Dennis
Gerrits

Dennis is not a tour guide. He's a travel companion and a storyteller, and the difference matters. People should feel a city, not just look at it. So the brand has to sound like a friend who knows the place, not a booking platform.

The core sentence

The ten second test

Anything new, a card, a page, an email, a post, has to pass all four.

Who this is for

• Culturally curious travelers, mostly 55 and over. Usually a couple, sometimes with friends.
• They've seen the famous places already, or they don't care about them. They want context and a good walk at a human pace.
• They read before they decide. Long honest text works better on them than a big button.
• Many arrive through a travel agent or because someone told them.

Four things that stay true

Files

Transparent PNG, high resolution. Orange is the default.

Lockups

Portrait plus the name in Bebas Neue. Horizontal for headers, email and documents. Stacked for anything square.

Favicon

Browser icon

Orange portrait, 256 by 256, transparent. Already live at public/favicon.png.

Download favicon.png

Rules

• One color. Orange on light by default. Cream on purple, on green and on photography. Heritage Green on cream where the mark has to sit next to a green section. Never multicolored.
• Clear space. Leave the height of the portrait empty on all four sides.
• Smallest size. 24 pixels tall on screen, 8 mm in print. Below that the lines close up.
• Not on a busy photo. Put it on a solid color field first.
• No effects. No shadow, outline, rotation or stretching.
• No companions. No badges, no award icons, no second logo unless it's a partner, separated by a hairline.

How much of each

Pairings that work

Tokens

--background: 0 0% 98%;        /* Heritage Cream  #FAFAFA */
--foreground: 0 0% 10%;        /* Heritage Dark   #1A1A1A */
--primary: 289 100% 11%;       /* Heritage Purple #2D0036 */
--primary-foreground: 0 0% 98%;
--secondary: 350 68% 29%;      /* Bordeaux        #7B1828 */
--secondary-foreground: 0 0% 98%;
--muted: 16 16% 70%;
--muted-foreground: 0 0% 40%;
--accent: 24 100% 45%;         /* Heritage Orange #E66300 */
--accent-foreground: 0 0% 100%;
--border: 16 12% 78%;
--ring: 289 100% 11%;

Scale

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Bebas+Neue&family=Outfit:wght@300;400;500;600&family=Caveat:wght@400;600&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

no fonts, as in Outlook or a Google Doc? Arial with wide tracking where Bebas goes, plain Arial for the rest. Never a serif.

Two backs, purple and Heritage Green. Pick one and stay with it. Both in circulation at the same time makes it look like two different people.

Print specification

ask for a proof on the real paper first. orange shifts warm on uncoated, which is fine, but worth seeing once

What goes on it

• Name, one line of role, phone, email, website. That's it.
• No street address. Dennis meets people in the city.
• No QR code on the front. If one is needed it goes on the back, cream, 20 mm.
• No social handles. The site carries those.

Signature

Lighter than the last one. The portrait stands on its own instead of sitting in a taupe box, the name is set in a normal weight rather than bold caps, the labels are gone, and the details run along a single line. Fewer edges, fewer blocks, more air.

As an image, for mail apps that will not take HTML

Same signature, flattened to a PNG. Drop it in as an image and set the width to 500 pixels. The background is Heritage Cream, which is all but invisible on white and keeps the text readable in dark mode.

Two things the image cannot do. The phone number, the address and the website are not clickable, and none of it is selectable text. So put one plain line under the image with the email address and the phone number, unstyled. That also covers the readers that block images.

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="border-collapse:collapse;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#1A1A1A;">
  <tr>
    <td style="padding:0 22px 0 0;vertical-align:middle;">
      <img src="https://dennisgerrits.com/favicon.png" width="76" height="76" alt="Dennis Gerrits" style="display:block;border:0;">
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;border-left:1px solid #E8E2DD;padding-left:22px;">
      <div style="font-size:17px;line-height:22px;letter-spacing:1.6px;color:#2D0036;">Dennis Gerrits</div>
      <div style="font-size:12.5px;line-height:17px;color:#7B1828;padding:3px 0 10px;">Storyteller, Host &amp; Travel Companion, Amsterdam</div>
      <div style="font-size:12.5px;line-height:20px;color:#D9D0C9;">
        <a href="tel:+31638402919" style="color:#1A1A1A;text-decoration:none;">+31 6 38402919</a>
        &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;
        <a href="mailto:dennis@dennisgerrits.com" style="color:#1A1A1A;text-decoration:none;">dennis@dennisgerrits.com</a>
        &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;
        <a href="https://dennisgerrits.com" style="color:#7B1828;text-decoration:none;">dennisgerrits.com</a>
      </div>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

<img src="https://dennisgerrits.com/signoff.png" width="112" alt="Dennis" style="display:block;border:0;margin:0 0 14px;">
<div style="border-top:1px solid #E8E2DD;padding-top:16px;"></div>

Handwritten sign off

The one piece of the brand that email normally loses. Drop it in above the signature at 112 pixels wide, using the snippet in the signature block above, and the message stops looking like a form letter. First replies and the day after, not every message.

How an email is built

Flat email is usually a wall of even paragraphs. Vary the block lengths instead: one short line to open, a labelled block in the middle where the facts live, one line to close.

Subject lines

Written to one person, not to a list. Sentence case, no exclamation marks, no emoji.

Letterhead

Only worth using if he writes invoices by hand. If they come out of accounting software, put the orange mark in there instead and skip this.

Out of office

Rules for every reply

• Answer within a day, even if it's only "I've read this, I'll come back to you tomorrow."
• First name once, at the top. Three times in one email reads like software.
• Ask before you propose. No plan until you know who's coming and what they like.
• One next step at the end. Not two.
• Sign off "Warm regards, Dennis". Always, so it gets familiar.
• No exclamation marks, no emoji, no capitals for emphasis.
• Read it out loud. If you wouldn't say it on a walk, rewrite it.

Profile images

The banner keeps its left side empty because the profile photo sits over it on desktop.

a real photo of Dennis beats the drawing here. use the mark only until there's a good portrait

Headline

220 characters, and it follows him around the platform with no context around it.

If the trade audience matters more than the traveler one, swap in: "Private days in Amsterdam for independent travelers and the agents who place them. One group a day, built around the guest."

About

Experience entry

Connection request

Posts

Once a week is plenty. Write about the city and the people, not about availability. LinkedIn hides everything after the first line, so that line has to carry.

Profile

Images

Highlight covers

Cream, with a handwritten word. Type one below and download it. Keep them lowercase so the row reads like a note.

Quote post

Rarely, about one post in eight. Something a guest said, or a line from a story you tell on the walk.

What to post

Captions

Stories and messages

• Stories stay rough. A photo, one line of Caveat in orange, nothing else. No stickers, no polls, no countdowns.
• Ask again before you post a guest's face, not only on the day itself.
• Answer every message yourself within a day, in the same voice as your email.
• No follow for follow, no commenting on big accounts for reach, no buying anything.

Hashtags

Six per post, mixed from these. Thirty tags looks like a business trying to be found, and this account is a person telling you something. Check them once a year, they go stale.

TripAdvisor

• List under private and custom tours, not walking tours. The competition there is free group tours and the comparison hurts.
• The first line is the preview. Everything after "the Amsterdam I live in" gets cut on mobile, so that sentence has to stand alone.
• Photos: ten or twelve, no stock, no posed groups. Details, streets, weather, hands, doors. One photo of Dennis, not smiling at the camera.
• Reviews are the whole ranking. The day after email in section 07 is what generates them. Send it every time.
• Answer every review within a week, using templates 13 and 14.

Google Business Profile

the profile is also where people find the phone number first. whatever number goes there has to be the one that gets answered

Search terms for the website

These are the phrases this guest types into Google. The point of the list is the website, not advertising. If a phrase appears in a page title and in the first paragraph of a real page, Google can match the site to that search. If it appears nowhere, the site cannot be found for it, however good the writing is.

Use one phrase per page. Put it in the page title, in the H1, and once in the opening paragraph, written as a normal sentence. Then stop. Repeating it in every heading is what makes a site read like it was built for a machine, and it no longer works anyway.

Which phrase belongs to which page

the ones about couples and a slower pace have almost no competition. those are the pages worth writing first

No search volumes here on purpose. Anything you plan to spend money on needs checking in Google Keyword Planner first, which is free with an Ads account.

Four rules

• Always "I", never "we". There is no team, and pretending there is breaks the only thing that makes this different.
• Write to one person. Not to an audience. One reader, somewhere, deciding.
• American spelling. Neighborhood, color, favorite, traveler, organize. Don't mix.
• No em dashes. A period or a comma does the same work.

Words

Sentences

The hard moments

Before you publish

• Does it use "I"?
• Would Dennis say this out loud on a walk?
• One next step, and only one?
• Any em dash, exclamation mark or British spelling left?
• Anything from the "not" column?
• Does it pass the ten second test: different, calm, trusted, human?

Your details

Change these and the cards, letterhead and signature above update before you download them. Nothing leaves the browser.

Downloads

Download every asset Your browser may ask permission for multiple files.

Where each one goes

Dennis Gerrits brandbook, version 2.0. This file is the source of truth for the brand. styleguide.md stays in the site repo as the developer spec and follows this, not the other way around. If something changes, change it here first and raise the version number.