Patterson brand identity

Authoritative source: Patterson Companies Brand Guide, VERSION 3.2025 (69 pp., 8 Apr 2025), cited below as [BG25 p.N]. Where a value comes from the 2020 design system deck it is cited [DS20 p.N]; production-stylesheet values are cited [DPL].

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Important

Never invent a hex, a font name, or a measurement. If a value is not in this skill’s references, say so and mark it [TBD: not specified in <source>].

The one rule that gets broken most

Sentence case is mandatory in every digital channel. [BG25 p.25]: “All caps are to be avoided in any digital channel since this is regarded as shouting.” [BG25 p.59]: titles, headlines, subheads, text and captions are all sentence case. [BG25 p.57]: button text is sentence case, “never all caps.”

Warning

This is a hard reversal of the 2022 guide, which said “Titles should be all caps.” If you are working from anything dated 2022 or earlier, that instruction is superseded.

Narrow exceptions, and nothing else:

Exception	Source
Titles may be all caps in print	[BG25 p.25]
Titles and footer text, Extrabold or Semibold all caps	[BG25 p.27]
The brand-promise line in an Outlook email signature, Arial Bold all caps	[BG25 p.28]

Palette — memorize these six

Swatch	Role	Name	Hex	PMS
	Primary, headlines and dark grounds	Navy	#003767	540
	Primary, default CTA and accent	Sky	#00A8E1	2995
	Body copy and dividers	Gray 80%	#58585B	Cool Gray 11
	Backgrounds for content-heavy work	White	#FFFFFF	—
	Eyebrow text	Teal	#00817D	7718
	Danger / error	Error red	#D0021B	[DPL] — not brand-published

Secondary [BG25 p.24] — use for depth, must not dominate:

Blue #147EC2 (7683) · Light blue #6DCFF6 (297) · Light gray #ECECEC (Cool Gray 1 @ 50%)

Tertiary [BG25 p.24] — infographics and presentations:

Green #7BC24D (369) · Teal #00817D (7718) · Purple #522E91 (7679)

Warning orange #F5A623 [DPL] — an implementation value, not brand-published.

Note

Tints are a 75 / 50 / 25 ramp over white — not an 80/60/40/20/10 ramp. Full table in ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/references/color-palette.md.

Icons must never use a color outside the brand palette [BG25 p.42].

Typography

Proxima Nova at every tier [BG25 p.25]:

Use	Weight
Titles, headlines	Extrabold (800)
Subheads	Semibold (600)
Body copy, long-form	Regular (400) or Light (300), whichever reads better at scale
Calls to action	Bold (700) [BG25 p.27]
OfficeSuite — Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams, SharePoint	Arial Regular / Bold

Tracking −10 (-0.01em); −25 (-0.025em) is acceptable at large scale; body copy runs 0 to −10. Leading is 75% of type size for headings, 125–150% for body. Everything is flush left. [BG25 p.27]

Caution

Do not ship Proxima Nova font files. It is licensed through Adobe Fonts; load kit uth1qfm (https://use.typekit.net/uth1qfm.css) and declare font-family: "proxima-nova", Arial, sans-serif. uth1qfm serves 400/500/600/700/800 in normal and italic, so Semibold 600 and Extrabold 800 render for real; the other kit in evidence, rul6mjk, serves only 400/700 and forces the browser to synthesise them. See ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/references/typography.md and the plugin README for the full licensing position.

Logo

• Four marks [BG25 p.13]: the handshake (corporate communications only — never for a business unit), the business-agnostic logo (internal / unit-agnostic external), the primary logo, and the secondary/square logo.
• Colorways [BG25 p.14, p.16]: navy, sky, dark gray (80% black), black, white reverse. Navy and sky first; dark gray only for grayscale; black only for very limited printing.
• Clear space: the height of the “P” in PATTERSON in print, half that in digital [BG25 p.14]. AHI uses the height of the “A” in Animal [BG25 p.23].
• Placement [BG25 p.15]: lower right or upper left.
• Co-branding [BG25 p.18]: Patterson is always dominant and always on the left; partner right and proportionally slightly smaller, separated by a vertical rule.

Warning

Never [BG25 p.20]: use the old gold-and-blue logo, use an old version, resize any part, distort or skew, rearrange elements, add names or elements, alter the color, place the logo over an image, or place an image inside the shape.

Geometry and controls

Property	Value	Source
Corner radius	5px	[BG25 p.57]
Button height	46px	[BG25 p.57]
Button side padding	30px each side (width = type width + padding)	[BG25 p.57]
Button type	Proxima Nova Semibold 15px, 0 tracking, centered, white on sky #00A8E1	[BG25 p.57]
Spacing grid	5px — inferred, not published	[DPL]
Icons	80 × 80px SVG for web, PNG @2x for email	[DS20 p.18], [IMG20 p.2]

Note

[DPL] ships min-height: 45px — a known conflict. Design to 46px.

Two palettes exist — know which one you are in

[BG25 p.24] publishes the print/brand palette. [DS20 p.7–8] publishes a WCAG-adjusted digital palette with different hexes that Patterson web properties actually render:

Swatch	Name	Hex	Source
	Sky (print/brand)	#00A8E1	[BG25 p.24] — the default here
	Digital sky	#269BCB	[DS20 p.7]
	Link blue	#147CBD	[DS20 p.7]

Warning

The 2025 guide does not acknowledge the digital palette; the 2020 deck does not claim to override the guide. Default to the 2025 values and flag the conflict — do not silently substitute. [TBD: whether the 2020 digital palette is still endorsed. Escalate to corporatemarketing@pattersoncompanies.com.]

References

Read only what the task needs.

File	When
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/references/DESIGN.md	Prose design system in Google Stitch DESIGN.md format — hand this to a generative design tool
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/references/color-palette.md	Full palette, tint ramp, digital palette, status colors, usage rules
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/references/typography.md	Per-element type spec, shipped web scale, font licensing
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/references/logo-and-imagery.md	Logo system, clear space, co-branding, photography, icons, video
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/references/conflicts-and-gaps.md	Every source conflict and every [TBD]
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/assets/palette.csv	Machine-readable palette for scripts and swatch generation
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/assets/brand-review-checklist.md	Pass/fail checklist for reviewing a design
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/_SOURCES.md · ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brand-identity/REFERENCES.md	Provenance and extraction confidence; canonical SharePoint locations

Tip

For CSS variables and a drop-in Tailwind v4 theme, use the design-tokens skill instead. For editorial mechanics, use copy-style-guide. For voice, use voice-and-tone.

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Source of truth: plugins/patterson-brand/skills/brand-identity/SKILL.md in the patterson-corp repository.