Brand Guide
The look, the voice, the pillars, the governed numbers, and the services. Anyone building something in Cedar & Sage's name works from this page. If a draft disagrees with what is written here, the draft is wrong.
The mark is the company in two shapes. An upright with a ground line is the cedar: the built bones, the patio, the walls, the walkways that have to still be right in ten winters. Two leaves are the sage: the living side, the planting that matures into a yard rather than fighting it. The logo is Forest and Sage only. Terracotta does not appear in the mark, because the accent is rationed for the layout, not spent on the logo.
The mark holds at 32px. Use it for avatars, favicons, and anywhere the wordmark would be forced below legible size. Do not shrink the full lockup to fit. Swap to the mark.
Five colours, and a ratio that matters more than any of them individually. Cream is the room. Forest is the furniture. Sage is the plants. Terracotta is the one warm lamp. Keep that ratio and the brand is almost impossible to get wrong. Break it and everything goes muddy or shouty.
Two faces, one rule. Fraunces says it. Figtree explains it. Never set long body copy in Fraunces. Never set a hero headline in Figtree. The two failure modes are equally bad and both are common in a hurry.
Warm, characterful, a little literary. It carries the "grows with you" feeling. Headlines, pull quotes, the tagline, project titles. Optical size up for big moments.
Fraunces, 'Fraunces 9pt', Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serifFigtree, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serifThe voice is the product on paper. If a caption does not sound like Marcus standing in someone's backyard, it is wrong. Rewrite it.
Warm, grounded, quietly confident. We know yards deeply, we care about yours specifically, and we never oversell, because good work does not need to. Every judgment call resolves back to that sentence. When you are unsure, ask: would the most knowledgeable person on the block, standing in your yard on a Saturday, say it like this?
A person, not a brochure. Contractions, plain words, a little seasonal poetry when it is earned.
No superlatives we cannot back. We would rather under-claim and over-deliver, which is the business model restated as a writing rule.
No countdowns. No "act now." Confidence is quiet. Pressure is what you use when you do not have any.
The reader's space is the subject of the sentence. We do the verbs, they own the nouns.
This season, this region, the way the light falls in October. Time and place are what make it real, and they are the two things a competitor cannot copy off our feed.
What is wrong with it: a discount, two superlatives, manufactured urgency, shouting in capitals, and stacked punctuation. Every one of those is a guardrail violation before you have read a word. And it does not just miss. It actively signals the thing our buyer is scanning for, because pressure is what cheap companies use, and our buyer has already been burned by one.
What replaced it: a scene (the evenings are yours) and an invitation (let's talk about your space). That is the whole Cedar & Sage move, in two sentences. No number, no pressure, no adjective doing work a noun should be doing.
Put a competitor's logo on the draft. If it still works, it is not Cedar & Sage's.
The specifics are the brand. When a line feels weak, do not reach for a stronger adjective. Reach for a truer noun.
Everything Cedar & Sage says is a version of one of these four. If a draft is not standing on one of them, it is not standing on anything.
Verbatim, or not at all. Take the words exactly as the Vault records them, attribute them exactly as the Vault records them, and if a quote is too long for the format, cut it. Never rewrite it. A tightened, tidied, or "punched up" review is a fabrication with a real person's name on it.
The governed numbers. Every figure Cedar & Sage has, each with a confidence flag and a rule for using it.
Every number in a Cedar & Sage deliverable comes from here, cited by key. Not from memory, not from a screenshot, not from a platform dashboard, not from the last deck. If a figure is not on this table, it does not go in the deliverable. Write around it, or get it confirmed and promoted first. The absence is information.
An [internal] number is never published. It exists for targeting, budget math, and planning. It never appears as a hard public claim, in any costume: not as a range, not as an "average project," not as a "starting at," not in a report a client will read out loud, and not in a direct message.
| Key | Value | Confidence | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| years_in_business | 12 years founded 2014 |
[verified] | Fine to state. Soft copy may say "over a decade." The stronger framing is not "we've been around a while," it is that there are yards out there in their twelfth season, and those yards are the argument. |
| google_rating | 4.9 | [verified] | Never publish without review_count alongside it. A rating alone invites "out of how many?" and the answer to that question is what actually persuades. Never round it. "5 stars" is a lie, and in a category full of five-star claims it is also less believable than the truth. |
| review_count | 260 | [verified] | Google reviews. Round down in copy: "260+ reviews." Re-pull monthly. It moves faster than anything else on this table. |
| projects_completed | 1,400+ | [verified] | Job records, lifetime since founding. Always keep the plus. Never state a precise count. |
| service_radius | 25-mile radius of Wheaton Hills |
[verified] | Confirmed with Marcus. Use it for geo-targeting and for "do you serve my area" copy. Never type a mileage figure from memory. Pull the key. |
| avg_ticket_value | ~$18,000 | [internal] | Planning only. Never published. Targeting, budget math, and cost-per-lead sanity checks. It never appears as a printed price, a range, an "average project," or a "starting at." Cedar & Sage does not publish prices. Every project is scoped, and public copy points to a consultation, not a rate. |
| monthly_leads | 38 | [internal] | Internal reporting only. Never published. Inbound design-consult requests, all channels, trailing three-month average. This is a rolling figure, which means it goes stale silently. When a month closes, the window moves and it has to be re-derived in the same sitting. |
| team_size | 14 | [internal] | Never published. Three designers, two build crews, nine field. In public copy this is "our designers and dedicated build crews," never the headcount. |
| referral_share | ~60% of new jobs |
[internal] | Never published as a number. It converts to language. Write "most of our work comes by word of mouth." Never "60% of our jobs come from referrals." Same persuasion, zero exposure, and it sounds like a person instead of a slide. A percentage in an ad invites an audit. The sentence does the same work and is unimpeachable. This is the guardrail most often broken. |
Four lines. The name is the ethos: Cedar for structure, the built bones that have to still be right in ten winters, and Sage for the living side, the planting chosen to mature into a yard rather than fight it.
Bluestone and paver patios, fire features and fire pits, pergolas and shade structures, seating walls, walkways, and full outdoor-living rooms. The signature work, and the largest projects.
The "grows with you" idea is most legible here. The patio is the cedar. The beds that will close in around it over five years are the sage. That is the clearest one-sentence explanation of what this company is, and it should be said out loud more often than it currently is.
Complete property design: planting plans, beds, trees and shrubs chosen for the site and for how they will read at maturity, grading, drainage, and flow.
Often the first step in a phased relationship. Marcus will actively recommend phasing when the whole thing at once does not serve the homeowner, and that willingness is one of the most trust-generating things the company does.
Ongoing care that protects the work: spring cleanups, bed maintenance, pruning, seasonal colour, fall cleanups, winterizing.
This is the literal engine of "landscapes that grow with you." A designed landscape is a living thing on a five-year arc, and without a caretaker it drifts. The plan is what makes the promise a service instead of a sentiment.
Low-voltage landscape lighting for paths, trees, architecture, and patios. Efficient irrigation design and installation.
Lighting is the sleeper. It extends the usable yard into the evening, it makes the patio work for eight months instead of four, and it sells in the dark months, exactly when everything else in this business goes quiet. It is the easiest add-on Cedar & Sage sells and the one it markets least.
Cedar & Sage is a premium, quality-first provider. We never compete on price and we never lead with a number.
Offers are seasonal invitations, never discounts or pressure. "Spring consultations are booking now" is on brand. It is simply true, and the reason it is true, that a build has to be designed before it can be built, is itself good copy. "20% off patios this month" is a different company's ad.
The distinction is not cosmetic. Our buyer is a considered purchaser who has been burned by cheap and is scanning for red flags. Pressure is a red flag. A discount does not just fail to persuade them. It reclassifies Cedar & Sage as the kind of company they are trying to avoid.