Co-branding

Standing next to other brands

We often appear with others: government entities, partners, customers and sponsors. Co-branding is how we share a surface with them so every logo is respected and none shouts. North should look confident, never dominant and never lost.

Which treatment for which relationship

Co-branding needs an agreement. Our own sub-brands, products and enablers are not co-branding: they use the logo lockups.

The shapes you will meet

Shape	Example	How to pair it
Landscape wordmark (text only)		Size by optical area; usually smaller in height than icon logos
Icon + wordmark (landscape)		The easiest partner for our horizontal logo
Square icon only		Pair with our icon or lockup at equal area; never with our wordmark alone at the same height
App tile (filled square)		Treat as a square icon; keep its tile
Portrait / stacked		Use our stacked lockup or give it the height it needs
Emblem with text (government)		Follow the entity's protocol; emblems often lead

Optical sizing

Equal area, not equal height

Logos of different shapes look equally important when they cover roughly the same area, not when they share a height. Set each logo's height from its aspect ratio:

height = √(target area ÷ aspect ratio)

• Wide wordmarks get shorter; square icons and stacked logos get taller.
• Clamp extremes: no logo shorter than 60% or taller than 160% of the average.
• Then check by eye: heavy, dark or colourful logos may need to come down a step.

Same height: the wide logos dominate

Optically balanced by area

Building a co-branding lockup

Two logos, one rule

• Order. North (or the sub-brand) first, the partner second, unless the partner hosts or protocol says otherwise. In Arabic-first layouts the order mirrors: the leading logo sits on the right.
• Separator. A 1px vertical rule in the text colour at 30–50% opacity, as tall as the taller logo. Equal gaps on both sides: 1× the height of our N.
• Size. Optically equal (see above), both vertically centred on the rule.
• Colour. The same treatment for both: if North is Midnight, the partner uses its own one-colour version where it has one; otherwise both appear in full colour on white.
• Words. None inside the lockup except an agreed connector (“in partnership with”, “powered by”) in Text Medium, caption colour, in the gap instead of the rule.
• Which North logo. The master logo for company-level partnerships; the sub-brand or product lockup when the partnership is about one product.

powered by

Government and protocol

The entity leads

• Follow the entity's brand and protocol guidelines for placement and precedence. Their emblem usually leads and may be larger; confirm with their communications or protocol office.
• Use the entity's official bilingual emblem as supplied. Never redraw, recolour or crop it, and never separate its Arabic and English names.
• On bilingual materials pair it with the North bilingual lockup (see Arabic), so both sides of the lockup carry both languages.
• Wording such as “in partnership with” or “delivered by” must be agreed with the entity in writing.

Logo walls

• Grid of equal cells (white tiles on dark backgrounds), each logo optically sized inside a fixed box with 24% padding.
• One colour mode for the whole wall: all full colour on white, or all one-colour. Never mixed.
• Tiers for sponsors: larger cells for higher tiers, never larger logos in equal cells.
• Customer walls on the website and in slides only with written approval from each customer.

On dark backgrounds

• Use the partner's official reversed (white) version if they have one.
• Colourful logos without a reversed version sit on a white tile with 12px radius and generous padding.
• Never recolour a partner logo into our palette, and never put our Snow logo next to a full-colour partner logo on dark without a tile.

Approvals and files

• Every partner, customer and government logo needs written approval for the specific use, and the official files they supply. Keep the approval with the project.
• Approvals expire with the agreement: remove logos from the website, decks and walls when it ends.
• Co-branding never implies more than the agreement says: no “certified”, “official” or “endorsed” without a contract that says so.
• Partners using our logo follow the same rules from their side: send them the logo package and this page.

Dos and don'ts

Last updated on 14 October 2026