how sugar sounds,
looks & feels in the feed.
A field manual for anyone making Instagram posts for Sugar. Every colour, letterform, and turn of phrase you'll need — plus five post templates you can use today.
Who Sugar is,
in three bites.
Before any post goes out, remember what Sugar is: a friendly financial guide for people who feel money is a bit too hard. Not a robo-advisor, not a bro. A helper who talks like a person.
Money help that doesn't feel like homework.
We turn dense, scary finance into a friendly conversation that ends in action.
Anxious-but-curious.
Mostly 22–45. Wants control of their money. Has been put off by jargon, fees, and Excel before.
Warm · Direct · Quietly playful.
We smile, we don't snark. We use small words for big ideas. We show proof, not promises.
If it wouldn't work in a text to a friend who's stressed about money, it shouldn't work in our feed.
The wordmark.
Sugar's wordmark is set in lowercase rounded letterforms and should always appear in Purple Deep on light surfaces, or Primary Purple on the Ink backdrop. Never recreate it in another font — use the provided SVG asset.
x-height of the wordmark clear of any other element. No exceptions — not even small captions.Minimum size: 24 px wordmark height on screen · 12 mm in print.
The palette.
Lavender, ink, a pinch of salt.
A 60-30-10 rule: 60% lavender canvas, 30% white surface + ink text, 10% purple & accents. Click any swatch to copy the hex.
Brand purple
3 swatchesCanvas & surface
3 swatchesInk & text
3 swatchesAccents — use sparingly
2 swatchesHow Sugar reads.
Sugar uses two typefaces. Octarine — a licensed custom face — carries the wordmark and every large display headline. Bricolage Grotesque (Google Fonts) handles all body, UI, and captions. Never introduce a third font on a Sugar asset.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1234567890 & % $ £ €
without the budgeting.
out of the red.
We look at how you spend, where your money goes, and what debts you're carrying — then we build you a plan that takes ten minutes a week to maintain, not ten hours.
Our 3D characters.
Sugar's illustration system is a cast of 3D-rendered characters and objects — concierges, magnifiers, card-holders — all rendered in the brand's purple palette with soft shadows. They make finance feel tangible and less intimidating.
One subject per frame.
Never crowd. One character or one object, centered, breathing room all around. Busy illustration competes with the message.
Purple-tinted, always.
Ground every illustration in the brand purple palette. No true blues, no greens (except the lime accent when absolutely required).
Soft drop shadow, not harsh.
Illustrations use a subtle radial shadow below them to feel lifted. Never use the button's offset hard shadow on illustration.
How Sugar talks.
Write like you're texting a stressed friend who asked for help with money. That's the test. If it reads like a press release, a bank, or a hustle-bro, it's wrong.
We assume the reader is smart and slightly worried. We use their language — dollars, not "capital allocation". We never shame anyone for being where they are.
Short sentences. One idea per line. The first word of a caption earns the second. If a word can be cut, cut it.
Light wordplay, the occasional em dash, a soft grin — never a joke at the reader's expense. If it makes you smirk, good. If it makes you wince, rewrite.
The four-line caption formula.
Grid & motifs.
Three IG canvas sizes, two recurring motifs. Memorise these and 80% of composition decisions are made for you.
White card on lavender.
The signature composition: a white card with ~20 px radius floating on the lavender canvas. The card carries the message; the canvas gives it air.
The offset-shadow pill.
All primary CTAs use a rounded pill with a hard Ink shadow offset 11/12 px down-right. Never soft shadows on buttons — that's a UI from a different brand.
Five posts,
ready to ship.
These are live at 1080 px in the browser — resize with ⌘ / Ctrl + scroll to inspect pixel detail, or rebuild in Figma / Canva using the tokens in Section 10. Screenshot at 100% for direct posting.
Build your savings,
without the budgeting.
Here's how
we get you
out of the red.
How we helped
Juan save
£8,000 in 18 months.
personality.
Captions & CTAs.
The caption is a whole second surface. Use the four-line formula (Section 06), keep it tight, and be generous with line breaks — Instagram collapses them into a "more" link and the first line is all anyone reads at first.
example ·
Stat post
What if the win wasn't in the coffee — it was in the 3 bills you've been overpaying on autopilot?
250k+ Sugar members saved an average $4,700 without cutting a latte.
→ Link in bio to see what you'd save in 4 minutes.
Savings & habits
#SavingsTips
#MoneyMindset
#SavingsGoals
#SmartMoney
#MoneyHabits
#FinancialWellness
#SavingsChallenge
Debt & credit
#DebtFree
#DebtPayoff
#CreditCardDebt
#GetOutOfDebt
#DebtFreeJourney
#MoneyHelp
Regional & brand
#NZFinance
#AussieFinance
#UKFinance
#MoneyKiwi
#SugarMember
#SugarSavings
Three CTA stems
you can remix.
Quick reference.
Hand this single page to a designer, developer, or paid-media partner — everything needed to build a Sugar asset is here.