Brand
How Once looks and sounds, taken straight from the app. For press, partners and anyone writing about us. For anything else, hello@getonce.app.
Logo
Wordmark
App icon
On light
Until then, set the name in Cormorant Garamond Italic in Parchment on Midnight. Give it clear space of at least the height of its capital O on every side, and never stretch, outline or recolour it.
Colour
A night sky and one gold star. Gold is spent sparingly — one primary action per screen — so it always means “this is the thing to do”.
Type
Cormorant Garamond
Medium 500 · Semibold 600 · Bold 700 · Italic 500
The Volcano Dragon
Titles, the wordmark, and the moments that should feel like a book.
EB Garamond
Regular 400 · Italic 400
Far away, past the rolling hills and the orange evening sky, there was a mountain shaped like a sleepy hat.
The story itself. 25pt on a phone, line height 1.75.
Nunito
Regular 400 · Semibold 600 · Bold 700
Weave the Story ✦
Everything you tap: buttons, chips, labels, settings.
Sky
Every screen sits under the same night: flat Midnight, never a gradient, with stars at four depths that move at different speeds as you scroll. A handful of bright stars carry soft light-spikes; the rest twinkle on two slow, out-of-step rhythms.
Along the bottom sits a bank of cloud — three layers of slowly rising, torn vapour, the front one catching a little light. It is drawn live, never as a photo, and it swells when a story ends.
Behind a story the sky dims to about a quarter, so nothing competes with the words.
Interface
Buttons
16pt corners, generous height, no shadows. Gold for the one thing to do; Slate for everything else.
Chips
Fully round. Selected is Gold with Midnight text.
Motion
Slow and eased, never springy. Screens fade as they are covered; sheets rise in a quarter of a second; a story opens through a mist that clears over about a second, and closes under cloud. Words are written in at 5.6 a second, each warming from ember to parchment. When someone asks for less motion, everything still appears — it just doesn’t move.
Illustration
Soft watercolour on deep blue night: animals, homes, gardens and small adventures, lit warmly and never frightening. Each story gets one picture, its cover, chosen from a shared library by what the story is about. Covers are library art and never pictures of a real child.
Voice
Warm, not cute.
Write to a tired parent at 7:45pm. Plain words, no exclamation marks, no baby talk.
The family first, the technology second.
Say what Once does for a child. Explain how it works when someone asks.
Say what happens.
A button names its result: “Weave the Story”, “Goodnight”. Never “Submit”.
Calm is the product.
No urgency, no streaks, no “don’t miss out”. Bedtime is the one place nothing should be trying to keep anyone awake.
Honest numbers only.
Every limit, price and promise is exactly what the app does. If it isn’t true tonight, it isn’t written.
We say
Tonight’s story is waiting.
Your World
Gentler · More · Sleepy
We don’t say
Generate unlimited AI stories now!
Family vault
Don’t break your streak
Describing Once
Once writes bedtime stories starring your family — your children, pets, grandparents and favourite places.
Once is an iPhone and iPad app that writes a new bedtime story every night starring a family’s own children, pets, grandparents and places, and reads it with them in a calm, dark reader made for falling asleep.
Once turns the real details of a family’s life — the children’s names, the dog, Grandma, the lake house — into an original bedtime story every night. Parents choose who is listening and what goes in; the story writes itself in, word by word, as it is read. Gentler, More and Sleepy steer it as a child settles, the page can follow a parent’s voice, and when the room goes quiet it drifts to a dark goodnight on its own. Stories can be shared with grandparents by private link, and one subscription covers up to four grown-ups.
The name is always Once — never ONCE, once, or Once App.