Brand Guide
Where Bucks County comes to play.
Where Bucks County comes to play.
Music Forte is the independent music store Bucks County grew up with: lessons, instrument sales, rentals and expert repairs, all in one place since 1985. The brand should feel the way the shop feels — warm, knowledgeable, local, and genuinely glad you walked in. Every surface we make, from a price sign to this website, should carry that same character.
Approachable and human. We talk to parents, students and pros like neighbors, never like a corporate chain.
Fluent in every instrument. Confidence without jargon — we explain, we don't lecture.
Proudly Levittown. Forty years of serving the same community is our biggest asset, so we lead with it.
We're here to get people playing. Optimistic, generous, always pointing toward the next step.
The full Music Forte logo is the primary mark. The "MF" monogram is the secondary mark for tight spaces — favicons, app icons, social avatars, stamps. Only ever use the approved files from MF Logo / Approved MF Logos / Final Feb 2026. Prefer the vector versions (SVG / EPS / PDF) for anything that scales or prints.
Keep a margin of clear space around the logo equal to the height of the "M" in the wordmark. Never crowd it with text, photos or edges. Minimum sizes: full logo no smaller than 120px wide on screen (1 inch in print); monogram no smaller than 32px.
Use approved files as-is. Place the white logo on dark or photographic backgrounds and the color logo on light ones. Give it room to breathe.
Don't recolor, stretch, rotate, add shadows, re-typeset the name, or rebuild the logo. Don't place the color logo on a busy or low-contrast background.
The system is built on a calm slate primary and warm cream surfaces, lifted by one bright "pop" moment — the sky blue pulled straight from the logo — and a gold accent for small highlights. Use color with restraint: warm neutrals do most of the work, blue marks the primary action, gold underlines and decorates.
Primary — slate
Accent — sky blue (the "pop")
Accent — gold
Surfaces & ink
Decorative — use sparingly
DM Sans carries every heading and every line of body copy — clean, modern, friendly. Fraunces appears only in italic, as a soft accent: a single emphasized word in a headline, a section title, a tagline. The contrast between the two is the whole personality of the type system.
Weights 400 / 500 / 600 / 700. Headings use 600 with tight letter-spacing (-0.02em). The workhorse — use it for almost everything.
Weight 500, italic, in sky blue. For a single accent word, section titles, taglines and footer headings. Never set body copy in it.
Plain, warm, confident. Short sentences. Lead with the customer and the community. Skip the hype and the hard sell — let forty years of doing the work speak for itself.
Soft, rounded, warm. Pill-shaped buttons, gently rounded cards, restrained shadows. These are the live styles from the site — reuse them rather than inventing new ones.
Primary = sky blue with dark text (the main action). Gold is reserved for special highlights. All buttons are fully pill-shaped and lift slightly on hover.
One-on-one instruction in six soundproof studios, every age and level.
Explore lessonsPhotography should feel like the actual shop and the actual community, never generic stock. Warm light, genuine moments, instruments in hands. On dark sections, images sit inside rounded cards with soft shadows.
Students, teachers, the shop, the studios. Show the real Levittown experience over polished stock photography.
Natural, golden-hour warmth that matches the cream-and-gold palette. Avoid cold, clinical lighting.
Crop into rounded corners (14px) with gentle shadows. Images lift slightly on hover, mirroring the cards.
Lead with people playing and learning. Instruments are the supporting cast, not the hero.
Slate #2F4252, Sky #5DADE2, Gold #C4953A on warm white #FAF6F0.
DM Sans everywhere; Fraunces italic for accents only.
Approved files only (Final Feb 2026). White on dark, color on light, monogram for icons.
Warm, expert, local. "Since 1985." No hype, no jargon, no em dashes.
Pill buttons, 14px rounded cards, soft shadows.
"Where Bucks County comes to play."