Carnegie Clark (1920–21): Australian Open champion who laid out the original course on reclaimed river sand, establishing the club's riverside character.

Dr Alister MacKenzie (1926): The most influential architect of golf's Golden Age, later of Augusta National and Cypress Point, who advised on greens and bunkering. Little of his specific work survives the 2007 rebuild, but the principles he championed (width, strategy, options over punishment) define the modern course.

The 2007 rebuild (Michael Clayton): With the Gateway Bridge about to be duplicated and the six eastern holes lost, the course was rebuilt as a strategic, MacKenzie-informed championship layout: wide fairways, centre-line and linear bunkering, large greens and preferred angles of approach. This is the course the world will see in 2032.

OCM (2020s): The club's consulting architects, stewarding the championship course and designing the new short course, The Knot, on the reclaimed Eastern Land, a homecoming to the club's original 1920 ground.

The club's design story is one of continuity through change. MacKenzie's brief 1926 visit left more philosophy than fabric. That philosophy, that golf should ask questions rather than punish mistakes, runs straight through the 2007 rebuild and into OCM's stewardship today. The result is a course that looks flat and plays deep: intelligence rewarded over power, angles over length.

Royal Queensland sits on the Hamilton reach of the Brisbane River, where the club's history is inseparable from the water. Through the 1920s and 1930s, Orient Line passenger liners, with their distinctive corn-coloured hulls and black-topped yellow funnels, berthed at the Hamilton wharves alongside the course.

From July 1938, Qantas Empire Airways' Short Empire flying boats operated to Singapore from a base near Hamilton and Pinkenba, taking off from the river. A famous archival photograph shows golfers on the course with a liner on the river behind and a flying boat overhead: the founding image of the club's colour palette and of The Knot.

Three Australian Opens, multiple Australian Amateur Championships and recent Australian PGA Championships have made Royal Queensland a proven championship venue. In 2032 it becomes Australia's first Olympic golf course: the horizon the whole club is preparing for, and a proof point rather than the point itself.

Leads with Ink, Gold and Signal Red on Paper, Cream or Black. Mostly navy and paper, with gold for detail and red in small doses. Disciplined, formal and quiet. The fewer colours on a master brand piece, the more it looks like the club.

Draws on the same foundation but opens into a wider, more playful set. Petrol from the tidal river, Sage from the salt marsh, Funnel from the yellow stacks of the liners. These three never appear on master brand work.

Ink, Cream, Black and Paper are the shared foundation. Gold is the master brand's alone. Petrol, Funnel and Sage belong to The Knot's extended set. Signal Red is shared, sparingly. Colour is one of the clearest signals of which brand is speaking.

3.2 gives every colour its numbers. 3.3 opens each one into tints, shades and opacities. 3.4 shows which pairings may carry text, with the contrast measured. 3.5 draws the line between the two brands.

The RQ members' monogram is at its best small, quiet and beautifully made: embossed, embroidered or foil-blocked on member applications. Pair it with the serif wordmark and generous space. Never crowd it, never blow it up, never explain it. Its power is that members already know.

Royal Queensland's photography is about river, light, era and people. Shoot the low, warm Brisbane light; the water and its traffic; the course's strategic lines; and, crucially, real members and guests, not stock golfers. Black-and-white and warm, aged tones connect the modern club to its 1920s and 1930s heritage. Avoid clichéd hero-golfer-at-sunset imagery. Favour atmosphere, place and genuine welcome.

The master brand's devices are the crown, the Q and the maritime signal flags flown on the course. The Knot's devices are the rope, the reef knot, the hand-drawn knot-tying diagram and the flying boat. Keep the two families distinct: crown and Q for the master brand; rope, knot and flying boat for The Knot.

The crowned-Q emblem is the club badge, for blazers, caps, flags and honour boards. Reproduce it faithfully at a generous size, in Ink, Gold or single-colour on Cream. This is the most formal expression of the brand. Treat it with restraint.

Set the master brand in the serif wordmark on Paper or Cream, with Ink text and sparing Gold and Signal Red accents. Generous margins, considered typography, quality stock. Print should feel like the club: understated, well-made, confident.

Premium, small runs, tightly controlled: quality over volume. Colour-match to the palette so the pro-shop range reads as one considered collection, not a patchwork of supplier reds and blues. Master brand merchandise leads with the emblem and Ink and Gold; The Knot's range uses its own marks and extended palette (see Section 7.0). No generic accessories. No external supplier branding on garments.

Wayfinding, signage and course furniture should be quiet and consistent: Ink and Cream, the serif wordmark, the emblem used sparingly and always with room. Let the river and the course be the hero. Let the brand guide, not shout.

The club's welcoming front door. Where a member brings the family, a beginner takes a first swing, and a group comes for the river, the deck and the drink as much as the golf. Cradle to grave.

Playful. A wink, not a lecture. Social. Golf is the reason to gather; the gathering is the reason to stay. Characterful. Retro, river-born and specific: steamships, flying boats, hand-drawn knots.

Warmer, lighter and more playful than the master brand, but never sloppy.

Endorsed by, and drawing its authority from, the club. It shares the values, the quality standard, the river heritage and the foundation colours, and loosens the rest. Always of Royal Queensland, never a separate club, never a diminished one.