Applying Bitwarden Branding

Applying Bitwarden Branding

This skill grounds brand-application decisions in Bitwarden's two canonical sources:

• [bitwarden.com/brand](https://bitwarden.com/brand/) — the brand guidelines hub, including

logo lockups, the radius system, social-post framing, product images, and B-roll.

• [github.com/bitwarden/brand](https://github.com/bitwarden/brand) — the source-of-truth

repository for SVG logos, PNG product icons (multiple sizes), the shield mark, color palette in multiple formats (HEX, HSL, SCSS), screenshots, and media assets.

When applying brand in real work, treat the repo as canonical for assets and the brand site as canonical for usage rules. Detailed reference material lives in references/brand-assets.md (asset inventory and file paths) and references/color-palette.md (full palette with usage notes and SCSS variable names).

The five rules that catch the most mistakes

1. Capitalize the B in Bitwarden. Always. The W is never capitalized. The only place "bitwarden" appears lowercase is inside the official logo lockup — not in body copy, not in headlines, not in handles or URLs. 2. Primary palette before tertiary palette. Green, Yellow, and Red are tertiary — use them sparingly, primarily in product graphics and for success / warning / error communications. They are not headline colors. 3. Inter for everything. Product and website. The available weights are 300 (light), 400 (regular), 500 (medium), 600 (semi-bold), and 700 (bold). 4. Logo safe-area is non-negotiable. Horizontal lockup needs one Bitwarden-shield width of clear space on every side. Vertical lockup uses the height of the "X" in the logotype. Cramped logos break the lockup. 5. 36px radius system, but buttons are the exception. Rounded corners follow a 36px radius across primary brand surfaces. Buttons sit outside that system — don't apply 36px to buttons.

Logo usage

• Default mark. /logos/logo-horizontal-blue.svg from the brand repo. Horizontal is the

primary/preferred lockup.

• Inverse (for dark backgrounds). /logos/logo-horizontal-white.svg.
• Vertical lockup. Available for use cases where horizontal doesn't fit; the safe area uses

the height of the "X" in the logotype.

• Product icon (the shield). Available rounded and square, at 16/32/64/128/256 px PNG plus

SVG (/logos/icon.svg, /logos/icon-inverse.svg, /icons/*.png). The shield itself lives at /shield/.

• Product logos. Unique lockups exist for individual Bitwarden products (Password Manager,

Secrets Manager, etc.). Use these "primarily for use in-product."

Don't recolor, distort, rotate, or recompose the logo. If the supplied SVG doesn't fit the need, reach out to the brand owners rather than improvising a variant.

Color palette quick reference

Full palette with all variable names is in references/color-palette.md. Five colors carry most of the work:

Tertiary palette (Green #7BF1A8, Yellow #FDC700, Red #FF6550) is sparingly applied for product graphics and success/warning/error states. The brand site is explicit on this.

SCSS variable names (from the brand repo's brand-colors/palette.scss):

• $bitwarden-blue, $deep-blue, $off-white, $true-white, $true-black, $light-grey,

$teal-highlight, $light-teal-highlight, $tertiary-green, $tertiary-yellow, $tertiary-red.

Typography

• Typeface: Inter (open-source, Google Fonts).
• Weights available: 300 (light), 400 (regular), 500 (medium), 600 (semi-bold), 700 (bold).
• Use: product UI and website body / headline copy. The brand site doesn't enumerate

weight-per-context rules; defer to product or marketing leads when an unusual case comes up.

Iconography

• Web icons. Designed for a wide range of uses with more detail than the product icon.
• Product icon (shield). Available rounded and square at multiple sizes from the brand

repo's /icons/ directory.

Asset paths and full sizing tables are in references/brand-assets.md.

Capitalization and trademark

• The "B" in Bitwarden is capitalized in all copy text.
• The "W" is never capitalized — neither BITWARDEN (in body copy) nor bitWarden.
• The only place "bitwarden" appears in lowercase is inside the official logo lockup itself.
• "Bitwarden" is a registered trademark of Bitwarden Inc. — surface this when content is

external-facing and trademark attribution is appropriate.

Composing with other skills

• `content-style-guide`. Brand sits alongside content style. When reviewing user-visible

surfaces, walk both: this skill catches color, logo, and capitalization issues; the content style guide catches voice, tone, sentence case, and accessibility.

• `using-figma`. Use get_variable_defs to check whether a design's colors are

library-bound and aligned to the brand palette; use get_libraries to confirm the right design library is loaded before claiming a design is on-brand.

• `preparing-design-handoff`. Surface brand findings as part of the handoff gate — flag

them as Figma annotations or as open questions in the Epic when something is off-brand at handoff time. Don't quietly fix.

• `evolving-design-system-components`. New patterns must respect the brand palette and the

36px radius system (with the button exception). The Component Library governance review catches obvious violations, but raise them explicitly when sponsoring a pattern.

Output format for brand checks

When asked "is this on-brand?", structure the response as:

1. What's checked — which brand surfaces this design touches (logo, color, typography, iconography, capitalization). 2. What's on-brand — what's working and should stay. 3. What's off-brand — each finding tied to the specific brand rule it violates (cite the section, e.g., "Tertiary palette overused — Green appears in three non-state surfaces, per the bitwarden.com/brand tertiary-usage rule"). 4. Proposed corrections — concrete swaps the designer can apply, sourced from the canonical palette or asset.

Keep findings specific. "The headline uses #7BF1A8 (tertiary green) where Bitwarden Blue (#175DDC) is the brand-primary color" beats "the color is wrong."

Additional resources

• `references/brand-assets.md` — full inventory of brand repo assets with file paths

(logos, icons, shield, screenshots, media assets).

• `references/color-palette.md` — full palette with HEX, HSL, SCSS variable names, and

per-color usage notes.

Bitwarden Brand Asset Inventory

The canonical source is the bitwarden/brand GitHub repository. Use raw GitHub URLs (https://github.com/bitwarden/brand/raw/main/<path>) or clone the repo when assets are needed locally. Paths below are repo-relative.

Logos

Safe area: horizontal lockup needs one Bitwarden-shield width of clear space on every side. Vertical lockup uses the height of the "X" in the logotype.

Don't: recolor, distort, rotate, stretch, recompose, or add effects (shadow, gradient, outline) to the logo. If a unique need arises, escalate to the brand owners.

Product icon (shield) — PNG sizes

Both rounded and square variants. The shield is at /shield/ for the bare-mark version without rounding or square framing.

For sizes beyond the table, check /icons/ in the repo for additional pre-rendered sizes.

Product logos

Unique lockups exist for individual Bitwarden products (Password Manager, Secrets Manager, etc.) and are described on bitwarden.com/brand as "primarily for use in-product." Source these from the brand site directly rather than reconstructing them.

Screenshots and media

The brand site links to Google Drive-hosted Password Manager and Secrets Manager product images and Vimeo-hosted B-roll footage available for "public use and distribution."

Source files

The /src/ directory holds source files for the brand assets (typically Illustrator or similar). Treat these as designer-only — use the exported SVG/PNG in production work.

When the asset you need isn't here

• For a missing format: check the brand site first (bitwarden.com/brand); some assets

live there but not in the repo.

• For a missing size: open an issue on the brand repo with the use case and the requested

size, rather than scaling up an existing PNG (rounded corners and shield proportions don't scale cleanly).

• For a missing color variant: don't generate one. The blue and the inverse-white are the

sanctioned variants. Surface the gap to the brand owners.

Trademark

"Bitwarden" is a registered trademark of Bitwarden Inc. Apply the ® mark or trademark attribution per the destination surface's standards (typically first reference per page in external-facing content; not required in product UI).

Bitwarden Color Palette — Full Reference

Source of truth: bitwarden.com/brand and the bitwarden/brand repository, specifically /brand-colors/palette.scss.

Branding colors

Tertiary colors

Per the brand site: "Green, Yellow, and Red should be used sparingly, primarily in product graphics and for success/error communications." Treat them as state colors, not headline colors.

CMYK (for print)

The brand site lists CMYK alongside HEX/RGB for use in print and produced materials. Pull from the brand site directly when print specs are needed — these are not in the SCSS file.

Application rules

• Primary surfaces lean on Bitwarden Blue and Deep Blue. Light surfaces use Off White or

True White; dark surfaces use Deep Blue or True Black.

• Highlights use Teal Highlight and Light Teal Highlight, paired with the blues.
• Greys (Light Grey, Medium Grey) carry secondary surfaces, dividers, and disabled states.
• Tertiary palette is restrained. Two or three tertiary swatches on one screen is usually

too many. State semantics (success/warning/error) are the right use; decorative use is not.

Common off-brand patterns to catch

• Off-system blues. Anything that isn't #175DDC or #0C3276 claiming to be "the

Bitwarden blue."

• Tertiary green or yellow used as a headline color. Reserved for state communication.
• Pure black (`#000000`) on pure white (`#FFFFFF`) at scale — usable for text, but Off

White (#F3F6F9) is the default light surface; not the sole option but more often correct.

• Raw hex values in Figma instead of library-bound variables. Compose

Skill(using-figma) with get_variable_defs to confirm library binding before claiming a design is on-brand.

When this reference is outdated

Treat the brand site and brand repo as authoritative. If a color appears in product code but not on this page, check brand-colors/palette.scss in the repo first — that file is the canonical SCSS source and is what this reference mirrors. If the palette has drifted, update this file in a separate PR.