NEUMAI: brand and website

NEUMAI is a technology company trying to break into the AI space, not a media company. So the site couldn't just be calm and editorial. It had to leave an impression, and people had to get what NEUMAI is about without reading much. The text is there for those who want it.

I kept NEUMAI's original fourteen-pathway mark and rebuilt it: one gentle curve rotated fourteen times, square pads and one line weight. One pad is lit in the accent blue. At the founder's request I squashed it slightly. A perfect circle read as a generic badge; the squashed shape reads more like a brain. I drew it in three versions and checked it down to 24 pixels.

The story I wrote for it: Fourteen pathways. One governing principle. Fourteen is seven pairs, such as exploration and restraint. The centre holds a distributed system together; it isn't a central controller.

Five colours and no more: a near-black ground, one surface, one cobalt accent kept for actions, and two text greys. Hairlines aren't a sixth colour; they're the text colour at low opacity. Familjen Grotesk for reading, IBM Plex Mono only where precision is the point. Every gap is on an 8-point scale, and nested corners follow one rule: outer radius equals inner radius plus padding.

I documented every component with its states, so the build had one answer for each. Buttons have one primary style for the single main action in a section; the navigation shows which menu is open by keeping its pill raised.

Two menus on desktop: Explore lists the products, Discover the research. On phones they collapse into one full-screen list in the same order, ending with the one call to action. Every product page opens the same way: its name, its status, one line and a short explanation.