ptt Brand guide · proposal · 31 Oct 2026
A rebrand, built from who actually buys

From candle shop to pottery studio.

The Pott is the constant. The scent is the variable. So the brand gets a fixed studio core that never moves, and a glaze layer that changes with every season, drop and collaboration.

HANDMADE IN BRITAIN · KEEP THE POTT · CHANGE THE SCENT ·
Who we design for

She buys it for herself, keeps it for years, and comes back for the next one.

Every design choice below traces back to these numbers from Pott's own customers.

70%
of purchases are from people aged 45 and over. 45-64 is the centre.
Meta purchases, 12 months, n=12,167
72%
buy for themselves. It is a considered treat.
Zigpoll post-purchase, n=413
2.84x
ROAS on "Maker Favourite Pottery", the best non-subscription angle in the account.
Meta, 90 days to 15 Sept
72-86%
of artisan drop buyers are existing customers. Raku sold out in about 14 hours.
Drop sell-through, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026
20%
male share of purchases in December, up from 5-10%. He is buying for her.
Meta, 1-24 Dec, two years
0.5%
of 2,405 reviews say "jar". Customers already call it a Pott.
Yotpo full corpus
What this means for the design: the brand should feel like the studio she buys from, not a fragrance counter. The pot and the maker are the hero, because that is what sells. Type has to be easy to read on a phone for a 55-year-old. And it needs a system for drops and collabs, because the growth plan runs on them.
Why change

Today, Pott looks like every other candle brand.

The current look is Bodoni Moda on everything, a warm cream and a bright red. It is tidy, but nothing in it says clay, hands or a kiln.

Now
Refillable Candle Starter Pack

Bodoni Moda · #FFF7F2 · #D43747

Shop now
Proposed
Your first Pott, and the candle that goes in it.

Young Serif + Figtree · Slip, Clay, Kiln

Find your Pott
Thin strokes at small sizesBodoni's very thin strokes break up at small sizes on a phone. 70% of buyers are 45+, and Bodoni is used for body text, buttons and prices too.
A sale-red accent#D43747 reads as Christmas or a discount, clashes with the glaze colours, and has nothing to do with clay.
Nothing says hand-madeThe best-selling message is the maker and the pottery, yet the type, colour and marks show neither.
The idea

A studio that makes candles, not a candle brand with nice jars.

Positioning stays the same as the brand messaging doc. What changes is how it looks and feels.

Brand line
Keep the Pott. Change the scent.
What Pott is
Hand-made British pottery you keep for good, with a candle refill for every season.
The feeling
Walking into a potter's studio on a quiet afternoon. Warm, unhurried, a bit dusty in a good way.
Constant (the studio)
Wordmark, stamp, type, Slip and Ink, and the maker's card stay the same everywhere.
Variable (the glaze)
Season colour, scent, the drop number, the collaborator. Changes every time.
Personality
Warm, plainspoken, quietly confident. Shows the craft, never boasts about it.
Proof we always show
The maker's name, the hands, the drop number, real reviews.
Marks

A wordmark, a stamp, and nothing fussier.

The "o" becomes a Pott seen from above, with the wick in the middle. It is simple enough to press into clay, emboss on a box or use as a favicon. The stamp is the maker's mark that goes on everything: the base of the pot, the box, the drop card.

pttPrimary wordmark · Young Serif, tracked -3.5%
HANDMADE IN BRITAIN · KEEP THE POTT · CHANGE THE SCENT · Maker's stamp · pressed into every pot base
pttOn Kiln
Symbol · favicon, wax seal, app icon
pttCandle studioLockup for packaging

Note: these are direction mock-ups built in the browser, not final artwork. A designer should draw the final wordmark by hand (ideally with the "o" cut from a real stamp) and check "Pott" trademark cover in classes 4 (candles) and 21 (ceramics) before it is used on packaging.

Colour

Studio colours stay. Glaze colours rotate.

Six core colours taken from unfired clay, slip and a kiln. Then a glaze layer taken from Pott's own pots, which changes with the season. The core does most of the work so the pots and scents can carry the colour.

Studio core

Slip
#F5F0E8
Page background
Wax
#FBF8F3
Cards, panels
Raw Clay
#E6D8C5
Packaging, feature blocks
Iron Ink
#2A231F
Text, main buttons. 13.6:1 on Slip
Ash
#6B5F56
Secondary text. 5.5:1 on Slip
Kiln
#A04A27
The one accent. Replaces the red. 5.3:1
60 · Slip, Wax, Clay
25 · Photography
10 · Glaze
5

Rough split on any page, email or ad: mostly studio neutrals, the photography does the heavy lifting, a single glaze for the season, and Kiln used sparingly for the thing you want clicked or noticed.

Glaze calendar

Named after the real pots, so the brand colour and the product are the same thing. Each season leads with one glaze and can support it with a second. Hex values are starting points; match them to photographs of the actual glazes before they go to print.

Feb to May · Mother's Day, spring florals

Blush & Sage

Soft and fresh. Lead with Blush for Mothering Sunday (7 Mar 2027), Sage after.

Jun to Aug · Tomato collab, outdoors

Ocean & Tomato

Seaside and garden. Seasalt and Tomato Vine live here.

Sep to Oct · Amber, Fig, Cook

Rust & Heather

Her oldest, most loyal season. Warm, quiet and settled.

Nov to Dec · Gifting

Holly & Gingham

The one season pattern is allowed. Icicle as the quiet alternative.

All year · texture, not colour

Speckle

A real speckled-glaze texture, used as a background behind product on the site and packaging. It is the one bit of "texture" in the system and it should come from a photo of a real pot.

Type

Three typefaces, each with one job.

All three are free, open-licence Google fonts. That matters later: no licence to transfer if the brand is sold, and they work in Shopify, Klaviyo and Canva with no setup.

Display · Young Serif

Headlines, product names, the wordmark. Stocky, soft-cornered and slightly uneven, like something made by hand rather than drawn on a screen. Accent words go in Kiln. Used at 22px and up only.

Raku, by hand.
Aa Bb Cc 0123 · Fig, Seasalt, Tonka, Orangery
Text · Figtree

Body copy, buttons, prices, navigation. Open shapes and a generous x-height, so it reads clearly at 16-18px on a phone. Replaces Bodoni for everything below a headline.

You buy the Pott once. After that, you are only ever buying the candle. When the wax is gone, put your Pott in warm water, lift the old one out, and drop the next scent in.

£69 · Starter Pack · Standard size

Detail · DM Mono

The studio's labels. Drop numbers, batch codes, burn times, scent notes. Small, uppercase, always tracked out. It is what makes a pot feel numbered and collectible.

Drop No. 13 · 200 pots
Made by Emily Doran
Notes: fig, cedar, cassis

Scale

Base 18px on desktop, 17px on mobile, stepping up by 1.25. Body text never goes below 16px. Sentence case everywhere, including headlines and buttons.

Display XL · 88 / 1.0
Keep the Pott.
H1 · 56 / 1.05
Change the scent.
H2 · 36 / 1.15
Amber is here for autumn
H3 · 26 / 1.2
The Heather, Standard size
Body · 18 / 1.6
Handmade by an independent British potter.
Small · 15 / 1.5
Each Pott is a little different from the last.
Label · 13 mono
Drop No. 13 · 200 pots
Space & shape

Room to breathe, like a shelf in a gallery.

An 8-point scale with generous outer margins. Product always gets more space than copy. Shapes are soft, never sharp, and never perfectly geometric where a hand-made edge is possible.

4
8
12
16
24
32
48
64
96
128

Layout

12-column grid, 1,080px max content width. Section gaps 96px desktop, 64px mobile. 16px side gutter on phones.

Corners

Buttons fully rounded, like the rim of a pot. Cards 14px. Inputs 6px. Product images square-cornered or 14px, never circles.

Lines

1px hairlines in a warm clay tone (#DCCFBE) instead of shadows. No drop shadows anywhere except on photographed pots.

In use

How it comes together.

A product card, a Drop Day announcement, and the maker's card that goes in every box. The same rules work on the site, in email and on Instagram.

Find your Pott How refills work Join the Club
Autumn
The Rust, with Amber
Handmade stoneware Pott and an Amber candle refill
£69Standard size
Drop No. 13 · Thursday 9am
Coast, by Emily Doran.

Two hundred pots, each one glazed by hand in her studio. Club Collectors can shop from Tuesday, Regulars from Wednesday.

200 potsNumberedSeasalt inside
Get early access
No. 041 of 200
Made by Emily.

This Pott was thrown and glazed by hand, so no two are quite the same. Keep it for good. When the candle is done, we'll send the next scent.

Scan for your next candle refill, or to set up a delivery whenever suits you.
Drops & collaborations

Loose enough for a collab, still unmistakably Pott.

The partner brings their name, their glaze and their story. Pott brings the frame. As long as the fixed parts below stay put, a collab with a Cornish potter, a tomato grower or a big-name designer all look like they belong on the same shelf.

Seasonal collab · June
ptt×Isle of Wight
Tomatoes
Tomato Vine · two makers, one Pott
Artisan drop · monthly
ptt×Emily Doran
Drop No. 13 · Coast · 200 pots

Always fixed

  • Pott wordmark on the left, then ×, then the partner · always this order
  • Young Serif and Figtree for all Pott copy · partner name can use their own type
  • The maker's stamp on the pot base and box
  • Drop number and edition size in DM Mono
  • Slip and Ink around the edges of every layout

Free to change

  • The glaze colour · the collab's own colour becomes the season colour
  • The partner's logo or signature
  • Pattern, for that drop only · like Gingham
  • Photography style of the partner's world · the garden, the studio
  • A shop-only pot design for each retailer
Photography

Show the hands, the clay and the evening.

The pottery process is the most convincing thing Pott owns and it barely appears today. Four shots every drop and every season, all in warm, natural light.

The wheel. Hands, wet clay, the maker's face.
The evening. Lit, in a real living room or kitchen.
The object. Pott on Speckle or Clay, unlit, close.
The swap. Old wax out, new candle refill in.

Do

Real makers named on screen. Real homes, lived-in. Late-afternoon and lamp light. Glaze close-ups where you can see the drips and speckles. Women in their 40s to 60s, like the people who buy.

Don't

White studio sweeps. Floating products. Dried-flower flat lays that look like every candle brand. A pot burning in an empty room (never shown unattended).

Voice

Warm, British, and unhurried.

The voice rules already exist in the brand messaging doc and Ailis's feedback. The visual rebrand should sound like this.

RuleSayNot
Say what it isAmber is here for autumn.Fill your home with the warmth of autumn.
Credit the makerThrown by hand in Emily's studio in Cornwall.Artisan-crafted luxury.
Saving, never guiltBuy the Pott once, then you're only buying the candle.Stop sending jars to landfill.
Name it properlyA Fig candle refill for your Pott.The Fig Pott.
Suggest, don't pushAnd then whatever scent you fancy next...Don't miss out. Only 3 left!
Built to sell

What a buyer would pay for.

A larger brand buys customers, margin and assets they can scale without the founder in the room. This rebrand is designed to turn things that live in people's heads into things written down and owned.

Distinctive assets they can own

The stamp, the "o" mark, the word "Pott" for the vessel and the glaze names. Each is simple, registrable and recognisable on a shelf with no logo visible.

A system, not a style

Fixed core plus rotating glaze means a new team can run seasons, drops and collabs from this guide without inventing a look each time.

Clean licensing

Open-licence fonts and in-house marks. Nothing to renegotiate at sale. Collab contracts should give Pott perpetual use of the drop photography.

A numbered archive

Every drop numbered, every maker credited. Over three years that becomes a back catalogue with resale interest, which is what makes a brand feel collectible rather than seasonal.

Retail-ready from day one

Shop-only pots plus the QR maker's card means wholesale grows Pott's own customer list instead of handing it to the shop.

Room to stretch

"Candle studio" can later hold diffusers, wick trimmers, tableware or a second brand. "Pott Candles" would box it in. Consider leading with Pott alone.

Rollout

Start where it costs nothing.

Don't relaunch in the middle of Q4. Test the look on paid traffic first, then roll it out when there's proof it doesn't hurt conversion.

Phase 1 · January

Digital

  • Fonts and colours in the Shopify theme settings
  • Run it first on the new paid landing page against the current look
  • Klaviyo templates and ad frames
Mostly time · no reprint
Phase 2 · Feb to Mar

Marks & drops

  • Designer finalises wordmark and stamp
  • Trademark check, classes 4 and 21
  • First numbered drop with maker's card, timed for Mothering Sunday
Designer + stamp + cards
Phase 3 · Spring onward

Packaging & photography

  • Kraft box with seasonal glaze band, as stock runs out
  • Studio shoot with two or three makers
  • Pott Club and Drop Day launch in the new look
Replace on reorder, not all at once

Open questions before this goes to Ailis: the glaze hex values need matching to real photos of the pots; "handmade in Britain" should be confirmed for every pot shape (the Octagon may be made differently); and the trademark check above. The positioning and voice are unchanged from the existing brand messaging doc, so this is purely a visual change.