The few beliefs every product, design and marketing decision should follow from. It doesn't list ideas: it explains what Nino is, so anyone can work out the right answer.
1How to use this
This is Nino's brand platform, also called a brand strategy or brand book. The visual rules alone are usually called brand guidelines.
When a situation isn't covered here, don't search for a rule. Apply the decision test at the end of the page. The answer should follow from what Nino is.
2The core idea
Essence: the idea in 3 words
Your apps, at home.
Promise: what customers can count on
Ask your AI for an app. Nino puts it in the hands of the people you made it for.
Purpose: why we exist
What people make with AI should belong to them, and reach the people it was made for.
A place, not a service.
Owned, not rented.
The customer is the creator. Nino is where their creations live.
3Positioning
For people who make small apps with AI but don't speak tech, Nino is the little box that puts those apps online for their family, clients and friends. Unlike web hosting or website builders, Nino is an object you own: set up in two minutes, no technical words, and your apps live with you.
Developers are welcome, but we never design for them. If a choice makes Nino better for a developer and harder for the plumber, the plumber wins.
4The rule that shapes Nino most
One physical-feeling object, with an owner, a name and a place, wherever it lives. Online or at home, it's the same Nino. Where it lives is a property of the object, like an address. Never a different product.
Always your Nino or Tom's Nino. Never an account, a plan, an instance or a server.
A shape, a size, a light and a face. Shown the same way online and at home.
It lives online or at home. It can move, and moving is something the owner does, like carrying a box to a new room.
It can be named and made personal. That belongs to the object, so it stays the same wherever it lives.
Set up by hand, it wakes, works, rests and moves. Its state shows through its body, especially its light, not through dashboards.
Objects don't vanish. Moving, pausing or upgrading never loses what the owner made.
The metaphor never becomes a lie. We never suggest an online Nino sits somewhere it doesn't. When it matters (privacy, data, outages), we say where the data really is. The feeling is physical; the facts are always true.
The owner can bring their Nino home, take a copy of everything, or leave, at any time. An object you can't take with you is not yours.
5Brand principles
When two conflict, the higher one wins.
6Personality
Warm, capable, a little playful, never showing off. As an object, a well-made kitchen radio: simple, solid, still working in twenty years.
Small is about size, never about power. The name and the box are small and friendly. What a Nino does is never presented as limited, "lite" or a starter version. An online Nino is a full Nino.
7Tone of voice
We follow ISO 24495-1 plain language: readers find what they need, understand it the first time, and know what to do next.
The company speaks as "we". The Nino itself may speak, in the first person, only in short object moments: when it wakes up, arrives home or says hello. It never explains, sells or warns.
8Visual identity
Like a home appliance ad, never like a tech product.
Bricolage Grotesque
Headlines and big words. Weight 800, tight spacing.Instrument Sans for everything else: body text, buttons, labels.
Weights 400 to 700.A cloud appears only as a simple label for where a Nino lives.
9Boundaries
We don't sell storage, uptime or servers. We sell a little home for your apps.
No command line, no settings pages in the main path, no technical vocabulary.
Owning your data is a quiet benefit, never a scare about Big Tech.
Nino works with the AI people already use. It never competes with it.
Friendly and small, but serious about reliability and safety.
There is one Nino. Where it lives and what extras it has are properties of that Nino, never products to compare.
We'd rather offer fewer features than add one confusing choice. We'd rather say no to a setting than explain it. When in doubt, Nino decides for the customer, safely, and lets them change it later.
10The decision test
Ask them in order, for any feature, screen, message or campaign. A "no" means rework it.
Reasoning patterns, not a feature list.