01 / The name
Viaalink — written as one word, pronounced “via a link”.
Everything Viaalink does happens the way the name says it: directly, from one point to another, via a link. The middle a is the whole idea — the article that turns a noun into a route. Written Viaalink (capital V, rest lowercase) as a name; viaalink lowercase only in adverbial tagline use: “We all connect viaalink.”
Do
- Write Viaalink as one word with a capital V
- Explain the pronunciation on first mention: Viaalink (“via a link”)
- Use taglines exactly as defined — one per surface
- Write viaalink lowercase only as the adverb: “connect viaalink”
Don’t
- Never drop the second a — one a is somebody else
- Never split the name: Via Link, Via A Link
- No all-caps in running text, no hyphenated form as a name
- No internal capitals (ViaALink) outside pronunciation notes
- Never modify, recolor or distort the logo
02 / Naming conventions
One family, one pattern: viaalink <noun>.
Every product is a common English noun, capitalised when it means ours. A buyer can repeat the whole system after hearing it once. The terminal verb is viaalink.
| Name | Names what | Tagline | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| Viaalink | The brand, the company, and the app people install (with Notu inside) — meetings, chat, notes and AI, phone to phone. | Everything connects — viaalink. | /download |
| Viaalink Notu | Takes the minutes of your meeting on your own device. Speech is processed on your device; notes stay yours. | Your notes. Your device. Viaalink. | /notu |
| Viaalink Relay | A Viaalink Relay is the door that gives you an address: one address where people and phones reach what you share, from anywhere. Category line: your own tunnel server, with automatic HTTPS. | From localhost to the world — viaalink. | /relay |
| viaalink | The CLI command developers type to publish a local port to an address on a Relay. | From localhost to the world — viaalink. | /cli |
Later: additional tools and bundles stay out of the navigation and product tables until they ship.
Names on things
One canonical table for the website, the Relay setup UI, the CLI and the app.
| Thing | Canonical name | Rule & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Viaalink Relay | The only name (“a Relay”, “your Relay”, “an office Relay”). Lowercase “door” is the metaphor in explanations, never a product name. |
| Category line | your own tunnel server, with automatic HTTPS | Plain sentence: “A Viaalink Relay is the door that gives you an address: one address where people and phones reach what you share, from anywhere.” |
| Server binary | viaalink-relay | Server only; viaalink-relay --version prints “Viaalink Relay <semver>”. |
| Systemd unit | viaalink-relay.service | Linux service unit installed on your server. |
| Docker image | viaalink/relay | Self-hosted container image. |
| CLI binary | viaalink | Developers run viaalink publish <port> (alias viaalink expose <port>); client helper stays off PATH. |
| Setup UI path | /_relay/ | Legacy alias /_asd/ continues to answer without redirect on POST/JSON routes. |
| Product page & docs | /relay · /docs/relay/ | Legacy /door redirects (301) to /relay. |
| Environment variables | VIAALINK_RELAY_* | Both VIAALINK_RELAY_* and ASD_TUNNEL_* are read; VIAALINK_RELAY_* wins with a warning. |
| Suggested hostname | relay.<your-domain> | Self-hosted on your own domain in R1. Customer addresses on viaal.ink (<name>.viaal.ink) are R2. |
| NAS & service display name | Viaalink Relay | Package ID com.asdengineering.tunnel unchanged for in-place upgrades. |
| Licensing | license · license.viaalink.com | Plans: Free, Personal, Team, Business, Enterprise. Licensed per installation, activated on one machine with an activation code or offline license file, and sized by connected devices. |
Terminal vocabulary
Only commands that ship in R1a appear on customer surfaces.
Domains
| Domain | Job | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| viaalink.com | The company and the brand. Site, app downloads, documentation, contact, and this brand system. | Canonical. The only domain in print. |
| license.viaalink.com | License activation and offline license file issuance. | Dedicated licensing service subdomain. |
| viaal.ink | Short domain reserved for R2 customer addresses. In R1, every Relay uses the customer’s own domain. | Functional, never a brand name. Reads as “via a l.ink”. |
Internal words that mean something else
Words that exist in internal codebases or protocols with a different meaning and never appear as customer product names.
| Word / identifier | Internal meaning | Customer surface rule |
|---|---|---|
| viaalink (legacy topology) | In older internal engineering notes, the codename for the multi-pod NATS-clustered tunnel topology. | On customer surfaces, Viaalink is always the brand and app. |
| door (lowercase) | Metaphor in explanations (“the door that gives you an address”, “the Relay is the front door”). Inside the app code, an internal MCP entry-point enum. | Lowercase metaphor only; never capitalised as a product name. |
| relay (lowercase) | Capital Relay is the product (Viaalink Relay). In WebRTC/ICE code, lowercase relay is the candidate type for media through firewalls. | Always say “calls through firewalls” on customer pages — never bare lowercase “relay”. |
| tunnel | The SSH reverse-tunnel mechanism inside Viaalink Relay. | Allowed on /relay (how-it-works and category line), /cli, /docs, and SEO meta; never on / or the Notu path. |
| single-a package path | The Android Kotlin package namespace uses a single “a” in its legacy code identifier. | Never used in copy; always spell Viaalink with two a’s. |
| /_asd/ · ASD_TUNNEL_* | Internal housekeeper CLI and legacy wire/environment prefix kept for backward compatibility. | Internal only; never shown as a customer command or brand. |
03 / Logo
The link, given wings.
Two swept wings carry an interlocked chain link — the connection, flying direct, peer to peer. The mark is one vector silhouette traced from the original artwork, filled with bronze lit from the top left: a gradient from #E0AC80 down to #47200C, plus a soft specular highlight. The favicon is the chain link alone. Never redrawn, recolored or distorted.
The wordmark is drawn, not typed: a monoline route in the URL register — lowercase, like the addresses it lives in. The two a’s are two peers; the blue underlink beneath them is the hyperlink joining exactly the letters that carry the idea. The underlink is not optional — a link without a link is just a word. Clearspace equals one link-ring radius; minimum sizes: wordmark 120 px on screen, mark 120 px wide. Two colorways only: the wordmark flips ink and paper — the mark is bronze in both.
04 / Color
Ink, paper, one blue — and the bronze of the mark. Blue is never decoration.
#0038FF appears only where something connects — a hyperlink, the underlink, a live route. If it’s blue, you can follow it. The mark is the one place metal lives: bronze, lit from the top left — #E0AC80 highlight to #47200C shadow, with a soft specular sheen. Layout ratio: paper 70 · ink 25 · blue 4 · green 1. The hex leads with 38 — Nice class 38, telecommunications: the class the mark is filed under.
05 / Type
Engineered, then spoken. Three faces, three jobs.
Display — Space Grotesk 500 / 700 (--display) · headlines, taglines, the pronounced name
Everything connects.
Viaalink 0038 — medium, then bold.
Text — IBM Plex Sans 400 / 500 / 600 (--text) · body copy, UI, documentation. 17px, line height 1.6, lines under 70 characters.
Viaalink connects devices and people directly — peer-to-peer, encrypted, with on-device speech processing and no cloud in between. It never shouts; the display face has that job.
Mono — IBM Plex Mono 400 / 600 (--mono) · addresses, commands, labels, fine print. Half of this brand’s language is URLs.
relay.yourco.com · $ viaalink publish 3000 · $ viaalink-relay --version
Self-hosted, always. Type ships as WOFF2 from Viaalink’s own endpoints — a platform that promises no cloud in between does not fetch its fonts from a third party. This site loads its fonts from /assets/fonts/, nothing else.
Brand & press
Say it once, say it right.
For press releases and third-party descriptions — copy verbatim, no edits:
Viaalink (pronounced “via a link”) is a peer-to-peer communication platform that connects devices and people directly — encrypted, with on-device speech processing and no cloud in between. Viaalink is developed in Zaandam, the Netherlands.
contact@viaalink.com · Viaalink is a registered trade name (KvK, the Netherlands). Trademark application pending (BOIP, classes 9/38).