Nortly — Brand Guidelines v2.0

01

The brand & the name

Nortly comes from “North”. For thousands of years, north has meant orientation: sailors navigated by Polaris, and a compass still always points north. North is not just a direction — it is the symbol of the right course.

Nortly is the operating hub for Shopify App companies. Today a Shopify Partner's picture of their business is scattered across the Partner Dashboard, Stripe, support inboxes, emails and analytics. Nortly unifies customers, subscriptions, billing, events, support and automation in one place — so a founder opens it and thinks not “I opened a dashboard”, but “now I understand where my business is going.”

The logo is that idea made visible. The ring is the horizon of your business. The needle is your current course. The star at 0° is true north — the goal you steer by. It nods to the navigational language of the Shopify ecosystem (Polaris, Compass, Horizon) without copying any of it.

BRAND PROMISE

Every metric has a direction.
Every customer has a story.
Every business needs a north.

Why “Nortly”, not “North”: it is ownable as a trademark, short, easy to pronounce, looks balanced in a wordmark — and evokes direction rather than infrastructure.

02

The mark — construction

The Nortly mark is a compass that has found north. Both halves of the needle are geometrically identical, rotated 180° around the center — the mark stays balanced at any scale.

Needle height — 13/16 of the mark's field
The halves split exactly at the equator
The star always sits at 0° (true north)
The south half is always the theme's base color at 28–40% opacity

03

Light theme

For white and light-grey surfaces: marketing site, documents, email. Needle — Pine Green, ring and wordmark — Ink.

nortly

Primary lockup — site headers, decks, documents.

Needle only — favicon, avatars, sizes under 40 px.

Wordmark only — text contexts, footers, legal.

04

Dark theme

The product's primary theme — the Nortly dashboard runs dark. Background — Deep Forest, needle — brighter Emerald for contrast, wordmark — Paper.

nortly

Deep Forest background — product UI, splash screens, social media.

Green background — monochrome white version only, never the colored needle.

05

Colors

Pine Green

#1E8A5E

Needle on light

Emerald

#2FB57E

Needle on dark

Deep Forest

#0E1F17

Dark background

Ink

#131B15

Text, ring

Paper

#F4F6F1

Mark on dark

The south half of the needle is always the theme's base color at 28–40% opacity. Never give it its own color.

This is Nortly's own palette — it deliberately avoids Shopify's brand greens (#008060, #95BF47). Pine + Emerald are deeper and cooler, so the mark belongs to the commerce ecosystem without borrowing Shopify's identity.

06

Clear space & minimum sizes

Clear space — ½ of the mark's width on all sides. No text, buttons or layout edges enter this zone.

40 px · with ring

24 px · needle

16 px · favicon

Minimum: full mark with ring — from 40 px. Below 40 px use the needle only (thickened, optically compensated version).

07

Motion

Motion is part of the identity: the needle always “finds north”. One screen — one animation; never combine several at once.

“Finding north” SPLASH · INTRO

The needle swings from −140° and springs to 0°; the star flares. When: app launch, splash screen, video intros. 2.6 s, played once — never looped in product.

Pulse radar LIVE · EVENTS

Waves radiate from the needle. When: live events — a new subscription, a new merchant install, real-time notifications. 2–3 cycles max, then the static mark.

08

Interactive states — hover & pressed

When the logo is a link or a button. Try them — hover and click the examples below.

nortly

Nav logo · hover — needle tilts −25° and springs back to north. Pressed — whole lockup scales to 96%.

Icon tile · hover — lifts 3 px with an emerald glow. Pressed — settles back and compresses to 93%.

Mark button · hover — the ring turns Pine Green. Pressed (hold) — the needle spins a half-turn, then springs back to north on release.

09

Loading states

All loading is expressed through the logo itself — no generic spinners.

Full-screen — first launch, sign-in. The mark at 96–120 px, centered, “finding north” once. Nothing else on screen.

Compass loader — inside the product: reports, sync, waiting on data. Ring draws while the needle seeks. Looped for the duration of the process, 40–72 px.

Rule: the full “finding north” animation plays only once per session (splash). Inside the product use the compass loader so the mark doesn't spin all over the interface.

10