One set of rules for colors, type, file names and documents, so that anything anyone at Live Oak produces looks like it came from the same company. Hand this to a new hire, a vendor, or the AI, and you get the same answer.
The Heritage direction. Five values, plus the warm neutrals that sit between them. Nothing here is a suggestion. If a color is not on this sheet, it does not go on a Live Oak anything.
The surfaces between cream and charcoal. Use them for grounds, panels and rules. They are house neutrals, not brand colors, so they never carry a message on their own.
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| Cream is the default | Pages open light. The photographs carry the color, not the background. Dark bands are used on purpose, not by accident. |
| Never pure black or pure white | Charcoal #23211D and cream #F5EFE4 are the ends of the range. Pure values look cheap next to warm photography. |
| Oak is a garnish | If oak covers more than roughly a tenth of the surface, it has become the primary and the piece is off brand. |
| One accent per piece | Oak or sage leading, not both competing in the same layout. |
| Text on maroon is cream | Charcoal on maroon does not carry enough contrast to read. |
| Photographs carry the warmth | The palette is deliberately restrained. Richness comes from the homes in the picture, not from adding colors. |
This is the Heritage direction. The same one on your brand direction sheet, Option B, written down here as the working rule so nobody has to guess.
A few of our earlier pieces carry slightly different mixes of these colors while everything gets brought onto these exact values. If you spot one, tell us where.
Two typefaces, each with one job. Both are free to use and free to install, so there is no license conversation for anyone on the team.
That is the whole type system. Two faces, the same pair on both brand direction sheets.
No third face, no script, no substitutions. If a tool will not give you Montserrat or Crimson Text, use its closest plain sans or plain serif rather than reaching for something decorative.
Your folder numbering already works, so it stays exactly as it is. This is only about what you call the file once it is in the folder. The goal is that anyone can find a file six months later without asking who made it.
| Rule | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Lowercase only | Some systems treat Oso and oso as different files, and some do not. Lowercase never breaks. |
| Hyphens, never spaces | A space becomes %20 in a link and quietly breaks it. No underscores either, so there is only one rule to remember. |
| Dates as YYYY-MM-DD | Files sort themselves into date order automatically. 08-24-2026 does not. |
| Versions are v01, v02, v03 | Never "final". Never "final2". Never "FINAL-really-this-one". The highest number is the current one. |
| No & # % or apostrophes | These are the characters that break links, uploads and backups. Write "and". |
Anything longer than an email opens the same way, so a reader knows within three seconds what they are holding and whether it is current.
| Element | The standard |
|---|---|
| Headings | Sentence case. "Warranty and service" not "Warranty And Service" and not "WARRANTY AND SERVICE". |
| Status | Every document is Draft, For review, or Approved. A document with no status is treated as a draft and does not get sent to a buyer. |
| Paragraphs | One idea each. If it runs past about five lines, it is two paragraphs. |
| Numbers | Square footage with commas (1,750,000). Money with a dollar sign and no cents unless cents matter. |
| Dates in the body | Written out for people: August 24, 2026. The YYYY-MM-DD form is for file names only. |
| Community names | Spelled exactly one way everywhere: Oso Vista, Lago Vista, King Landing. Not OsoVista, not Oso vista. |
Same idea as file names, applied to the workspace, so the list of projects stays readable as it grows.
| What | How to name it |
|---|---|
| Shared project | LO / Brand and voice, LO / Communities, LO / Sales. The LO / prefix means everyone at Live Oak relies on it. |
| Private project | Your first name, then the topic. Lynna / September posts. Obvious at a glance that it is one person's working space. |
| Chats | Rename anything you will want to find again. The default title is the first thing you typed, which is never useful later. |
| Knowledge files | Same file name rules as section 03. The AI reads the file name too, so a good name makes it find the right document faster. |
Why any of this is worth the trouble. Standards are what let the AI stay right without being watched.
When every community is spelled one way and every document says whether it is approved, the system can answer a buyer's question confidently. When the same neighborhood is spelled three ways across four files, it hedges, or worse, it picks one. The rules on this sheet are less about tidiness than about keeping the answers trustworthy.