One system for every document the organization ships.

Read 01 before every submission — it is the only section a solicitation can override. Everything else is fixed for the organization: if a document needs something this kit does not contain, add it here first, then use it.

Federal formatting rules the templates already satisfy

Every template on this page is drawn inside the constraints below. They come from the way agencies define a page and from the instructions that repeat across solicitations. None of them is a matter of taste.

Every volume uses the same cover, divider, header/footer and figure-numbering conventions, so a reviewer moving between volumes never has to re-learn the document.

The mark and lockup

Prism is one solid V split down the vertex: cobalt on the leading leg, ember on the trailing leg, with the seam on the center line. It is a single letterform rather than two shapes. The lockup is stacked, with the word spelled out beneath the wedge. Nothing is ever set beside the glyph.

Also never: a tagline inside the clear space, the lockup on a photograph without a solid panel behind it, a shadow or outline on the wedge, or a reproduction with a gap between the legs.

Color

One tinted cool gray carries every surface. Cobalt and ember carry every mark. All neutrals sit at OKLCH hue 260–262, which is cobalt's own hue at a whisper of chroma, so the grays belong to the brand rather than sitting next to it. No pure white, no pure black, no untinted gray.

Two pairs are excluded and must never be used: cobalt on ink (1.5:1) and ember-light on any light surface (under 2:1). Warning amber is a fill only. It carries ink text at 8.5:1 and is never itself a text color.

Adjacent series slots always oppose blue against orange. That is the one axis that survives protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia (adjacent ΔE ≥ 65 in all three, CIE76 on Viénot simulation). Same-family slots separate on lightness alone, so scatter, bubble, map and small-multiple charts cap at three series (slots 1, 2 and 5) or facet instead. Status hues never appear in a chart, so a status can never impersonate data.

Type

Manrope for everything — wordmark, headings, body, slides, UI. JetBrains Mono for eyebrows, labels, code, figure numbers and tabular figures. No third face. Figures set tabular wherever they stand in a column.

Caption convention: Figure 3-2. Continuous ATO pipeline. — volume-section-number, period, sentence case, one line where possible. Tables take Table 3-2. in the same pattern and sit above the table; figure captions sit below the figure. Every figure and table is called out in the body text before it appears.

Layout, spacing and elevation

One 4px spacing scale for screens, one 12-column page grid for documents, one 12-column grid for slides. Radius and elevation have three steps each. A value that is not on these scales is an error rather than a choice.

Elevation is always a hairline plus a shadow, never a color change. The steps between ground, panel and card are only 4 and 3 points of OKLCH lightness, so the border does the separating.

Imagery and icons

Photographs are evidence: real people, real screens, real facilities. Until the real asset exists, the striped placeholder stays in the layout with the required dimensions written on it. An empty frame is honest. A stock photograph implies something the company has not shown.

Components

Cards are bordered and unfilled. The only filled surfaces in the system are the cobalt button, the ember ground, the ink ground and chart marks. Elevation is a hairline plus a two-layer shadow, never a color change.

Tables

Nine table patterns cover the proposal set. All share one rule set: a 2px cobalt rule under the header, hairline row rules, 3% ink zebra striping, tabular figures right-aligned, header text never rotated, and no vertical rules. Every table carries a numbered caption above it.

Fill the "where addressed" column with page numbers only after the final page break. The status chip is the internal control. Nothing ships with a partial or a gap left in the matrix.

Charts

Twelve chart types, one palette, one order. Every chart carries a monospaced caption, a legend when it has more than one series, and axis labels at 9pt or larger. Grid lines are hairlines or absent. No 3D, no shadows on data marks, no decoration, and never more than six series.

Chart rules that hold everywhere: label the axis in words and units; put the takeaway in the caption, not in a title; sort categories by value unless time or a required order says otherwise; annotate the one number the reader should remember rather than labelling every mark; and never encode a variable in color alone — pair it with order, position, a dash pattern or a direct label.

Diagrams and the quad chart

Four diagram patterns cover the graphics a proposal needs. All are built from hairline boxes, cobalt rules and one ember accent. No gradients, no SmartArt, no isometric clip art. Each drops into slide layout 11.5 or 11.7 and into the body-page figure frame without resizing.

Figure 10-1. Continuous ATO pipeline — the control gate is the discriminator.

Slide layouts — 16:9

A deck is built only from these twelve layouts. Type never drops below 24px at 1920×1080, each slide carries one idea, and the takeaway is written as the headline rather than left for the presenter to supply. Section dividers are the only dark or ember surfaces in a deck.

The diagram patterns in Section 10 drop straight into 11.5 (headline + bullets, diagram replacing the list) and 11.7 (chart + takeaway) without resizing — they are drawn on the same grid.

Deck rules: 16:9 at 1920×1080; the footer carries the wordmark left and page / total right; no slide numbers on dividers or the title; every chart on a slide reuses the palette and order from Section 09; and an oral-presentation deck carries no animation, because most solicitations forbid it.

Document templates

Every page is 8.5 × 11 with 1-inch margins. The four proposal pages below share one header, one footer and one figure-numbering scheme; the capability statement and the pamphlet are standalone marketing pieces built from the same parts.

Two different legends, and they are not interchangeable. The title page carries the full restriction at FAR 52.215-1(e)(1), reproduced verbatim, with the restricted sheets listed. Every restricted sheet carries the short legend at FAR 52.215-1(e)(2) in its footer: "Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the restriction on the title page of this proposal." Mark only the sheets that genuinely contain proprietary data; marking the whole volume weakens the claim and irritates evaluators. Cover pages, dividers and the acronym list carry no page number when the solicitation excludes them from the count — but they still carry the legend.

Word and PowerPoint templates

Build the .dotx and .potx from this map and the two files will stay in step with the web system. Style names are literal — use them exactly, so a document can be re-styled by swapping the template instead of re-formatting the text.

Accessibility, and the rules that hold everywhere

This page is the source of truth. When a token, a size or a rule changes, change it here first, then regenerate the .dotx, the .potx and the web theme from it. Record the date and version in the masthead so a proposal team can tell which kit produced a document.

Governance and pre-submission QA

The kit stays usable only if one person owns it and every change is recorded. This section is that record, with the checklist a volume passes before it leaves the building.

:root{
  --ground:#E3E6EC; --surface:#F1F3F7; --card:#FCFDFF;
  --ink:#1A1E26; --body:#2C3038; --muted:#585E68;
  --line:#D4D8DD; --line-strong:#BABEC4;
  --cobalt:#0E52BD; --hover:#003D9F; --visited:#455581;
  --ember:#D56D1D; --ember-deep:#BE5000; --ember-light:#F69557;
  --s1:#0E52BD; --s2:#D56D1D; --s3:#4173B3; --s4:#8F3804; --s5:#5688BF; --s6:#9E5300;
  --q1:#013191; --q2:#0E52BD; --q3:#4275B9; --q4:#6897CD; --q5:#8EB6DC;
  --ok:#246A47; --warn:#FFA449; --err:#952732;
  --sans:'Manrope',system-ui,sans-serif; --mono:'JetBrains Mono',ui-monospace,monospace;
}

PowerPoint theme order: TX1 ink · BG1 card · A1 cobalt · A2 ember · A3 #4173B3 · A4 #8F3804 · A5 #5688BF · A6 #9E5300. Word theme colors use the same six accents in the same order, so a chart pasted between the two keeps its series colors.

Deliberately absent from this kit: a second typeface, a dark mode for documents, decorative iconography, stock photography, animation in proposal decks, and any color outside the block in 15.1. Each was considered and refused. Adding one is a change to the system and needs the owner's sign-off.

Cloud architecture views — agentic AI

Reference views for the architectures we propose most often, drawn in this system rather than in a stock diagramming style. Each view is provider-neutral first, then mapped to AWS, Azure and Google Cloud so the same figure can be retargeted without redrawing it. Service names are current at the version date and must be checked against the provider's government-region availability before a submission.

Figure 16-1. Seven-layer agentic reference architecture. Ember marks the three elements an evaluator asks about: who decides, what constrains the model, and what proves it happened.

Two cautions for a technical volume. Model availability in government regions lags commercial regions, so name the model family and cite the region where it is authorized rather than promising a specific commercial model. Agent and orchestration services also move fastest of anything in this table; confirm the service name and its FedRAMP status at the authorization package level before the proposal goes out.

Figure 16-2. The same seven layers, three providers. Step numbers match across columns so a reviewer can compare line for line.

Figure 16-3. Change management for a non-deterministic component. The evaluation set and the rollback drill are what make it auditable.

Every claim in this table belongs in the proposal only with a citation to the provider's current authorization listing and the customer's own boundary documentation. Write the posture as a statement the government can verify, such as inference-only with no retention, keys held in a customer-managed HSM, and no egress path from the subnet, rather than as a brand name.