RAPBITCOIN.The rulebook for matte black, gold foil, and the line between rap-luxury and Bitcoin-maxi.

01Identity & thesis

RAPBITCOIN is a rap-first, mobile-first music economy where every track is simultaneously a streamable song, a collectible NFT, and a tradeable bonding-curve token. The brand expresses that three-gear flywheel with one rule: premium rap-luxury, never Bitcoin-maximalist.

The sentence

Rap. Owned.

Two words. Used as the signature line on every major surface (hero, footer, merch, pitch deck). Capital R, capital O, period-anchored. No variations.

The aesthetic reference

Death Row × Supreme × Rolex. Matte black with real gold foil, not screaming bling. Every Bitcoin-maxi trope — orange-pill wallpaper, "Satoshi" quotes, Greek columns, stacked-sats icons — is forbidden. Our gold is cultural, not financial.

The audience

Rap superfans aged 16–34. Independent rappers in the $50K–$1M revenue tier. Crypto-curious, not crypto-native. If a non-crypto fan can't listen, collect, and share without seeing the word "wallet," we shipped it wrong.

02Palette — matte black + gold foil

Two tiers: primary (brand) and functional (semantic state). The primary palette is what the world sees. The functional palette only appears inside the product for up/down/neutral signaling. Never mix ratios — gold dominates, ivory supports, black holds the frame.

Primary · brand

Primary · supporting

Functional · semantic only

Ratios

• 60% matte black (canvas, frame)
• 25% ivory (body text)
• 10% gold (accents, CTAs, logotype)
• 5% functional colors (only inside product UI)

03Typography — three faces, one rule each

Every letterform on every surface comes from one of three faces. Each has a domain. Crossing domains is a brand error.

The rule

Money uses mono. Music uses Space Grotesk. The logotype (and ONLY the logotype and heading 2/3 in the brandbook) uses Archivo Black. Section headings outside the brandbook are Space Grotesk 700 at ~clamp(26px, 3.8vw, 44px) — never Archivo Black, which stays sacred to the logotype.

04Logo — mark, logotype, misuse

The mark is the gold coin with the stylized "B" (Bitcoin B + FB combo). The logotype is RAPBITCOIN. with the terminal period. They can be used together or apart — but always with the specified clear space.

Clear space

Minimum clear space around the mark = height of the letter "R" in the logotype at the same scale. Nothing else enters that zone — no copy, no imagery, no other logos.

Minimum sizes

• Mark alone: 32 × 32 px digital / 12 mm print
• Primary lockup (mark + logotype): 120 px wide digital / 30 mm print
• App icon: 512 × 512 px source, rendered at Android mipmap sizes (48 / 72 / 96 / 144 / 192)

Never

• stretch, skew, or rotate the mark
• change the gold color (outside the three approved variants)
• place the mark on patterned or cluttered backgrounds
• add drop-shadows, strokes, or bevels to the mark
• use the mark as a bullet, divider, or decorative element
• attempt any Bitcoin-maxi visual pun (orange pill, stacked sats, etc.)

05Voice & tone

RAPBITCOIN talks like a confident rap manager who happens to understand blockchain. Never both at once. Never talks down to rap culture. Never talks up to crypto culture.

06UI components — sharp corners on money, soft on music

The grammar of the product. Trade-oriented surfaces use 2px corner radius + IBM Plex Mono. Music-oriented surfaces use 14–18px corner radius + Space Grotesk. The eye learns the language instantly.

Corner radii — the rule

07Motion & imagery

Motion is minimal and purposeful. Imagery is never stocky. When in doubt, go static gold on matte black — trust the typography.

Motion principles

• 200 ms for hovers, 400 ms for transitions, never more than 600 ms.
• Ease-out for entrances, ease-in-out for state changes, linear for progress bars.
• No parallax. No tilt. No spring-loaded bounce. We're not a 2013 startup.
• Audio-reactive distortion (BRNZ engine) is allowed ONLY on demo/landing surfaces, never inside the product UI.

Imagery dos

• Artist photography — low-key lighting, 1:1 square crops, gold tonal wash over the whites.
• Track art — user-submitted, no gold-overlay watermark, presented as-is inside a 14px radius.
• Texture — real foil scans, gold leaf on paper, brushed-brass macro shots.
• Iconography — geometric, monoline, always gold on dark.

Imagery don'ts

• Stock photos of headphones, turntables, or microphones — ever.
• 3D-rendered "Bitcoin" coins floating in space.
• Emoji as visual assets (only allowed inline as punctuation in body copy).
• Gradient backgrounds that aren't from the three approved radial gradients (see landing pages).
• Faces of crypto celebrities. Ever.

08Product principles

Six principles from the PRD that shape every design decision. If a proposal violates one of these, the proposal loses.

09Asset manifest

Canonical URLs. Use these — never copy into your own repo.