Design brief: Cordia Heartbeat identity

Prepared 2026-07-27 for an external designer. Information only. All visual decisions are the designer's.

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1. What it is

Cordia Heartbeat is the name of the proprietary system that generates each child's personalised school term inside Cordia, a Christian homeschooling product for Australian families.

It is not a consumer product and it is not sold separately. It is the engine underneath, referenced by name on marketing pages, inside the app, and in investor and partner material.

The job of the mark: to signal that the technology is proprietary, considered and trustworthy, to an audience that is wary of artificial intelligence being involved in their child's education.

2. Audience

• Australian homeschooling parents, predominantly mothers, roughly 30 to 50
• Christian, and faith is central to why they chose this product
• Often larger families, frequently single income
• Actively cautious about AI near their children
• The mark will usually be encountered while they are deciding whether to trust the product with their

child's education

3. Deliverables

Asset	Purpose
Primary lockup, horizontal	Symbol plus the words "Cordia Heartbeat"
Secondary lockup	With the phrase "Built on Cordia Heartbeat"
Standalone symbol	Used without text
Stamp or seal variant	Where a "certified" reading is wanted
App icon	1024 x 1024
Favicon	Must be legible at 16 x 16
Micro or inline variant	Footers, generated PDFs, printed packs

4. Formats

• SVG as the primary format, paths outlined
• PNG at 1x, 2x, 3x
• ICO for favicon
• Editable source (Figma or Illustrator), layers named
• Colour, single-colour black, single-colour white, and a reversed variant

5. Technical constraints

• Must remain legible at 16 px
• Must work in one colour for stamping, embossing and single-colour print
• Must work on light (#FFF6EC) and dark (#171438) backgrounds
• Must hold up in greyscale
• Horizontal lockup will sometimes sit in a space around 280 x 52 px
• It may later be animated for an in-app loading state, so a form that can move or draw itself is useful

6. Brand facts

Existing assets: Cordia has a primary crest already in use, a gem-style heart containing a cross, sitting above an open book. It is the parent brand mark and will appear on the same surfaces. The Heartbeat mark must sit alongside it without competing with it or replacing it.

Palette

Name	Hex
Cream (background)	#FFF6EC
Ink (primary dark)	#171438
Coral (primary accent)	#FF5A4D
Sun (gold)	#FFC24B
Lime	#2FC076
Grape	#5B45E0
Line (borders)	#EBE1D2

Typefaces

• Display: Bricolage Grotesque (600, 700, 800)
• Body: Plus Jakarta Sans (400 to 800)

7. Text that appears

• Cordia Heartbeat (the name)
• Built on Cordia Heartbeat (the stamp phrase)
• Every term, built for one child (optional strapline)

The full product name is Cordia Heartbeat Personalised Learning Engine.

Naming tiers in use:

Tier	Form	Where
Full	Cordia Heartbeat Personalised Learning Engine	First mention, decks, press, legal, investor material
Everyday	Cordia Heartbeat	Marketing pages, in-app, most copy
Short	the Heartbeat	After first mention in the same piece
Stamp	Built on Cordia Heartbeat	Footers, generated documents, printed packs

Only the everyday form and the stamp phrase need to appear in a lockup. The full name is a line of text, not a mark, and does not need to be set in the logo.

8. Where it will appear

Context	Notes
Sales page, AI section	Largest use. Appears on both cream and ink backgrounds
Website footer	Small, often single colour
In-app loading screen	Shown while a child's term is generated, which takes around an hour. Likely animated
Generated PDFs and printable work packs	Small, monochrome, printed
Investor and partner decks	Needs to survive being pasted into someone else's slide template

9. Constraints and exclusions

• Must not read as a medical or health device mark.
• Must not read as generic technology or SaaS branding.
• Must not compete with or replace the Cordia crest.
• Must not depend on colour alone to be recognisable
• Must not include depictions of children or faces

10. Trademark

The mark is intended to be filed for registration in class 9 (software) and class 41 (education services) in Australia. It must therefore be **original work, cleared for commercial use, with full rights assigned to Cordia**. No stock icons, no licensed fonts embedded in outlines without a licence permitting it, and no derivative of an existing mark.

11. Context on what has already been explored

Concept explorations exist at https://lightkeepers-concepts.pages.dev/heartbeat. They are included as background on what has been considered, not as direction. Two routes were tried: a pulse line paired with the brand's spark motif, and a version integrating a cross into the pulse with a technical instrument treatment. The second was rejected. The designer is not expected to develop either.

12. Practical

• Deliver source files plus exports
• Define clear-space and minimum-size rules as part of the deliverable
• Provide the mark on both brand backgrounds as proof of use
• File naming: cordia-heartbeat-[variant]-[colour].[ext]

13. Open questions for the designer to raise

• Whether the strapline is part of a lockup or always set separately
• Whether a monogram or abbreviated form is needed for very small use
• Whether an animated variant is in scope now or later