Clause 9
Photography
Alpha Mart photographs are deliberately plain. Consistency comes from grading and framing, never from decoration.
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Shape | Square, 1:1 |
| Size | 1200 px · 1080 px for Instagram |
| Ground | Cream #FBF6EF, whole frame |
| Margin | 5.5% of the frame |
| Subject | The whole object, centred, uncropped |
Shooting
- Near the door, in morning daylight. Never under the fluorescent lights.
- One thing at a time. A shelf of forty products photographs as nothing.
- Hands in the picture. A hand holding a packet outperforms the packet alone.
- Take ten, keep one.
Never put text, a logo or a watermark on a photograph. The cream ground is what makes forty different packages read as one set; anything laid over the top destroys that.
Never use an AI-generated or AI-altered image of the shop, the team, the food or the stock. Not as a placeholder, not as a mock-up, not "just to show the idea".
Never apply a platform filter. Instagram's Clarendon, Juno and the rest will overwrite the grade. Leave every filter off.
Never crop into a product so the packaging is cut. If it does not fit, step back and reshoot.
Clause 10
Video
Most people will watch on a phone, with the sound off, with a quarter of the screen covered by the platform's own buttons. Every rule here follows from that.
Delivery specification
| Item | Specification |
|---|---|
| Primary shape | 1080 × 1920 · vertical |
| Also accepted | 1080 × 1080 · 1920 × 1080 |
| Codec | H.264, yuv420p |
| Frame rate | 25 or 30 fps, constant |
| Audio | AAC — include a silent track if there is no sound |
| Container | MP4, faststart |
| End card | Supplied, 3 s, on the end of every cut |
Safe area
On a vertical video, keep everything that must be read inside the middle. As a working rule, leave the top 250 px, the bottom 420 px and the right 180 px clear of anything essential. That is where the caption, the buttons and the account name sit.
Don’t measure it yourself. The video kit has a safe-area guide for each shape — import it as a reference layer, build inside the dashed box, turn it off before export.
Every cut ends with the supplied Alpha Mart end card, held for its full three seconds. Drop the MP4 on the end of the timeline. Do not rebuild it, do not shorten it, do not put anything over it.
Burn in captions. Most of the audience watches muted, and a good share of them read English as a second language.
Where products appear, show the front of the packet clearly and hold it. That frame is what people screenshot, and it is the entire commercial purpose of the shot.
Never feature a product we do not stock. Before filming, send a photograph of what you plan to show and wait for confirmation. A viewer who comes in for something we do not have is worse than a viewer who never came.
Never show or speak a price. Video outlives pricing, and an old price is a complaint at the counter.
Never use commercial music without a licence that covers the platform and the territory. A copyright claim takes the video down and the sponsorship with it.
If opening days are mentioned at all, say closed Tuesdays. Never claim a number of days open. Getting this wrong sends people to a locked door.
Clause 11
Social posts
| Format | Pixels | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Feed post | 1080 × 1080 | The house format |
| Portrait feed | 1080 × 1350 | Only where the subject needs the height |
| Story / Reel | 1080 × 1920 | Safe area as clause 10 |
| Facebook cover | 1640 × 924 | |
| Link preview | 1200 × 630 | |
| Profile picture | 1080 × 1080 | Supplied — composed for a circle crop |
Instagram defaults a new post to 4:5 and silently slices the sides off a square image. Open Select crop and force 1:1 before pressing Next, every single time. The profile grid then previews tiles at roughly 3:4, so anything that must survive in the grid belongs in the centre of the frame.
Never publish a post that is mostly price. A feed of prices reads as a shop in trouble.
Tag @alphamartpadstow. It is the only Alpha Mart account. Another account carrying a similar name is not ours to post from and is being retired.
Clause 12
Voice
Five things are true of everything Alpha Mart writes: it is personal by name, warm rather than cheerful, naturally bilingual — mixed, not translated into two blocks — useful before it is clever, and quietly proud.
- Short sentences.
- Indonesian first for feeling. English first for fact.
- One emoji at most, or none.
- No more than one exclamation mark a week, across everything.
- Always say what to do next.
✗ "We are excited to announce our new shipment has arrived!!"
✓ "Kontainer baru sudah sampai. Kerupuk, sambal, kecap, Indomie — lengkap lagi. Buka sampai jam 8 malam."
The approved one-liner, where a line is needed: "Indonesian grocery in Padstow. The things from home, on a shelf near you."
Never write in an announcement voice, never use three exclamation marks, and never describe the shop as the biggest, the cheapest or the most authentic. Every competitor claims all three.