Window tint, paint protection and detailingBranding

From the paperwork to the last screen

A workshop built from nothing: company formation, brand identity with its own manual, applications across uniform, stationery, signage, flags and vehicle, and the website. Window tint, paint protection and detailing in Santa Clara, California.

Client: Imperium Auto Studio
Business type: Window tint, paint protection and detailing
Service area: Branding
Location: Santa Clara, California
Year: 2026

Services delivered

Company Formation
Filings & Permits
Brand Design
Identity Manual
Stationery
Uniforms & Textiles
Signage & Flags
Vehicle Wrap
Web Design & Development
Copywriting
Accessibility & Measured Contrast

44contrast failures found by the meter and not by the eye, across three passes over the rendered page — none of them stayed on the site

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The challenge

Imperium was starting from nothing. There was no company on paper, no brand, and nothing to show a client before they walked through the door. And this trade has a difficulty of its own: it's judged on a finish nobody can see before buying it. The client arrives with expectations already formed somewhere else —that darker means cooler, that tint fixes an already faded dashboard, that the glass becomes unbreakable— and half the complaints in the sector come from an expectation nobody corrected in time. The business had to be set up and, at the same time, given a way of explaining itself that didn't depend on having Miguel standing there.

What we did

It was built in the order a workshop can actually start invoicing. First the file: the entity and the filings, so the business existed before its logo did. Then the brand. The mark integrates a white letter “I” and a red form that completes the “M”, built on a grid that takes the “I” itself as its minimum unit; from there come the clear space, the reductions down to 30% and the six variants. Twenty-four pages of manual with the five colours and their HEX, RGB and CMYK, the type pairing, the rule for use over photography —a 10% to 30% tint, which in a workshop ends up being the most-used rule of all— and a full page drawing the six ways to break it. From there to what gets touched: card, polo, cap, flag, A-frame, mirror hanger and the vehicle wrap. And on top of that base, the site: the manual's palette turned into code variables so it can't drift. The piece of its own is the window tint guide, which isn't a brochure — half of it is devoted to what tint does NOT do, it explains the difference between VLT and TSER, compares the four film types with their downsides included, and summarises California law window by window. It's the counter, written down. The rest was decided by measuring, not by looking: a script walks the rendered site and computes the real contrast of every piece of text against its real background. It found 44 failures across three passes, several of which the eye had waved through.

The result

A company that exists on paper, a brand that no longer depends on who applies it —the polo embroidery, the card, the sidewalk A-frame and the side of the car all come from the same file and the same rule— and a site that claims nothing it can't back up: the reviews shown are the five published on the Google listing, copied verbatim, with no spelling or punctuation corrected and each name exactly as that person signs it. And the guide does on the website the work that could previously only be done at the counter: whoever arrives asking for the darkest shade leaves knowing what actually suits them and what is legal on their vehicle.

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.

An “I” and an “M” resolved as one

The mark integrates two elements: a white letter “I” and a red form that completes the “M”. That union reinforces the initials of the name and concentrates the brand's character into one compact symbol — which is what lets it work equally well as embroidery or as a favicon. And the construction isn't left to the eye: the system is built on a grid defined by the proportion of the “I” itself, used as the minimum unit, so the proportions hold across every version of the mark.

The “I” measures the air, and 30% is the floor

The clear space isn't estimated: it equals at minimum the height of the mark's letter “I”, kept free on all four sides, in both the vertical and horizontal versions. The reduction is tested too. At 100% the full lockup is shown; at 60% the relationship between elements holds and it still reads at medium sizes; at 30% the written name is dropped, and that's the version that fits the smallest spaces without compromising the association with the brand. Having that number written down is what avoids the argument the day someone wants to put it on a pen.

Vertical, horizontal and symbol

The manual resolves the variants by situation, not by taste: vertical for when there's height, horizontal for a website header or the side of a vehicle, simplified versions where less weight is needed, the symbol alone for embroidery and social media, and the wordmark on its own when the symbol is already present on the surface. Six pieces for six different problems, and each one has its own written down.

Three primaries, two secondaries, and a red that isn't for text

Brick Red (#CD1420), Alabaster Grey (#E9E8E7) and Ink Black (#101518) as primaries; Sunflower Gold (#EEB81D) and Burning Terracotta (#E94F27) as secondaries. Each arrives with its HEX, RGB and CMYK written out, because a van wrap and a printed card aren't ordered the same way. And out of that palette came a decision you only see by measuring: Brick Red reads 3.30:1 on the dark background, so on the website it works as a button fill and never as small text. For inline emphasis, Terracotta takes over at 5.00:1.

Causten to headline, Source Sans to read

Causten is the primary typeface: geometric, clean-lined, meant for headlines and for the logotype itself, where legibility at a distance is what counts. Source Sans Pro comes in as the secondary for long text, interfaces and editorial surfaces, which is where a geometric face gets tiring. That same pairing was carried straight onto the website, served from our own server rather than a third party.

Over photography, between 10% and 30%

This is a workshop: almost all its material sits over photographs of cars, which are busy, high-gloss images. The manual doesn't leave it to individual judgement — it sets a tint of between 10% and 30% over the image, depending on how much detail it carries, so the mark and the text keep enough contrast. That rule is what governs the site's hero and every interior page header.

Six ways to break it

The manual devotes a full page to what isn't done, drawn out rather than merely stated: rotating the mark, distorting it, recolouring it with the secondaries, altering its elements, changing the typeface, and placing it over an image with no figure-to-ground contrast. They're not there to limit whoever is designing, but so the brand survives every pair of hands it's going to pass through — whoever embroiders the polo, whoever prints the card and whoever wraps the car.