Golden-hour aerial of a tee cut into fescue, two golfers with a trolley waiting to play, the course running to a low tree line under a wide sky

St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club · Cambridgeshire · Founded 1923

Brand guidelines

Video placeholder · still photograph

The club is a hundred years old.

The course is fifteen.

Before you start

This is a reverse-engineered brand system. It was compiled by reading the live website, pulling the actual colour values and typefaces out of the site's stylesheet, and sampling the crest artwork pixel by pixel. Everything about colour, type and factual detail is measured and checkable today. Everything about voice, values and messaging is a proposal drawn from how the club already writes, and needs the club to say yes to it.

Measured Taken from the live site, its stylesheet or its artwork. Verifiable.

Proposed Synthesis. Requires club sign-off.

Nothing here has been approved by the club yet.

Aerial view over the practice ground to the range building and clubhouse, target greens cut into the grass, flat Fenland to the horizon under a cloud-scattered sky

The club

The club is a hundred years old. The course is fifteen. That sounds like a contradiction and it is actually the whole proposition.

The story in one paragraph Measured

St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club has existed since 1923. In 2007 it bought a 230-acre site at Giffords Farm off the Needingworth Road, commissioned the architect Cameron Sinclair, and in 2010 opened an inland links laid out on it. So you get a century of club, section and fixture life, played over a course built with modern drainage, USGA-specification greens and forty millimetres of sand capping. Neither half of that sentence works alone. Heritage on its own sounds like every other club in the county. A modern course on its own sounds like a resort. Together they are the only thing the club can say that nobody else can copy.

The numbers Measured

1923Founded
2010Course opened, Cameron Sinclair
230Acres at Giffords Farm, bought 2007
6,758Yards off the back, par 72
40mmSand cap on every fairway
USGAGreens specification, velvet bent

Four tees on every hole: 6,758, 6,566, 6,147, and 5,626 yards. Paths between every tee and fairway.

What the club stands for Proposed

Decision 8

Mission

To give everyone, from a first-timer to a scratch golfer, a century-old club's welcome and a modern links course to test them on, in the middle of Cambridgeshire.

Vision

To be the club in the region that people recommend without hesitating, because it plays well in February, welcomes you properly in July, and never once makes you feel you are in the way.

Values, read out of what the club already does rather than a values statement it does not publish.

01
Welcome before ceremony
Visitors are welcome every day. That is a decision, and it should read as one.
02
The course comes first
Greens specification, drainage and sand-capping are led with, not buried in a footnote.
03
Meet people where they are
Four tees on every hole. Flexible memberships. Ten months at nought per cent. Juniors on reduced rates.
04
Named people, not departments
Every enquiry on the site goes to a person with a name. That is unusual, and it is a strength.
05
A club, not just a course
Sections, fixtures, socials, padel, and a clubhouse people actually sit in.

Brand personality Welcoming · Unstuffy · Well-run · Quietly proud · Practical

Golden-hour aerial of a green guarded by three revetted bunkers, a lone golfer pulling a trolley across the fairway, the rough turning gold

Positioning Proposed

For golfers in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire who want a proper club without a waiting list, a joining fee or a members-only Saturday, St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club is a hundred-year-old club playing a modern inland links: sand-capped, fully drained and four tees a hole, so it is in condition and open to you when the clay parkland courses nearby are not.

St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club crest: a quartered gold and red shield bearing four silver bulls' heads, crossed golf clubs behind, ringed by the club name and the words Founded 1923

The mark Measured

The lettering in the crest's surround is black, so the mark is unreadable placed directly on Club Navy. Until a reversed version exists, with the surround type in cream, the correct workaround on any dark ground is a light circular plate with clear space inside it, as used here. That is a stopgap, not the answer. The answer is item 2 in the table below.

How we look

A heraldic crest, navy and gold from the website, and photography that already knows what the Fens look like. The job is to make the three agree.

The crest Measured

Decision 1 and 2

The club's mark is a heraldic crest: a quartered shield in gold and deep red carrying four silver bulls' heads, two crossed golf clubs behind the shield, and the club name set in a circle around it.

Good news · the correct crest already exists

There are two different crests live on the club's own server right now. The website header serves a small one carrying a dated CENTENARY 2023 ribbon. The favicon folder serves a larger, cleaner one reading FOUNDED 1923, with no dated ribbon at all. The second one is the primary crest this document has been asking for, and it already exists. The fix is not a commission. It is changing which file the site points at.

The Founded 1923 crest, 512 pixels square, no dated ribbon

Use this one

Reads FOUNDED 1923. No dated ribbon. 512 × 512px, transparent. Currently served only as a favicon at /favicon/android-chrome-512x512.png.

Primary crest

The Centenary 2023 crest, 220 pixels wide, carrying a dated gold ribbon

Retire this one

Reads CENTENARY 2023. 220 × 227px. This is what the website header and every downstream asset currently uses. It is 2026.

Commemorative only

What exists, and what is still missing

Mark	Purpose	Largest file	Status
Primary, full colour	Everything. Web, print, signage, apparel	512 × 512 PNG	Exists, unused
Commemorative	Anniversary years only	220 × 227 PNG	In use by mistake
Vector master (SVG / EPS)	Signage, flags, embroidery, large print	none	Missing
Reversed	On navy. Gold, silver and cream, no red	none	Missing
Mono	Single-colour navy, embroidery and etching	none	Missing
Icon only	Shield alone, for avatars below 32px	none	Missing

The blocker · there is still no vector artwork

512px is enough for the website and a social avatar. It is not enough for a sign, a flag, an embroidered shirt or anything printed larger than a business card. The crest needs redrawing as SVG and EPS before any print or signage work is commissioned. Until that exists, most of the print and signage work in this document cannot be executed.

Clear space and minimum size Proposed

Minimum clear space on all four sides equals the height of the lettering in the surround. Nothing sets inside that boundary: no type, no rule, no photograph edge, no second logo.

Context	Minimum	Note
Full crest, print	20mm wide	Vector artwork only
Full crest, screen	80px wide	Below this the circular club name breaks up
Icon-only shield, screen	32px wide	Use instead of shrinking the full crest

Colour Measured

Decision 3

Colour: the conflict, first

The club is running three unreconciled sets of colours. The crest artwork, the website stylesheet, and the vestigial reds inside that stylesheet all disagree. Sampled directly from the artwork and counted directly from the CSS:

1 · The crest artwork says

#E2AD33Heraldic Gold

#7E1416Heraldic Red

#B3B3B3Heraldic Silver

#FFFFFFWhite

2 · The website says

#0D306F59 uses

#20609E29 uses

#A17B2C15 uses

#F4F1F0Warm Stone

3 · The orphaned reds

#8900064 uses

#A805323 uses

#7E1416the crest's own, for comparison

Three different reds and two different golds are in circulation. Nothing on the site resolves them, which is why the badge reads as borrowed rather than belonging.

Recommendation

Keep navy as the brand colour and gold as the accent, because that is what 59 and 15 declarations of live code already say, and because navy and gold is the more distinctive pairing in a category where almost everyone defaults to green. Then re-cast the red as a heritage colour with a narrow, defined job: it stays inside the crest, it takes the crest's own value #7E1416, and the orphaned #890006 and #A80532 are deleted from the stylesheet. It may appear on centenary, honours-board, club history and captain's material. It never becomes a general accent, and it never becomes a button. That gives one system with a reason, rather than three by accident.

Applied Measured

Navy and gold, on the things the club actually prints

In the club's photographs read for this book, the crest is not legible on any flag, sign or shirt, and the only lettering in shot is the Titleist wordmark on the range building. So there is no picture of the brand in use to show here. The applied pieces are drawn under In use, below.

Colour usage rules

Navy is the default dark. Headers, footers, primary buttons, headings on light grounds.
Fairway Gold is a seasoning, not a ground. Never a large filled panel, where it turns mustard. If gold is ever a ground it is Pale Gold with navy type, and it is used once.
Light Gold and Pale Gold are for dark grounds only. They are too pale to read on white.
Heraldic Gold and Heraldic Red belong to the crest. Reproduce the crest in those values. Do not use them to paint anything else.
Warm Stone breaks up long pages. Alternate white and Warm Stone. Never introduce a third background tint.

The palette Measured

Every value, counted

Primary

Club Navy

#0D306F
13, 48, 111
88 / 57 / 0 / 56

59 uses. Headers, headings, primary buttons, footer.

Fairway Gold

#A17B2C
161, 123, 44
0 / 24 / 73 / 37

15 uses. Rules, hovers, small flourishes. Never body text.

Secondary

Sky Blue

#20609E
32, 96, 158
80 / 39 / 0 / 38

29 uses. Links and hover states. If it is blue and not navy, it should be clickable.

Light Gold

#D9B764
217, 183, 100
0 / 16 / 54 / 15

6 uses. Dark grounds only.

Pale Gold

#E6C679
230, 198, 121
0 / 14 / 47 / 10

4 uses. Highlights and rules on navy.

Heraldic, crest artwork only, sampled from the PNG

Heraldic Gold

#E2AD33
226, 173, 51
0 / 23 / 77 / 11

The shield gold. Reproduce the crest with this, not Fairway Gold.

Heraldic Red

#7E1416
126, 20, 22
0 / 84 / 83 / 51

The shield red. Heritage material only. Replaces #890006 and #A80532.

Heraldic Silver

#B3B3B3
179, 179, 179

The bulls' heads and the crossed clubs.

Neutrals

White

#FFFFFF
255, 255, 255

134 uses. Default page ground.

Warm Stone

#F4F1F0
244, 241, 240

6 uses. Alternating section grounds.

Body Grey

#4B4B4B
75, 75, 75

11 uses. Body copy.

Ink

#222222
34, 34, 34

7 uses. Maximum-contrast text.

Rule Grey

#E4E4E4
228, 228, 228

4 uses. Borders and dividers.

Accessibility Measured

Contrast, measured not asserted

Contrast ratios calculated to WCAG 2.1 from the measured hex values. Body text needs 4.5:1; large text, meaning 24px or 18.66px bold and above, needs 3:1. Each row below is rendered in the actual colours.

Club Navy on white12.58:1Pass

Body Grey on white8.72:1Pass

Sky Blue on white6.50:1Pass

Heraldic Red on white10.51:1Pass

Fairway Gold on white3.90:1Body fail

Heraldic Gold on white2.05:1Both fail

White on Club Navy12.58:1Pass

Pale Gold on Club Navy7.62:1Pass

Light Gold on Club Navy6.53:1Pass

Fairway Gold on Club Navy3.23:1Body fail

The two hard rules this produces

Fairway Gold #A17B2C fails for body text on both white and navy. It is a rule, border, icon and large-heading colour. Never paragraph text, never small print, never a caption, never link text at body size.

Heraldic Gold #E2AD33 fails as text entirely, at 2.05:1 on white. It exists to fill the shield in the crest. It is never used to set type on a light ground.

Display type Proposed the recommended tagline, decision 4

Proxima Nova Bold, the club’s own face. A display serif for lines like this one is proposed in decision 5.

Typography Measured

Decision 5

The site loads Proxima Nova from Adobe Typekit, kit pdh2nxp, in weights 300, 400, 500, 600 and 700 plus one italic. The stylesheet declares font-family: proxima-nova, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif.

Proxima Nova is a licensed Adobe font, so anyone producing print work needs their own Adobe Fonts licence for it. Do not substitute Montserrat. It is the common free lookalike and it is noticeably wider and rounder; set side by side the difference is obvious.

The typographic gap, and this page as the argument

The club sets one typeface for everything. That is clean, and it is also why the site reads as competent rather than characterful. A century-old club with a heraldic crest has an obvious opportunity: introduce a serif for display use only, meaning the homepage headline, section openers, the wedding brochure, menus, honours boards and certificates, and keep the sans for every piece of interface and body copy. That serif is a proposal, decision 5: an English transitional face in the tradition the crest already borrows from. This page is set in Proxima Nova throughout, from the club's own Typekit kit pdh2nxp, so it shows the brand as it is today: Bold for display, Semibold for headings, Regular for reading. That kit is licensed to the club's domains; any other site using this system needs its own Adobe Fonts licence.

AaDisplay, Proxima Nova Bold

AaEverything else, Proxima Nova Regular

Display · Proxima Nova 700 · 56 to 72px · line-height 1.05

The links in the Fens

H1 · Proxima Nova 600 · 40 to 48px

Visitors are welcome every day

Body · Proxima Nova 400 · 17px · line-height 1.6

Fairways sand-capped with forty millimetres of sand, fully drained and irrigated, with pathways between every tee and fairway. It means the course is in condition and open to you in February as well as July.

Label · Proxima Nova 600 · 13px · letter-spacing 0.06em

Book a tee time

Hierarchy Proposed

Level	Face	Weight	Size	Line height	Use
Display	Proxima Nova	700	56 to 72px	1.05	Hero, brochure covers
H1	Proxima Nova	600	40 to 48px	1.15	Page titles
H2	Proxima Nova	600	30 to 34px	1.2	Section headings
H3	Proxima Nova	600	22 to 24px	1.3	Sub-headings
Body	Proxima Nova	400	17px	1.6	Paragraphs
Body large	Proxima Nova	300	20px	1.6	Standfirsts
Caption	Proxima Nova	400	14px	1.4	Photo captions
Label	Proxima Nova	600	13px	1.2	Buttons, tags. Uppercase, 0.06em

If the display serif in decision 5 is approved, it takes the Display and H1 rows only. Everything else stays Proxima Nova.

Typographic rules

Line length 60 to 75 characters. Body copy sits in a column, not edge to edge.
Sentence case for headings. Not Title Case, not ALL CAPS except on small labels and buttons.
Never centre a paragraph. Centre a heading if you like. Never a block of running text.
Never justify. It creates rivers at this line length.

Photography Measured

Decision 6

The club's photography is genuinely good and it already has a consistent look. Keep all of it. It is the strongest part of the current brand. A second bank of ten frames arrived on 4 September 2026, golden hour on the ground and from the air, and this page is now built from it. These are the club's own originals, at full resolution.

Straight-down aerial of a green and two revetted bunkers, a greenkeeper raking sand beside a utility vehicle, long evening shadows across the turf — Aerial work for scale and shape. Use sparingly, it sells the site rather than the round. Straight down, the revetted bunkers become the club's own pattern.

Measured Two frames in the September bank show the range building carrying a Titleist wordmark, one of them the only close shot of a golfer. Both are excluded from the brand set under the club's own rule below: no competing logo in frame. Two padel-court aerials are in the bank and not on this page; they belong to the facilities pages, not the identity.

Golden hour. Low, warm, raking light. Long shadows. Sun in frame or just out of it.
Big Fenland skies. The horizon sits low, sky takes half the frame or more.
Foreground framing with grasses and reeds, shot shallow, leading the eye to water and green.
Blues and straw-golds dominate, which happens to echo the navy and gold palette.

The gap · people are still small and seen from above

The copy's entire argument is welcome, warmth, staff, sections and community. The September bank puts people in frame for the first time, a greenkeeper raking a bunker, two golfers on a tee, but every one of them is small, from behind, or from the air. Nobody is close enough to be welcomed by. Commission a second bank to sit alongside them: four-balls on the tee, the bar in use at five o'clock on a Saturday, juniors being coached, the ladies' section at a fixture, a wedding party outside the clubhouse, staff behind the bar. Same golden-hour treatment and warm grade, so the two banks read as one set. Working ratio: 60 per cent landscape, 40 per cent people.

What to avoid

Stock photography of golfers who are obviously not at this course
Anyone in frame breaking the club's own dress code
Grey, flat, overcast light. If the weather is poor, do not shoot
Over-sharpened, HDR-crunched landscapes with haloed tree lines
Photographs of empty rooms on the weddings and functions pages. An empty function room sells nothing
A competing logo in frame. Equipment brands on range buildings, bag tags or flags are cropped out or the frame is not used

In use Proposed

The brand on the things the club sends

Six pieces the club actually uses, drawn at their real proportions in the club's own typeface and built from the club's own photographs. Every fact on them is from the club's website. The crest is placed as the artwork it is, never redrawn or recoloured. Only the website itself is measured; the rest is proposed.

St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club crest, Founded 1923 — Scorecard Proposed
A folded card, 110 × 160mm closed. Outside, the Founded 1923 crest on its Warm Stone plate over Club Navy, and a back in Warm Stone with the club's own facts. Inside, all 18 holes off the four tees, which the club names by their length rather than by colour: 67, 65, 61 and 56. Every yardage, par and stroke index is from the course page, and the tees add up to 6,758, 6,566, 6,147 and 5,626 yards.

Hole	67	65	61	56	Par	S.I.
1	355	347	329	303	4	9
2	397	386	366	344	4	5
3	179	163	152	142	3	17
4	536	528	496	457	5	15
5	407	396	365	334	4	1
6	386	374	348	324	4	7
7	182	167	162	147	3	13
8	525	513	478	439	5	11
9	436	425	397	365	4	3
Out	3,403	3,299	3,093	2,855	36

Hole	67	65	61	56	Par	S.I.
10	372	359	335	312	4	12
11	557	544	519	454	5	4
12	147	136	126	108	3	18
13	304	299	280	257	4	16
14	389	384	350	324	4	2
15	390	379	353	330	4	8
16	187	179	159	144	3	14
17	452	440	416	386	4	6
18	557	547	516	456	5	10
In	3,355	3,267	3,054	2,771	36
Out	3,403	3,299	3,093	2,855	36
Total	6,758	6,566	6,147	5,626	72

Membership brochure Proposed
A4. The cover is the club's own golden-hour aerial over a Club Navy panel, with the line the membership page leads with: 10 months at 0 per cent. The inside page uses the club's own words: the four sections, the 15 per cent drinks discount, and the categories the site names. Only Flexible carries a published price, from £285, so the others say ask.

Golden-hour aerial of a tee cut into fescue, two golfers with a trolley waiting to play — Social posts Proposed
Three posts at 4:5, the shape Instagram crops to. Each is a fact from the club's site on one of the club's own golden-hour aerials: visitors welcome every day, four tees on every hole, and the 40mm sand cap. Pale Gold is used once, as a ground with navy type, as the colour rules allow.

Social posts Proposed
Three posts at 4:5, the shape Instagram crops to. Each is a fact from the club's site on one of the club's own golden-hour aerials: visitors welcome every day, four tees on every hole, and the 40mm sand cap. Pale Gold is used once, as a ground with navy type, as the colour rules allow.

The club's homepage at 1440 pixels: the Centenary 2023 crest centred over a golden-hour photograph of a green, the line The perfect venue for visitors, societies and corporate golf days, and a Visitors and societies button — The website Measured
The club's site as it stands, captured on 6 October 2026 at 20:44 UTC, 1440 and 390 pixels wide. Proxima Nova throughout, and the Centenary 2023 crest in the header, which decision 1 retires. The other pieces on this page use the Founded 1923 crest.

The same homepage at 390 pixels wide — The website Measured
The club's site as it stands, captured on 6 October 2026 at 20:44 UTC, 1440 and 390 pixels wide. Proxima Nova throughout, and the Centenary 2023 crest in the header, which decision 1 retires. The other pieces on this page use the Founded 1923 crest.

Letter and card Proposed
A4 letter and an 85 × 55mm card, to the book's own letterhead rule: the crest top-left at 25mm, the address at the foot in Body Grey, a Fairway Gold rule above it. Body lines are placeholders. The card is Thomas Munt's, General Manager, as named on the membership page, with his address from the same page. The back is Club Navy with the crest on its Warm Stone plate.

Social media

Avatar: icon-only shield on white. The full crest is unreadable in a circle.
Post mix: roughly a third course condition and photography, a third club life meaning results, sections, juniors and socials, and a third offers, opens, and visitor and society availability.
Hashtags: a maximum of three, and they should be real. #StIvesGolfClub #InlandLinks #CambridgeshireGolf.
Never post a grey-sky photograph. Hold it until the light is right.

Print

Item	Specification
Scorecards	Navy and white. The Founded 1923 crest on the cover. Yardages for all four tees in one legible table. This is the piece most used and most often badly set.
Signage	Vector artwork only, which does not yet exist. Primary crest. Navy ground with the crest reversed reads best from a distance and at dusk.

Brand don'ts, the one-page checklist

Never use the CENTENARY 2023 crest. The Founded 1923 crest already exists, use that
Never enlarge a raster crest for print. Commission vector artwork first
Never set Fairway Gold #A17B2C as body text. It fails contrast on white and on navy
Never set Heraldic Gold #E2AD33 as text at all. It is a shield fill, at 2.05:1 on white
Never use a colour outside the palette above
Never substitute Montserrat, or any other lookalike, for Proxima Nova
Never use Title Case or ALL CAPS for headings, except on small labels and buttons
Never write stunning, fantastic, first class, boasts or nestled
Never use an em-dash, and never more than one exclamation mark in a social post
Never publish a grey-sky or flat-light photograph
Never show an empty room on the weddings and functions pages
Never route an enquiry to a department when it can go to a person by name

How we speak

The club sounds like a good general manager showing you round: warm, straight, quietly proud of the place, and never once making you feel you should have known something already.

Proposed The voice essence.

Tone dimensions Proposed

Dimension	Where it sits
Formal to casual	Slightly casual. Contractions are fine. Slang is not.
Serious to playful	Mostly serious, with room for dry warmth. Never jokey.
Reserved to enthusiastic	Warm, and evidenced. Enthusiasm is earned with a fact, not asserted with an adjective.
Ornate to plain	Plain, always.

The voice, in seven lines Proposed

Nothing here is an adjective. Two of the lines are taglines the club has not yet chosen (decision 4). The rest are things that are true on a Tuesday in February.

A hundred years old.

Fifteen years young.

The links in the Fens.

Welcome every day.

Four tees on every hole.

Sand-capped, forty millimetres deep.

Ring us on 01480 499920.

Voice qualities Proposed

Five ways to tell it is us

1. Welcoming, not ingratiating

Visitors are welcome every day. Book online, or ring us on 01480 499920.

Don't

We would be simply delighted to have the pleasure of welcoming you.

2. Specific, not superlative

Sand-capped fairways, forty millimetres deep, so the course drains and stays open.

Don't

Our stunning course boasts fantastic, first-class facilities.

3. Plain, not corporate

Every hole has four tees, so you can play it at a length that suits you.

Don't

We offer a multi-tee solution catering to golfers across the ability spectrum.

4. Confident, not boastful

One of the first courses in the country built to USGA greens specification.

Don't

The undisputed finest golfing experience in Cambridgeshire.

5. Human, not institutional

Ring James Hart, our Golf Operations Manager, on 01480 499920, option 1.

Don't

Please contact the Golf Operations Department for further information.

Vocabulary Measured the four live words Proposed the lists

stunningfantasticfirst classboasts

These four are live on the club's own pages today. They are what the site reaches for when it has run out of facts, and this club has more facts than almost any comparable course. Replace each one with the thing that made you want to use it.

We say

inland linkssand-cappedwelcomevisitorsmembersthe cluba proper testin conditionfour teesflexibleyour roundthe clubhousesectionsfixturesour teamring usa hundred years

We don't say

stunning livefantastic livefirst class liveboasts livestate-of-the-artpremierluxuriousexclusiveunrivalledbespokenestleda hidden gemworld-classprestigiouselevateexperiencereach out

Writing style Proposed

House rules

British English throughout. Colour, organise, enquiry, programme, centre.
Oxford comma. Always.
Sentence length. Vary it. Average around 15 to 20 words. A short one lands.
Sentence case for all headings. Not Title Case.
No exclamation marks in club-published copy. One per social post at the absolute most.
No em-dashes. Use a comma, a full stop, or a colon.
Numbers. Spell out one to nine, numerals from 10. Always numerals for yardages, pars, handicaps, prices, dates and times: 6,758 yards, par 72, £45, 8.30am.
Dates. 3 September 2026, not 3rd Sept.
The club's name. St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club in full on first mention and in every formal document. St Ives Golf Club thereafter in running copy. The club after that. Never "SIGC" outward-facing. No apostrophe in St Ives.

Messaging Proposed

Decision 4

A hundred-year-old club. A course built to play all year.

Proposed The core message.

Value proposition

St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club has been a club since 1923 and has played this course since 2010. Cameron Sinclair laid out an inland links across 230 acres of Cambridgeshire: USGA-specification greens, fairways sand-capped and fully drained, four tees on every hole, and paths between all of them. It means the course is in condition and open to you in February as well as July, and that whoever you bring, there is a set of tees that fits. Visitors are welcome every day.

Tagline routes

Route	Line	Leans on
Heritage and modernity	A century of welcome. A course built for now.	The 1923 / 2010 story
The course	The links in the Fens.	The single hardest thing to copy
The welcome	Welcome every day.	The club's own most repeated idea

Recommendation

Pick one and hold it for at least three years. The links in the Fens is the recommendation: short, geographically true, memorable, and no competitor within an hour can say it.

Key messages, with proof

Message	Proof
It plays when others don't.	Fairways sand-capped with 40mm of sand, fully drained and irrigated. Pathways between every tee and fairway, so trolleys and buggies run near year-round.
It is a real test, at your length.	6,758 yards off the back to par 72, with tees at 6,566, 6,147 and 5,626. Four tees on every hole.
The greens are the good bit.	USGA specification, velvet bent grass. One of the first courses in the country built this way.
You don't have to join to play.	Visitors welcome every day, booked online with instant confirmation.
And joining is not a cliff edge.	Flexible categories, pay-as-you-play, reduced rates for juniors and distant members, and membership spread over ten months at 0% interest.
There is a club here, not just a course.	Men's, ladies', juniors' and mixed sections, competitions, county and regional fixtures, socials, padel, and a clubhouse with a bar and kitchen.

Audience angles

Audience	Lead with	Do not lead with
Prospective members	Flexibility and the sections. You can join in a way that fits your life, and there are people to play with when you do.	Yardage
Visiting golfers	Condition and access. It is in condition, you can book online, you are welcome today.	Club history
Societies	Tailoring and a named person. Every day is different, James will build yours.	The clubhouse menu
Weddings and functions	The view, the licence and the people. Ceremony and reception in one place, with Chelsea running it and Martyn cooking it.	Golf
Padel	Sociable, quick to learn, and it is here now.	Technical rules

Contacts and assets

Brand guardian: Thomas Munt, General Manager. All brand decisions, all approvals, and any exception to this document.

General management and membershipThomas Munt, General Manager01480 499920, option 1
Golf operations and societiesJames Hart, Golf Operations Manager01480 499920, option 1
Weddings, functions and eventsChelsea, Events Manager01480 499920
CateringMartyn, Head Chefvia the clubhouse

Club details for all published material

St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club
Needingworth Road, St Ives, Cambridgeshire PE27 4AD
01480 499920 · stivesgolfclub.co.uk
facebook.com/StIvesHuntsGolfClub · twitter.com/stiveshuntsgc

Asset location · to be established

There is currently no central store of brand assets. The correct crest is hiding in a favicon folder, the wrong one is in the theme's logo folder, and there is no vector master anywhere. Setting up a single shared folder holding vector artwork, the approved photography library and this document should be the first action taken from these guidelines.

Open decisions

Eight things only the club can settle

These cannot be settled without the club, and each one blocks something downstream.

1
Switch the site to the Founded 1923 crest
The correct crest already exists on the club's own server. Every printed item currently celebrates an anniversary that ended in 2023. This is a file swap, not a commission.
GM
2
Commission vector artwork, SVG and EPS
No signage, apparel or large print can be produced properly until this exists.
GM
3
Settle navy and gold as the palette, heraldic red as heritage only
Three reds and two golds are in circulation at once.
Committee
4
Choose one tagline and hold it
Recommendation: The links in the Fens.
Committee
5
Approve or reject the display serif
The cheapest single change to make the brand look like the club it is.
GM
6
Commission people photography
The September bank puts golfers and a greenkeeper in frame, small and from the air. Nothing yet shows a face, the bar, or a section at a fixture, while all the copy is about welcome.
GM
7
Decide whether to publish prices
Green fees, society packages and wedding packages are all unpriced on the site, which loses the enquiries that will not ring.
Committee
8
Confirm the mission, values and voice
They are inferred from the club's own writing, not supplied by the club.
Committee

Brand guidelines

The club

Mission

Vision

Welcome before ceremony

The course comes first

Meet people where they are

Named people, not departments

A club, not just a course

How we look

Use this one

Retire this one

What exists, and what is still missing

Clear space and minimum size Proposed

Colour: the conflict, first

Navy and gold, on the things the club actually prints

Colour usage rules

Every value, counted

Primary

Secondary

Heraldic, crest artwork only, sampled from the PNG

Neutrals

Contrast, measured not asserted

Hierarchy Proposed

Typographic rules

What to avoid

The brand on the things the club sends

Before you play

Scorecard Proposed

Find your perfect match

Membership brochure Proposed

Social posts Proposed

The website Measured

Letter and card Proposed

Entrance sign Proposed

Social media

Print

Brand don'ts, the one-page checklist

How we speak

Five ways to tell it is us

1. Welcoming, not ingratiating

2. Specific, not superlative

3. Plain, not corporate

4. Confident, not boastful

5. Human, not institutional

House rules

Value proposition

Tagline routes

Key messages, with proof

Audience angles

Club details for all published material

Eight things only the club can settle

Switch the site to the Founded 1923 crest

Commission vector artwork, SVG and EPS

Settle navy and gold as the palette, heraldic red as heritage only

Choose one tagline and hold it

Approve or reject the display serif

Commission people photography

Decide whether to publish prices

Confirm the mission, values and voice