Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com.
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Idea before execution — name the ONE device first. Decide the single distinctive idea
the mark carries before drawing anything. Janoff: "going straight to the computer is often
devoid of an idea… the idea should come first, the execution follows" — a direct restatement
of the doctrine's anti-slop rule (don't reach for the tool to "get something on screen";
doctrine/design-doctrine.md §2). The device is one of:
- Interactive wit / a small surprise — a hidden or dual-reading detail the viewer
discovers (the FedEx arrow in the negative space; I♥NY's substitution). A mark that
carries a small surprise gets remembered. It must be earned through one device, never a
literal picture of the product (Janoff: "visualise it metaphorically, perhaps subliminally
— certainly not literally").
- USP-encoding — the mark's defining feature is the differentiator (stripes =
colour-on-TV). State the USP, then make the geometry carry it.
Pick by conviction, not by test — a signature mark is a heuristic/taste decision with no
objective arrow, so it is resolved by demo + taste, never outsourced to a metric or an AI
recommend-list (
doctrine/references/creative-selection-and-taste.md, the "41 shades of
blue" rule; doctrine §2 sourcing-authority asymmetry).
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Silhouette iteration. Draw the essence every which way — many quick variants — until
the simplest form that still carries the device appears. Janoff: "When in doubt, leave it
out"; clients arrive with "laundry lists of must-haves — a recipe for failure." A clear
message is singular. Converge to one, then refine (the demo→feedback→next-demo loop,
creative-selection-and-taste.md). Never an AI-generated mark — they carry the
warped/fused/misspelled-glyph tell and read as every other logo
(doctrine/references/ai-slop-taxonomy.md §Visual tells).
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Construct the mark on a grid. Fix the geometry so it is reproducible from rules, not
from a single exported PNG: construction modules, key ratios, stroke contrast, optical
corrections (overshoot on round forms, optical centring, joint thinning). Full method in
references/mark-construction.md. Rand's discipline: simple, distinctive, reproducible at
any size, in one colour, from memory.
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Draw / specify the wordmark. If lettering is custom, state which glyphs are modified and
why, the kerning and tracking discipline, the cap-height/x-height relationship, and the one
distinguishing detail. If set from an approved face, name it (from
font-selection-and-pairing) and record the customisation (tightened spacing, a redrawn
terminal). The wordmark's skeleton should agree with the brand's display type — one voice.
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Build the lockup family. Specify: primary lockup, horizontal and stacked
variants, monogram/glyph-only, and the alignment/relationship rules (mark-to-wordmark
gap in mark-units, shared baseline or optical alignment, relative scale). Vignelli's
discipline: a small governed set used consistently, not a sprawl of one-offs.
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Clear-space and minimum sizes. Define clear-space in units of the mark itself (e.g.
= cap-height, or = the monogram's width), never in px. Set minimum legible sizes per lockup,
verified at the favicon end — the scale-relater test (Janoff): does the mark still read
as itself, not a smudge, at 16 px?
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Responsive logo ladder. Define the breakpoint-driven swap: full lockup → reduced
wordmark (detail dropped) → monogram → favicon glyph. State the trigger size for each step.
This is the same load-shedding discipline as "edit for less" — drop detail the small size
cannot carry rather than shrinking everything uniformly.
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Favicon + app-icon system. Derive the whole icon set from the monogram, not from a
squashed lockup. Full matrix (web favicon.svg + ICO fallback, iOS/iPadOS, Android adaptive
foreground/background + safe zone, maskable PWA, monochrome/tinted, Safari mask) in
references/app-icon-and-favicon-system.md. Verify the maskable safe zone and the 16 px
render.
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Colour, mono, reversed, dark variants. Bind the owned signature colour
(../color-system-and-palette) and specify: full-colour, single-colour positive, reversed,
and dark-mode variants — each verified legible on its surface. A mark that only works in
full colour is not finished (Janoff: works in one colour, from memory).
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Misuse sheet + Construction Gate. Write the do-nots (no recolour, no stretch, no
outline, no swoosh, no drop-shadow, no rotate, no set-on-busy-photo-without-scrim, no
substitute typeface) and run the Construction Gate below. Structure the deliverable
against examples/aperture-mark-and-lockup-spec.md.
If any item fails, fix before sign-off — do not ship a half-built mark.
Read and vector inspection are required. Editing and export require explicit design authority. Do not claim trademark clearance, purchase licences, overwrite masters, or publish without approval.
Without vector tooling, deliver a construction specification and sketches marked non-production. Without legal or licence clearance, mark release blocked and avoid public deployment.
