Bank
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The house, in print.

What the bank is called, how the name is written, and how its marks, colors and type are used. The files are here to download. The rules are short because the marks were drawn to need few.

The name.

Three letters, three families, one rule.

Bank

Gardner, Ripley & Hale

The house is GRH Bank. Its formal name is Gardner, Ripley & Hale, after the three partners who took the charter, and the letters are theirs in that order. In running text write GRH Bank. On a document that signs for the house, a statement, a letter, a certificate, write the formal name in full, with the comma and the ampersand.

The three letters never stand alone. They are always beside the word Bank or the three names, on the page or in the same breath. Never G.R.H., never G R H, never the letters as a word.

In text
GRH Bank
On documents
Gardner, Ripley & Hale
Possessive
the house’s, never GRH’s
Never
G.R.H., GRH alone, Grh

The story.

Windsor, Vermont. A counting house, then a charter.

Before there was a bank there was a counting house on Main Street in Windsor, where the Connecticut River trade was settled in coin and in credit. Elias Gardner kept it. He bought and sold what came up the river and lent against what went down, and the ledger he kept for himself became, without anyone deciding it, the ledger for the town.

Samuel Ripley ran the river. His flatboats carried Windsor's wool and lumber to Hartford and came back with iron, salt and drafts on Boston houses, and he understood before the others that a draft honored in Windsor was worth more than the goods it paid for. Josiah Hale was the lawyer who wrote the charter, walked it to the General Assembly, and argued it through. In 1818 the three names went over the door.

The town became the seat of the precision-toolmaking trade a generation later, and the house lent into the armory and the machine shops when nobody else on the river would. It has been lending into things that are made carefully ever since. The bank still keeps accounts at the same address.

The date on every mark is 1818, the year of the charter. Nothing before it is dated.

The marks.

One monogram, drawn once. Every mark places it; none redraws it.

The letters are Ibarra Real Nova, the site's display face, so the mark and the page are the same hand.

GRH Bank horizontal lockup: the GRH monogram, a hairline, the word BANK, and beneath them Gardner, Ripley & Hale, Windsor, Vermont, 1818, in ink on statement paper

The lockup

The primary mark. Letterhead, the masthead of a document, anywhere 600 pixels or wider. Below that the names in the descender line fall under four pixels; use the stacked lockup.

SVG PNG

GRH Bank horizontal lockup in bone on obsidian

The lockup, on obsidian

The same mark in bone and lifted copper for the dark ground. Never the ink version on obsidian, never this one on paper.

SVG PNG

GRH Bank stacked lockup: GRH over BANK over the rosette and two lines of small capitals

The stacked lockup

Narrow columns, the foot of a card, print under 600 pixels wide. Holds to 160 pixels.

SVG PNG

GRH Bank stacked lockup in bone on obsidian

The stacked lockup, on obsidian

For the dark ground.

SVG PNG

GRH Bank lockup in bone on a framed obsidian plate

The plate

The lockup on its own obsidian plate with a hairline frame, for placements where the ground is not ours: a partner’s page, a signature block, a slide.

SVG PNG

The GRH seal at 512 pixels: Gardner, Ripley & Hale around the top, Windsor, Vermont, 1818 around the foot, a copper guilloché ring, the monogram in the center The seal at 128 pixels The seal at 48 pixels The small seal at 48 pixels: two rings and the monogram The small seal at 32 pixels

The seal

Certificates, the last page of a statement, the wax. The guilloché ring holds to 64 pixels; under that the small seal takes over, two rings and the monogram, so the device is never mud.

Seal SVG PNG On obsidian Small seal SVG Small, on obsidian

The GRH tile: the monogram in bone between two hairlines on a green rounded square, at 180 pixels The tile at 60 pixels

The tile

The app icon and the favicon. It is the one place the monogram stands without the word beside it, because the app names the bank on every screen. The corners are cut at twenty-two percent of the side; the iOS icon is supplied square, and the system cuts them.

SVG PNG App icon, 1024

The GRH monogram in ink

The monogram

Supplied for the wordmark and for anyone building a new lockup. It goes beside the word Bank in the site's small capitals, and nowhere on its own.

SVG On obsidian Inline, current color

Clear space and size.

The measure is the mark's own cap height. It scales with the mark; nothing else needs to be known.

X X
X is the height of the G. Nothing comes closer than X on any side, including the edge of the page.
The lockup
600 px wide, or 45 mm
The stacked lockup
160 px wide, or 18 mm
The seal
64 px, then the small seal to 24 px
The tile
32 px
The wordmark
18 px cap height on screen

Below the smallest size shown, the mark is not used. Set the name in type instead.

Color.

Two grounds, one green, one metal. The page breathes between the grounds; the green is lifted on the dark one so it reads.

Values are read from the site's token file when this page is built, and the ratios are measured. Change the token and this page changes.

On statement paper

  • Statement paper #f4f0e6 The light ground. Every statement is printed on it.
  • Ink #1c1a16 Headings and the marks on paper. 15.3:1 on paper
  • Green #1c5a44 The brand primary. The one button on a page, links, the pill. 7.1:1 on paper
  • Green, deep #123d2e Hover and pressed states; the seal’s outer ring. 10.7:1 on paper
  • Copper #9c6b3f Engraving only: the rosette, the guilloché, the hairlines on the marks. 4.0:1 on paper Not for text

On obsidian

  • Obsidian #0b0b0e The dark ground. Tinted, never black.
  • Bone #ede8dc Headings and the marks on obsidian. 16.1:1 on obsidian
  • Green, lifted #8fbfa6 The primary on the dark ground. The same green, brought up to read. 9.5:1 on obsidian
  • Green, lifted deep #a9d2bd Hover and pressed states on obsidian. 11.8:1 on obsidian
  • Copper, lifted #c79a6b Engraving on obsidian. 7.7:1 on obsidian Not for text

Copper never carries text on paper. It measures under the reading floor there, and it was never meant to be read: it is the color of an engraving, and it stays on the rosette, the guilloché and the hairlines of the marks. Green is the only color that ever asks for attention, and it asks once per page.

Type.

Three faces, each with one job. The marks are cut from the first.

Gardner, Ripley & Hale

Ibarra Real Nova Display, and the marks. 400 for heroes, 500 for titles, 600 in the monogram. Tabular lining numerals for figures.

The Desk answers at every hour of the year. A banker who knows your file picks up, and if the question needs the ledger, the ledger is in the next room.

Instrument Sans Text and interface. Body at 17 pixels and 1.55; labels at 13 pixels, medium. Sentence case everywhere.

We are slower than the platforms. That is the product. Nothing here is decided in a hurry, and nothing is undone in one.

Literata Letters and long reading only. Optical sizes on; a drop capital in green opens a letter.

12,486,905.174.30%1818802-GRH-0000

Numerals Money and figures are Ibarra, tabular, always to the cent. Telephone numbers and references are monospaced. Small capitals appear on the ticker and beside the monogram, and nowhere else.

The seal and the rosette.

The engraving is the house's one ornament. It appears where a document is vouched for.

The GRH seal in bone and lifted copper on obsidian, at 360 pixels
The small seal on obsidian at 48 pixels The small seal on obsidian at 32 pixels

The ring inside the seal is a guilloché: a family of hypotrochoid curves, two dozen passes, drawn in copper hairlines. The same construction turns on the metal card in the app and on the rosette that sits on the rule of every lockup, so a client who has held the card recognizes the seal, and the seal recognizes the statement.

The seal goes on certificates, on the last page of a statement, and on anything that is signed for the house. The rosette goes on the rule, centered, once. Neither is decoration; both say that what follows has been vouched for, and they are not used where that is not true.

Voice.

Short sentences. Confidence without adjectives. Wit that is dry and rare.

How the house writes

Case
Sentence case, headings included
Labels
None above a heading
Spelling
American English
Money
Numerals, to the cent
Dashes
None in letters; a comma or a full stop
The house
the house, the Desk, a banker
The client
you, by name; never “users”

What the house never says

Seamless
or bespoke, or solutions
Unlock
or elevate, or empower
Exclamation marks
not one
We’re excited
the house is not excited
Reach out
telephone, or write
Innovative
the house is two centuries old
An arrow on a link
the words say where it goes

Stationery.

Three things a client holds: a letter, a statement, a card.

The letterhead

Gardner, Ripley & Hale

Bankers

41 Main StreetWindsor, Vermont 05089 802-GRH-0000 (802) 474-0000

Windsor, 4 September 2026

The statement foot
Opening balance11,282,586.62
Movements for the period1,204,318.55
Closing balance12,486,905.17
Head of Custody and Statements
Scan to verify this statement verify.grhbank.com/s · Ref 9F3A1C202607 Verification confirms the reference, period and closing balance of this document as issued.
The card. Brushed obsidian, the chip and the engraving in copper: a material, not a color.

What not to do.

Six things, each of them once seen on a bank's letterhead, none of them on ours.

  • Stretch it. The proportions are the mark. Scale from the corner, never a side.
  • Recolor it. The monogram is ink or bone. Copper belongs to the engraving, green to the tile.
  • Outline it. The letters are solid. A stroke thins the serifs and loses the swash.
  • Shadow it. The marks sit on the ground. Nothing floats above a statement.
  • Leave the letters alone. The three letters never stand without Bank or the names beside them.
  • Set it on a picture. A mark on a painting is neither. Use the plate, or leave the picture unmarked.

Need a mark that isn't here?

Write to the Desk and say where it will be printed. Files are supplied in the size and color the surface needs, and the house would rather cut a new one than see an old one stretched.

Write to the Desk 802-GRH-0000