Start with one shape

Every identity we draw begins as a single piece of geometry. Before colour, before type, before anything that can be photographed, there is one shape that has to work on its own. If it does not survive that test, no amount of palette will save it.

We draw it flat. No gradients, no depth, no effects that depend on a particular screen or printer. What is left is the part of the mark that actually has to carry the brand.

Colour is the variable

Once the geometry is settled, colour becomes the only thing that moves. Eight colourways is not eight logos. It is one logo that can be tuned to a context without losing its shape. A green version and a magenta version should be recognisably the same thing at a glance.

That constraint is useful. It forces the palette to stay simple enough to swap, and it stops anyone from redrawing the mark to fit a campaign.

Testing at every scale

We test the system at the sizes it will actually be seen: a sixteen-pixel favicon, a tote bag, a ten-metre wall. Most marks fail at one end or the other. A shape that reads at ten metres usually has too much detail for a favicon, and a shape built for a favicon often looks empty when it is blown up.

Drawing in vectors is what makes this testable. The same file scales from one extreme to the other without a second version having to be drawn.

Building the system

The last step is writing down how the colourways relate to each other. Which one is default, which ones are for dark backgrounds, which ones are for print on uncoated stock. A palette without rules becomes a palette where anything goes, and then the system stops being a system.

Conclusion

Eight colourways from one piece of geometry is not a trick. It is a way of separating the parts of a brand that have to stay fixed from the parts that are allowed to move. Done properly, the mark stays recognisable even when the palette does not.