the system's only warm color; the moment you hand it out, it stops meaning anything.

Icons, patterns and macro

Three families of resources so the brand can fill a piece without falling back on a repeated logo: thin-line icons that name what Blackout sells —precision, purity, protection, perfection—, patterns drawn from the mark itself for backgrounds and dividers, and macro textures where you can see the grain of the paint and the thread of the leather.

What you cannot do

Half a page of the manual is devoted to what's forbidden, because that's where a brand gets cheapened: touching the symbol, changing the proportions, moving the elements, swapping the typeface, recoloring with secondaries and —the most common one in this trade— placing the mark over a photo where black eats the contrast.