Cove Communities
Brand Style Guide
Everything you need to use the Cove brand correctly, and nothing you don’t. If you’re looking for a logo, a color, or a font, you’ll find it in under a minute.
The 2026 refresh is rolling out gradually. You will see old and new branding side by side for a while. Materials update as they are reordered or replaced, so there is no need to throw away usable stock, and no need to worry if your community still has older pieces in service.
Approved March 2026 · One palette, all regions
Section 2
Brand Foundation
Cove operates communities and resorts where people actually live and holiday, premium, but never precious. Everything below flows from that.
Our Mission
To own and operate communities in prime destinations that offer a lifestyle guests and residents love to live.
Our Vision
To create a world where exceptional customer service and generosity are second nature and hospitality is a passion.
Our Values
Hospitality
Lead with “yes,” and go the extra mile.
Excellence
Deliver outstanding experiences.
Passion
Make every moment count.
Trustworthiness
Transparency and integrity.
Stewardship
Protect our people, properties and resources.
Kindness
Treat others as you’d want to be treated.
Why this sits in a style guide. These aren’t decoration, they’re why the brand looks and sounds the way it does. Warm colors and plain language are hospitality and kindness expressed visually. If a piece of work feels cold or corporate, it’s usually drifted from one of these.
Positioning
Draft, to confirm with Marketing. Cove sits in the space between a campground and a resort: outdoor lifestyle communities with genuine amenities, aimed at people who want an active, sociable life outdoors without the price or formality of a traditional resort. Premium but accessible is the balance to hold, aspirational enough to be desirable, grounded enough to feel like home.
The portfolio spans manufactured-housing communities (long-term residents, largely 55+) and RV parks and resorts (seasonal and short-stay). Both share the brand; the tone shifts slightly, which is covered in §3.
Cut from the Previous Guide
Long mission and vision essays, org history, and persona documents. None of it changed how anything got designed.
Section 3
Brand Voice Draft for Review
How Cove sounds. The examples below are a working draft, structure first, wording second.
This section is a placeholder for real language. Nicolle (with Michelle) is leading the voice work, and everything here is written to show the shape of the section rather than to be final copy. Expect the examples to change.
Four Things Our Writing Always Is
Warm and Welcoming
We write like a neighbour, not a notice board.
Active and Lifestyle-Focused
We talk about doing things, not owning things.
Community-Oriented
“We” and “you,” rarely “the management.”
Aspirational but Accessible
Appealing without being showy or exclusive.
Sounds Like Cove / Doesn’t
The most useful part of this section, the difference is usually one rewrite away.
| Sounds like Cove | Doesn’t |
|---|---|
| “Come down to the pool Saturday, we’ll have coffee on.” | “Residents are advised that a social event will be held poolside.” |
| “There’s a spot open on the lake. Want to see it?” | “Premium waterfront inventory now available. Inquire today!” |
| “We’ll get that sorted this week.” | “Your request has been escalated to the appropriate department.” |
| “New neighbours on Cypress Lane, say hello.” | “Please welcome our newest homeowners to the community.” |
Words We Use, Words We Avoid
community · neighbours · home · gather · outdoors · season · welcome · stay · nearby · year-round
units · inventory · residents are advised · luxury · exclusive · world-class · utilize · leverage · unparalleled · act now
Also: no em dashes in Cove copy. Use a comma, a period, or parentheses instead.
Rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t say it out loud to someone at the mailbox, don’t write it.
Writing with AI? Fine for brainstorming, never for finished copy. Rewrite it in your own words; if it doesn’t sound like something you’d say to a resident standing in front of you, it isn’t ready. Full policy: Using AI.
Voice Versus Tone
Voice is constant; tone flexes with context. The same brand can be playful on a pool-party flyer and plain on a water-shutoff notice without sounding like two different companies.
| Context | Dial setting |
|---|---|
| Signage & wayfinding | Short, plain, friendly. No cleverness, people are reading at speed. |
| Social & events | Warmest end. First person, light humour, community-first. |
| Sales & advertising | Aspirational but concrete. Describe the life, not the asset. CTAs stay plain. |
| Operational notices | Clear and respectful. Lead with what changes and when; skip the apology-jargon. |
| MH vs RV | MH leans home and neighbours; RV leans stay, season and escape. Same voice, different nouns. |
Messaging Building Blocks
Not yet defined, for the voice session. A tagline, a one-line boilerplate, and three or four approved key phrases. Until those exist, the property tagline system in §4 is the only fixed messaging Cove has.
Section 4
Logo
One mark, used consistently, is how people recognize a Cove property. Start with your own community’s logo: that is the one you will use most.
Get the Logo Files
Every logo lives in Bynder, and the logo collections need no login. Pick screen or print, then your property type, and search your community’s name once you’re in.
For Screen
Word, PowerPoint, email, web, social
Use the transparent .png or .svg
For Print
Flyers, signage, anything going to a vendor
Use the vector files: .ai .eps .pdf
Not sure which you are? “RV” in the name means RV, and Point Sebago counts as RV too. Putting it on a dark or colored background? Use the white or cream version, or the full-color logo in a clean white panel.
The one rule that prevents almost every problem: never rebuild, retype, recolor or reshape the logo. Download it. If the version you need doesn’t exist, submit a Marketing Request and we’ll make it.
Approved Treatments
The white panel treatment is an accepted use on any background, and is how the logo appears on home sales signage. If you need something beyond these, ask Marketing.
Clear Space & Minimum Size
Keep clear space equal to the width of the “O” in Cove on all sides. No text, photos or edges inside it.
Minimum width: 0.5 inch in print. If it’s smaller than a paperclip, it’s too small.
Is Your File Current?
Sage and Slate mark, refreshed palette. This is the one to use.
If your file looks like this, it’s out of date. Delete it and download a current one.
Logo Misuse
These are the mistakes that actually happen, not hypotheticals.
Hold Shift while dragging a corner handle to keep the shape locked.
The most common mistake by far: dragging a corner without Shift in Word, PowerPoint or Canva.
Every property has finished lockups in Bynder, with the correct tagline already set.
Bear Creek Village
A COVE COMMUNITY
Wrong font, wrong spacing, wrong tagline. The second most common problem.
Full color, navy, charcoal, black, white or cream. Nothing else.
Including tinting it to match a flyer’s accent color or a photo.
The logo is finished artwork. It doesn’t need help.
Also: bevels, gradients and WordArt treatments.
Anything carrying our logo comes from a real design file, downloaded from Bynder.
AI tools redraw it wrong: garbled text, wobbly marks, invented details. This example was AI-made from our real logo. Look closely at the spelling.
Also Avoid
this season…Still to add with real artwork: placement on a busy photo without a scrim.
Before You Send It Out
| 1 · Are the proportions untouched? |
| 2 · Is it the right file, vector for print, transparent PNG for screen? |
| 3 · Is there clear space equal to the “O” all the way round? |
| 4 · Is it legible at final size, at least 0.5″ wide? |
| 5 · Is it the current 2026 version? |
The Three Logo Families
Bynder organizes logos as MH, RV and Home Office. Mirror that split rather than inventing a taxonomy. Scope is 25 in-scope properties (16 MH + 9 RV) plus Cove Communities and Cove Home Sales; ten Canadian properties were descoped 2026‑06‑16.
Type in the Lockup
Property name, Plus Jakarta Sans 700, title case, 0 tracking, metrics kerning. Tagline, Lora SemiBold 600, all caps, 420 tracking (letter-spacing: 0.42em), metrics kerning.
The 2026 source doc is wrong on case. It specifies all-caps property names; the artwork is title case (“Bear Creek Village”). It’s the tagline that’s all caps. Three intentional all-caps exceptions: Point Sebago, Cove Home Sales, and Cove (Home Office).
Tagline Rules, Verified Against All 25 Packages
MH properties always read A COVE COMMUNITY, invariant, regardless of whether the name ends in “Village.” Sun Valley, The Waters and The Meadows all carry the identical tagline.
RV taglines vary by setting and amenity tier, assigned from a controlled vocabulary. They are never composed on the fly, and bare “A Cove Resort” does not exist:
| Property | Tagline |
|---|---|
| Big Pine Key RV | A COVE OCEANFRONT PARK |
| Blueway RV | A COVE GULF COAST PARK |
| Chokoloskee RV · Holiday RV | A COVE PARK & MARINA |
| Lake Jasper RV · Oak Harbor RV | A COVE LAKESIDE PARK |
| River Vista RV | A COVE RIVERFRONT PARK |
| CreekFire RV | A COVE LOW COUNTRY RESORT |
| Point Sebago | A COVE LAKEFRONT RESORT |
Intentional Exceptions, Features, Not Errors
Point Sebago uses an all-caps wordmark and its “A” is drawn as a picnic table, a nod to the property’s original logo. Big Pine Key RV’s bubble mark uses palm trees instead of the generic trees every other property shares, a coastal variant. Cove Home Sales is stacked, all caps, and carries no tagline (renamed from “Cove Homes” in 2026).
Lockup Variant Matrix
Orientation horizontal (primary) or centered (signage) × name wrap 1-line or 2line × tag / notag.
Terminology: what older planning docs call “Vertical” is now 2 Line, same layout, renamed. Use “2 Line”.
Most MH packages ship 8 variants (long names need the 2-line wrap). Properties without 2-line: Sun Valley, The Meadows, The Waters, and all RV except Point Sebago, deliberately skipped where the treatment didn’t suit the name (notably CreekFire RV and Big Pine Key RV). Not an export oversight; don’t go looking for them.
Six colorways: fullcolor navy charcoal black white cream. Web = RGB (.svg .png transparent, .jpg white-bg) · Print = CMYK (.ai .eps .pdf). All rasters ship at a single 2048px size.
White and cream ship without JPG, JPG bakes in a white background, so a white logo would be invisible on it. That’s the white-box problem expressed as a production rule.
All type is outlined in every vector export, no live fonts, no font dependencies. Vendors don’t need Jakarta or Lora installed to place a lockup.
Reading a Filename
BCV-bear-creek-horizontal-tag-fullcolor-cmyk.ai
= [prefix]-[property]-[orientation+tagline]-[colorway]-[gamut].[format]
Each property has a three-letter prefix, BCV, BPK, CKF, PSR, RVV and so on.
Sub-Brands Awaiting the 2026 Refresh
A handful of marks have not yet been redrawn in the 2026 system: Cove Cares (and the Cove Cares Giving Match), Big Cypress Grill, and the Point Sebago restaurant logo, with possibly one or two others. They are on the rework list. Until then, request current artwork through the Marketing Request Form rather than reusing old files.
Spot color and embroidery. Proposed PMS equivalents are defined in the Color section below. DST embroidery files are not distributed by Cove: your embroidery vendor produces the DST from our vector artwork, which every print package contains. Per-community “Cove Home Sales at {Community}” lockups remain deferred.
Further Prohibited Treatments
Beyond the everyday list: disassembling or re-spacing the mark and wordmark; using the logo as a repeating pattern or faint watermark; adding unofficial taglines beneath the mark; masking imagery inside the letterforms; co-branding with a partner logo without correct relative sizing and spacing; and applying it across panel gaps or door seams on vehicles.
Multi-Mark Hierarchy
Unresolved: when a property lockup, Cove Home Sales, a golf sub-brand and the EHO mark must coexist, order, relative sizing and spacing all need defining. This will come up first on home-sales signage.
Production Note
Every distortion on this page is generated live from the real logo file via CSS transforms, so the examples can never drift out of sync when the artwork is updated.
Three properties carry a distinct golf sub-brand: Point Sebago Golf Resort, Big Cypress Golf Club (Cypress Lakes Village) and Rolling Greens Village Golf Club.
No approved direction exists. A decision one-sheet went out 2026‑06‑22 presenting three routes (Current / Rebuilt / Reimagined badge, badge recommended) and has had no response. Naming decisions also remain open. Golf artwork is absent from the export folder, so this section cannot ship in v1.
Section 5
Color
Five colors, used consistently. Pick one of the combinations below and you can’t go wrong, they’re all checked for readability.
Approved Combinations
These are the pairings to use. Each one is a background and a text color that work together, don’t mix and match your own.
Charcoal text The default. Use this for most documents.
Cream text For covers, headers and strong panels.
Navy text Clean and formal, letters, reports.
White text For highlights and callout boxes.
Cream text Footers and quieter dark panels.
Need something outside these combinations? Ask Marketing, marketingteam@covecommunities.com. There are more colors in the system, but choosing when to use them takes a bit of care, so we’d rather help than have it go wrong in print.
The Colors Themselves
If you need to set a color by hand, in Word, PowerPoint or Canva, these are the five. Click any value to copy it.
Sage Green leads, it’s the color that makes Cove feel like Cove.
Semantic Roles
Sage and Slate are both brand-primary, the logo uses them as a pair, but each carries one job so nothing is decided by taste.
| Color | Role |
|---|---|
| Sage Green | Lead brand color, nature, outdoor lifestyle |
| Slate Blue | Supporting, water, sky, secondary panels |
| Navy | Structural anchor, headers, deep panels, headings |
| Charcoal | Default body text |
| Cream | Default page background |
Core Ramps
Tints are press percentage screens, multiply each CMYK channel by the percentage, so a printer reproduces them exactly with no color matching. The hex values are the parallel digital equivalents. “Deep” is digital-only: a screen can only lighten, so a darker ink needs a real Pantone or CMYK build (Phase 2).
#EEF2EB#DEE5D7#BDCBB0#627F3F#314B03#ECF1F6#D9E4EC#B3C9D9#447CA1#05486B#E7EAEF#CFD5DE#A2ACBE#273B61#010D30#E8E9EA#D2D3D4#A7A9AB#33373C#090C11Accent Colors Marketing & Partners Only
Deliberately absent from the everyday view. Property teams encounter these pre-applied, on SOLD riders and in templates, and never have to decide where an accent goes. Accents are used at full strength only: no tint ramps.
Roles: Campfire Red = urgency, Sold, alerts · Sunset Orange = CTAs, warm promotion · Golden Amber = badges, seasonal callouts.
Neutral Ramp
The palette’s biggest gap filled, between Cream and Charcoal there was nothing for rules, borders, dividers, secondary text or disabled states. Interpolated in perceptual color space, running between the two existing brand neutrals rather than introducing new ones.
#FFFFFFCards, max contrast#F4F5F0Default background#D6D8D4Subtle panel, alt row#BDBFBDHairline rules, borders#A1A3A3Dividers, disabled fill#878A8BDisabled text#717476Icons, de-emphasized#5C6063Secondary / caption#494D51Strong secondary#33373CDefault body textContrast, Measured, Not Assumed
The 2026 source doc lists eleven “Accessible Pairings (WCAG AA)” without distinguishing text size. Three don’t meet AA for normal text, and three more pass by hundredths.
| Pairing | Ratio | Safe for |
|---|---|---|
| Navy on Cream | 10.17:1 | Any size · AAA |
| Charcoal on Cream | 10.94:1 | Any size · AAA |
| Campfire Red on White | 6.18:1 | Any size |
| Campfire Red on Cream | 5.64:1 | Any size |
| Golden Amber on Charcoal | 4.60:1 | Any size · by a hair |
| Sage Green on White | 4.54:1 | Any size · by a hair |
| Slate Blue on White | 4.52:1 | Any size · by a hair |
| Sunset Orange on White | 4.40:1 | Large text only |
| Golden Amber on Navy | 4.28:1 | Large text only |
| Sunset Orange on Cream | 4.01:1 | Large text only |
The rule, stated once instead of eleven times.
Text-safe at any size on white or cream, Navy · Charcoal · Campfire Red.
Large text only (24px+, or 18px+ bold), Sage · Slate · Sunset Orange. Excellent as fills with white or charcoal type on top; the limit applies only to colored type.
Never colored type on a light ground, Golden Amber (2.61:1 on white, failing even large text). Use as a fill with Charcoal on top, or reverse out of Navy at large sizes.
Spot Color: Proposed PMS Equivalents
Cove is defining its spot standard, not matching a legacy one. These are computed nearest matches (Pantone Solid Coated) from the approved values. Verify against a physical fan deck before the first spot-color production run; screens cannot be trusted for Pantone.
| Color | Proposed PMS | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Sage Green | PMS 575 C | Close match |
| Slate Blue | PMS 7697 C | Confirm vs 7698 C on the deck |
| Navy | PMS 534 C | Close match |
| Charcoal | PMS 432 C | Confirm vs 447 C on the deck |
| Cream | No spot | Reproduce as CMYK 3/1/4/0, or let paper stock carry it |
| Campfire Red | PMS 7620 C | Confirm vs 180 C on the deck |
| Sunset Orange | PMS 7511 C | Close match |
| Golden Amber | PMS 7563 C | Close match |
Retired
The previous 33-color regional system is withdrawn. One palette, all regions.
Section 6
Typography
Two typefaces, and that’s it. Both are free to install, you don’t need a license.
The Styles
Five styles cover almost everything you’ll make. The sizes are for letter-size documents; scale up for posters and signs, and ask Marketing when unsure.
| Big HeadlinePlus Jakarta Sans ExtraBold · 30 pt | Welcome to Cove |
| HeadlinePlus Jakarta Sans Bold · 22 pt | Welcome to Cove |
| SubheadPlus Jakarta Sans SemiBold · 17 pt | Welcome to Cove |
| BodyLora Regular · 11 pt | Neighbours become friends here, across 25 communities and resorts. |
| Small PrintPlus Jakarta Sans Regular · 8.5 pt | Captions, credits and fine print. |
On Cove computers, both fonts are already installed. IT deployed them company-wide, so in Word and PowerPoint just pick them from the font menu. On a personal machine, or when a recipient might not have them (email!), use Arial in place of Plus Jakarta Sans and Georgia in place of Lora. Never let it fall back to Calibri.
The Scale
Body runs deliberately large: 18 of the 25 properties are 55+ communities, so resident-facing material is read by older eyes. Nothing but legal copy goes below 9 pt.
| Step | Face / weight | Digital | Leading | Tracking | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Display | Jakarta ExtraBold 800 | 42–72 pt | 52 px | 1.05 | −2% |
| H1 | Jakarta Bold 700 | 30 pt | 36 px | 1.15 | −1.5% |
| H2 | Jakarta Bold 700 | 22 pt | 28 px | 1.20 | −1% |
| H3 | Jakarta SemiBold 600 | 17 pt | 22 px | 1.30 | −0.5% |
| Overline | Jakarta SemiBold 600, caps | 9 pt | 13 px | 1.20 | +10% |
| Body Large | Lora Regular 400 | 13 pt | 20 px | 1.55 | 0 |
| Body | Lora Regular 400 | 11 pt | 18 px | 1.60 | 0 |
| Body Small | Lora Regular 400 | 9.5 pt | 16 px | 1.55 | 0 |
| Caption | Jakarta Regular 400 | 8.5 pt | 14 px | 1.40 | 0 |
| Legal | Jakarta Regular 400 | 7 pt | 12 px | 1.35 | 0 |
Sanctioned Weights
Plus Jakarta Sans: Regular 400 · SemiBold 600 · Bold 700 · ExtraBold 800.
Lora: Regular 400 · Italic 400 · SemiBold 600 · Bold 700, display only.
Lora Bold 700 carries a size condition: permitted for headlines and subheads at 30 pt / 36 px and above, where Pairing B needs Lora to hold presence. Never for body copy, captions or legal. It is the only weight in the system with a condition attached, state the condition wherever it is listed.
Off-limits: Light, ExtraLight, Medium 500. Medium was considered and deliberately dropped; SemiBold 600 covers the mid-weight need, including on signage.
The Two-Pairing Model
Serif-led layouts are an established Cove pattern, not an exception, ads with a Lora headline over Jakarta body tested well, and the current website runs serif headings over sans body. A type system doesn’t break because the serif sometimes leads; it breaks when nobody knows which to use when.
| Pairing | Headline | Body | Use for |
|---|---|---|---|
| A · Editorial default |
Plus Jakarta Sans | Lora | Informational and long-form, print collateral, operational documents, wayfinding |
| B · Campaign expressive |
Lora | Plus Jakarta Sans | Brand and lifestyle advertising, emotive hero moments, invitations |
Web / UI overrides to Jakarta throughout, with Lora as an accent only, serif body is harder at small sizes on screen. Signage is Jakarta only.
Three invariants. One direction per piece, choose a pairing and hold it. One face leads, one supports, never serif over serif. CTAs are always Plus Jakarta Sans, in both pairings.
Fallback Stacks
font-family: 'Plus Jakarta Sans', 'Inter', 'Segoe UI', 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-family: 'Lora', Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;
IT has deployed both faces to all Cove-managed machines, so the stacks above matter mainly for email, personal devices and vendor handoff. Inter is the closest widely-available match to Jakarta; Georgia the best-matched near-universal serif. Both brand faces are OFL open-source, so vendors may install them freely, and logo files are outlined, so a sign shop needs no fonts at all to place a lockup.
A live example of why fallbacks matter. covecommunities.com declares Zilla Slab, Georgia, serif on its headings 47 times, but Zilla Slab has no @font-face and is loaded from nowhere, so every visitor has been seeing Georgia. Worth passing to whoever maintains the theme.
Tagline Lockup
Lora SemiBold 600, all caps, 420 InDesign tracking = letter-spacing: 0.42em. A named one-off, not a scale step.
Section 7
Iconography Specs Only
Font Awesome is the icon system, a bought library applied consistently beats a bespoke one that drifts. Everyday users never place icons, so this section is specs-only.
Font Awesome 7 Pro, Standardized on 7.3
Cove holds a Pro license, self-hosted. The live site still runs FA 6 Pro, a version upgrade to schedule, not a new purchase. Class syntax is unchanged from v6 (fa-solid, fa-regular, fa-light, fa-brands); the CSS family name changes from "Font Awesome 6 Pro" to "Font Awesome 7 Pro".
Solid Is the Standard Style
Every Pro style is available, but Solid is the default across print and digital and should cover nearly everything, matching existing practice (about 50 of 55 icon instances on the homepage). Deviations are deliberate and rare, not a matter of taste. Solid is also the most forgiving at small print sizes and on vinyl, which makes it the right signage default too.
Two follow-ups. The home-sales sign riders currently read as outlined and lighter, so they don’t match, bring them to Solid unless they’re a considered exception. And the site loads Solid 900, Regular 400 and Light 300; if Solid covers everything, the other two can leave the build, shrinking the payload and making the standard self-enforcing.
The Grid Is 512 Tall, Not Square
This is the detail that makes custom icons match or not. Font Awesome draws on a fixed 512-unit height with variable width, widths run 320, 384, 448, 512, 576 and 640 across the solid set. Match the 512 height and let width fall where it naturally does. Forcing everything into a square is the most common way a custom icon reads as foreign.
384 × 512narrow
512 × 512square
576 × 512wide
640 × 512widest
512 × 512square
512 × 512squareAll six sit on the same 512 baseline height, the widths differ. Shown in Solid.
Custom Icons
Roughly 80% of need is covered by the library. When something genuinely isn’t there, match the 512-unit height plus Solid’s stroke weight, terminal shapes, corner radius and optical padding, so the addition is indistinguishable from a library icon. Custom icons live in a dedicated Bynder collection with a naming convention, today ASSETS/ICONS/ holds a single stray SVG, which is how fragmentation begins.
License trap, state this to every partner. FA Pro is a paid, self-hosted license. An outside vendor, freelancer or sign shop almost certainly does not have it. Never hand off a layout that expects them to pull from the library, supply the specific SVGs with the artwork.
Section 8
Photography
Real people, real places, natural light. Cove photography looks like somewhere you’d actually want to spend a Saturday.
Hero images to be selected
Four to eight defining shots, chosen from the Bynder library and shown here at full width, so anyone can see the standard without needing an account.
What Makes a Photo Feel Like Cove
Natural daylight · real residents and staff · outdoor and water · relaxed, unposed moments · space and landscape.
Harsh flash · tilted framing · clutter in the foreground · heavy filters · empty, lifeless spaces. (Staged example, nobody’s real photo.)
Where the Photos Are
Everything lives in Bynder, the official asset library.
No account? Photography sits behind a login and seats are limited, assigned to Property Managers, Lifestyle Managers and Marketing. Request access through the Marketing Request Form (“Bynder Access”).
Got great photos? Send them in, you don’t need an account. Go to the Bynder login page, find the “Drag & drop your files here” box beneath the login, and drop them in.
Always add a note saying who you are, which Marketing team member to notify, and the event, property and date. Without it we can’t tell whose photos they are or what they show. The per-community contact list is on the intranet page.
Listing Photos: Shoot to Sell
Good photos sell homes faster, and your phone is enough. Remember the 3 L’s.
Less
Clean it up. Hide clutter, personal items and pet gear. Turn the TV off. Think “fancy vacation rental.”
Light
Open every blind, turn on every light, and turn the flash off. Golden hour (the hour before sunset) is magic.
Lines
Shoot landscape, grid on, phone at chest height and straight up and down so walls don’t lean.
Blinds closed (simulated)
Blinds open, flash off
Drag the handle. Same room, same phone; the only difference is light.
Room cleared, blinds open, phone level. This is the whole trick.
Laundry, boxes, closed curtains, lamp-lit. Buyers can’t picture themselves here.
Phone perpendicular to the floor. Verticals stay vertical.
Tilted up or down, the room looks like it’s falling over.
The 30-second edit: straighten, brighten a touch, and skip the filters. Buyers want accurate. Full training, including where to stand and the pre-shoot phone setup, is in the Shoot to Sell deck; request it via the Marketing Request Form. Marketing can also virtually stage an empty home from one good source photo.
Event Photos on Your Phone
Same principles, faster pace: daylight over flash, hold steady, get close to real moments instead of shooting the whole room from the back. A few good shots beat fifty rushed ones, and photos of people enjoying themselves beat photos of the buffet table.
Send the keepers to Bynder (the upload box under the login, with a note saying who you are, the property, the event and the date). They become next season’s marketing.
AI images are not allowed in Cove marketing. No AI-generated photos, flyers or graphics. Real photos of your actual community always win. See Using AI.
Still to Define
- Shot-list categories, amenity, lifestyle, resident, aerial, interior, event, so gaps in the library become visible.
- Crop ratios per use: 16:9 web hero, 4:5 and 1:1 social, 9:16 stories, 3:2 print.
- Color grading, a reference set or LUT, so shoots by different photographers match.
- Text-on-photo scrims, which color at what opacity, tied to the contrast rules in §5.
- Bynder tagging taxonomy, property, state, city, amenity, season. Metadata is what makes a library findable rather than merely large.
- Model release tracking, needed before resident photos run in paid media.
Section 9
Signage
Signs are the most-seen thing we make. Home sales signage in particular is high-volume, so it’s worth getting right.
Ordering a Home Sales Sign
Home sales signs come as a set: a main panel with the property logo, a phone number strip along the bottom, and a swappable message strip on top that changes as the listing does.
for
Sale
How It Works
The main panel carries the property logo and the headline. It stays on the post.
The bottom rider is the phone number. It also stays put.
The top rider is the one you swap, “Open House” this weekend, “Sold” next month. Order the messages you expect to need.
Some older frames only take one rider. If yours looks different from this, tell Marketing when you order.
The headline follows the property type: “Cottage for Sale” at RV properties, “Home for Sale” at MH communities. It comes pre-set on the panel; there’s nothing to decide.
Messages You Can Order
The top rider comes in a set vocabulary, pick from these rather than requesting custom wording.
Check your community’s sign rules before ordering. Some communities cap how large a home sales sign can be, Camelot East and Camelot Lakes are limited to around 12″ and need a smaller version. If you’re not sure, ask before you order rather than after.
A self-serve ordering system is on the way, so you’ll be able to order directly rather than going through Marketing. Until then, order through the Marketing Request Form (“Re-print orders”).
Other Sign Types
A-frames (typically 24″ × 36″) and flutter flags are also available. Property entrance and wayfinding signage is handled by Marketing, those aren’t self-serve.
Home Sales Sign Construction
| Element | Size | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Main panel | 24″ × 18″ | Property lockup + headline (“Cottage for Sale” / “Home for Sale”) |
| Top rider | 24″ × 6″ | Rotating status or feature message |
| Bottom rider | 24″ × 6″ | Phone number |
Double rider is the target standard (top + bottom). Legacy single-rider frames remain in the field, document both and mark clearly which is current, so nobody orders into the old system.
Color Logic
Sage green rider · Slate Blue main field · Navy inset panel behind the headline · Charcoal phone bar · white logo panel. Campfire Red is reserved for Sold and directional riders, everything else is Sage. Codify this rather than leaving it to be eyeballed.
Open Standardisation Decisions
- Icons, some riders carry them, some don’t, and the ones that do read lighter than the FA Solid standard (§7). Decide whether icons are standard, optional, or category-specific.
- “Look Inside” sets the “OO” as eyes, keep as an intentional exception or normalise?
- Which lockup? Mockups use the property lockup, but Cove Home Sales exists as a brand and the Phase 2 “Cove Home Sales at {Community}” lockups look purpose-built for this. Decide now or face a reprint.
Equal Housing Opportunity (EHO)
The EHO mark is required on home sales and promotional materials. It is a compliance mark, not a brand asset: never restyle it beyond the approved colorways below, and keep it legible (roughly the size of the body copy it accompanies, never smaller than 1/4″ in print).
Colorways exist in charcoal, white, cream, navy, sage and slate to sit quietly on any Cove background. It is currently absent from the sign mockups above; placement on signage is being confirmed before the next print run.
Community Size Restrictions
Known: Camelot East and Camelot Lakes cap at roughly 12″. There are almost certainly more. The authoritative list must come from community compliance, and it belongs with the ordering system, not here, it’s operational data that changes, and duplicating it guarantees the two drift.
This spec is the self-serve system’s option set. Sizes, rider vocabulary, color rules and per-community restrictions are exactly the fields that ordering form needs. Define them once and have both the guide and the system reference them.
Division of labour: the guide defines what a compliant sign looks like; the Catalog and ordering system handle ordering, quantities, vendors, restriction lookup.
Vendor Files
CMYK vector from the [PRINT] collections, never a raster. centered is the sign-oriented lockup layout.
Section 10
Vehicles & Fleet in Progress Specs Only
A wrapped cart circulates a property all day, in front of residents and prospects, among the most-seen brand surfaces we have.
Concepts, not final. Cart directions are in development and trucks haven’t started. The system rules below are the durable part; individual vehicles get added to the library as they’re built.
System Rules, These Hold for Any Vehicle, Now or Later
- Treatment level, full wrap or decal (partial). Driven by vehicle role and budget.
- Use category, RENTAL vs TEAM. Guest and staff vehicles should be tellable apart at a glance.
- Chassis colors in the renders: cream, navy, charcoal, green. Approved set still to be decided.
- Vendor files, CMYK vector from the
[PRINT]collections, never a raster.centeredis likely the right lockup layout, as with signage. - Property lockups, each property has its own; show placement rather than only the master brand.
- Don’ts, distorting artwork around curves; running the logo across panel gaps or door seams.
The Vehicle Library, Populate as We Go
| Vehicle | Status |
|---|---|
| 6-seat golf cart | Concepts in progress |
| 4-seat golf cart | Concepts in progress |
| Utility cart | Concepts in progress |
| Trucks | Not started |
| Passenger van · Point Sebago | Already wrapped, see below |
| Security SUV · Point Sebago | Not started |
| Housekeeping van · Point Sebago | Not started |
Point Sebago carries the widest fleet, van, security SUV, housekeeping van, plus the golf resort. It’s the natural reference property to pilot the system.
Fleet transition, needs an answer. The Point Sebago van is already wrapped, so old and new liveries will share a parking lot for years. Do existing wraps get replaced on a schedule, or run to end of life? Same problem as stale logos, just far more expensive, and staff will ask why two carts don’t match. Even one line settles it.
Section 11
Brand in Practice
The rules above, actually applied. If you’re not sure whether something feels like Cove, compare it to these.
Sage and Slate mark on a Cream field · centered lockup
Navy ground, reversed mark · landscape-led composition
Cream and Navy · Jakarta at signage weight
Full wrap · cream chassis · property lockup
Navy with reversed mark, the workhorse combination
Embroidered mark · Navy
Heather gray with full-color mark
Still to add
Print collateral (flyers, check-in materials), digital ads and social, and email, once refreshed examples exist.
Section 12
Downloads
Almost everything lives in Bynder, our asset library. The logo collections need no login.
Logos, No Login Needed
Digital = Word, PowerPoint, email, web, social. Print = anything going to a printer or sign vendor.
Fonts
Both are free and open-source, install them on any machine, and share them with vendors.
Photography & Everything Else
The full library needs a Bynder account. Seats are limited, request one via the Marketing Request Form.
Coming soon, templates
A library of ready-made flyers, social posts, signs and slide decks, so you can start from something rather than a blank page. This will become the most useful link on this page.
Source Files
Approved logo artwork, every property, layout, colorway and format, lives at 2026-06-15 COVE new logo packages/out. That folder is the source of truth; when a summary document and the artwork disagree, the artwork wins.
Also available: color swatch files (.ase / .clr), the logo inventory spreadsheet, and the deliverables spec.
Still to Produce
InDesign templates with paragraph, character and object styles plus a loaded swatch library · Word and PowerPoint templates with theme colors baked in · a Canva brand kit · email and social templates. These are the enforcement layer, guidelines describe, templates enforce.
Section 13
Using AI
AI tools can help you get started. They cannot speak for Cove, and they cannot draw it. This is the current policy; a more comprehensive one is in development.
- Use AI for writing inspiration, not finished copy. It’s fine to ask for ideas, headline options, or a starting point when you’re stuck on a blank page. Don’t copy and paste what it gives you straight into a post or newsletter. Pasted AI writing is extremely obvious to readers, and we want to sound like real people, not robots. Rewrite it in your own words and read it out loud before it goes out. If it doesn’t sound like something you’d say to a resident standing in front of you, it isn’t ready.
- AI is not okay for images or layouts. No AI-generated photos, and no AI-generated flyers, posters, covers or social graphics. The tools can’t get our logo right, they invent buildings and amenities we don’t have, and they produce people and places that aren’t real. Anything with our logo on it needs to come from a real design file.
- Use real photos of your community. A phone photo of the actual event, the actual clubhouse, or actual residents will always beat anything AI makes up. If you need something you don’t have a photo of, ask.
- If you’re not sure, ask before you post. That’s a lot faster than taking something down after it’s already out there.
And never the logo. AI tools cannot reproduce the Cove mark correctly; there is a real example of what they produce in Logo Misuse. Anything carrying our logo comes from a real design file, downloaded from Bynder.
Section 14
Using the Brand
When in doubt, ask. We’d much rather help early than fix it after it’s printed.
Who to Ask
For anything brand-related, from a file you can’t find to a vendor asking for something unusual, the fastest route is the Marketing Request Form. It goes straight into our project system, gets auto-assigned to the right person, and nothing falls through the cracks. It covers design requests, Bynder access, email sends, reprints, social help and more.
Email Signatures
A standard Cove email signature exists, built by a generator that produces a ready-to-paste signature for your email client. It has been approved by IT leadership and is being deployed inside Cove’s systems now. Until it goes live internally, request your signature through the Marketing Request Form and we’ll send it to you.
Link coming
The signature generator will be linked here once IT completes the internal deployment.
When to Check with Us First
- Anything going to an outside printer, sign shop or wrap vendor
- Anything with a budget behind it, paid ads, large print runs, permanent signage
- Anything using colors or layouts outside the approved combinations
- Anything a resident or prospect will see that isn’t built from a template
Day-to-day flyers, notices and social posts built from templates don’t need review. Use your judgement, that’s what the templates are for.
Looking for paint colors, furniture, interiors or approved products and vendors? Those live in the Cove Communities Catalog, a separate companion document currently in development, we’ll link it here as soon as it’s ready.
This guide covers identity, how the brand looks and sounds. The Catalog covers specification and procurement, what to buy, in which finish, from whom.
Source-Of-Truth Precedence
Established by inspection, and worth stating plainly because this guide is about to become another summary document: artwork > the logo inventory spreadsheet > summary documents. The 2026 source style-guide doc has already been found wrong on property-name case, the RV tagline vocabulary, and the “Vertical” layout name.
Still to Define
- Version number and changelog, without it nobody knows whether their copy is current.
- Named approver per layer, who signs off a new property lockup vs a template vs a color addition.
- Deprecation policy. Three transitions are live right now: old-palette logos still circulating, already-wrapped vehicles, and legacy single-rider sign frames. A system states sunset rules once instead of answering ad hoc forever.
- Onboarding path for new staff and vendors, “read these three things first.”
- Audit cadence, even an annual pass to catch drift.
- Motion standard. This guide is the seed: one easing curve (
cubic-bezier(.22,.61,.21,1)), 200 to 500ms, settle-down character, always honoring reduced-motion preferences. Formalize per medium later.