--- title: Last week in the studio (CW28-26) | daily.dev description: A web designer shares their experience working with a client's brand guidelines PDF for Portico Investments, critiquing its lack of practical guidance for web... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-in-the-studio-cw28-26--xqqpjyqnv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Last week in the studio (CW28-26) | daily.dev og:description: A web designer shares their experience working with a client's brand guidelines PDF for Portico Investments, critiquing its lack of practical guidance for web... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-in-the-studio-cw28-26--xqqpjyqnv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/XQQPjyQnV.png og:image:alt: Last week in the studio (CW28-26) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Last week in the studio (CW28-26) **[Blogging and all that Malarkey](https://daily.dev/sources/stuffandnonsense)** · 4 min read · 1 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary A web designer shares their experience working with a client's brand guidelines PDF for Portico Investments, critiquing its lack of practical guidance for web work. The guidelines lacked colour system logic, typographic hierarchy, and interactive state definitions. The designer reworked the colour palette by removing pure black/white, adjusting greens, and adding accent colours. They also replaced the high-contrast serif The Seasons with Calibra for better readability across sizes. The post argues that traditional brand guidelines PDFs are relics designed for print and have little relevance to web projects, which is why the designer creates an HTML/CSS design guide at the start of every project instead. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@agustinbarrientos** · 0 upvotes > Please give me the HTML/CSS guide. A brand PDF can’t show focus, hover, or what happens when the copy is twice as long. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [I still like writing websites by hand](https://daily.dev/posts/i-still-like-writing-websites-by-hand-jxosop61t) · Chen Hui Jing · 138 upvotes · 23 comments - [How I designed an information-rich website for The Shared Homeland Paradigm](https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-designed-an-information-rich-website-for-the-shared-homeland-paradigm-uuv2gazbv) · Blogging and all that Malarkey · 17 upvotes · 1 comments - [4 Lessons From Our Company Rebranding: Designing Afternow](https://daily.dev/posts/4-lessons-from-our-company-rebranding-designing-afternow-pqmroqai5) · Dribbble · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Design Systems as Governance, Not Just Component Libraries…](https://daily.dev/posts/design-systems-as-governance-not-just-component-libraries--zgw3hf7zh) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#css](https://daily.dev/tags/css), [#ui-design](https://daily.dev/tags/ui-design), [#typography](https://daily.dev/tags/typography) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-in-the-studio-cw28-26--xqqpjyqnv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Last week in the studio (CW28-26)","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-in-the-studio-cw28-26--xqqpjyqnv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-in-the-studio-cw28-26--xqqpjyqnv"},"datePublished":"2026-07-14T00:46:58.905Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T21:17:24.874Z","description":"A web designer shares their experience working with a client's brand guidelines PDF for Portico Investments, critiquing its lack of practical guidance for web...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/e191661d7ea3e6eb1ac87d52e2b5b01c?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/e191661d7ea3e6eb1ac87d52e2b5b01c?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Blogging and all that Malarkey","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Blogging and all that Malarkey","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--EAFiC7C---/f_auto/v1764512231/logos/stuffandnonsense","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/stuffandnonsense"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-in-the-studio-cw28-26--xqqpjyqnv","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"css,ui-design,typography","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Blogging and all that Malarkey","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/stuffandnonsense"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Last week in the studio (CW28-26)"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/last-week-in-the-studio-cw28-26--xqqpjyqnv","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"Please give me the HTML/CSS guide. A brand PDF can’t show focus, hover, or what happens when the copy is twice as long.","datePublished":"2026-08-01T19:52:41.287Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/XQQPjyQnV#c-FO7hSBA9F","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Agustin Barrientos","url":"https://daily.dev/agustinbarrientos","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--5ayxQnqn--/f_auto/v1788281802/avatars/avatar_wQYYVe5Tbj0NJ7C7qPoa8?_a=BAMAMicg0"}}]} ```