Why draw a letter as negative space?

It makes the whole mark one object, which removes registration from the equation entirely.

Does copper foil suit soft organic shapes?

Very well. Copper's warmth and the slight edge variance of foil both work with curved forms in a way they fight against hard geometry.

Is this legible as an F?

At full size and at icon size, yes — the lobe width difference is what carries it. That asymmetry is deliberate.

Ferrum

Foundry & Metal Casting

Brand guidelines
Version 1.0
↓ scroll

01 — The idea

Every edge in the mark is curved. The F behaves like the material rather than depicting it.

Client

A foundry and metal casting works

Construction

A thick vertical blob with two rounded lobes budding off it, cut out of a solid rounded square as negative space.

02 — Primary lockupStacked · symbol over wordmark

Foundry & Metal Casting

03 — On light

Foundry & Metal Casting

Ink on Bone

03 — On dark

Foundry & Metal Casting

Molten Orange on Ink

04 — One colourFor fax, engraving, foil dies and single-plate letterpress

05 — Clear space

Clear space equals a fifth of the container's width on all four sides.
Minimum 14 mm wide.

06 — Scale

48 MM

24 MM

12 MM

FAVICON

Favicon: the container as drawn. Below 12 mm the wordmark is dropped and the symbol stands alone.

07 — ColourPantone from the Solid Uncoated book

Bone#F6F1E6RGB 246 241 230CMYK 0 2 7 4

Ink#1C1A18RGB 28 26 24CMYK 0 7 14 89

Molten Orange#B4451FRGB 180 69 31CMYK 0 62 83 29

08 — Typography

Syne · display

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789

DM Sans · text

Body copy is set at 16–18 px on screen and 9.5–10.5 pt in print, sentence case, with a maximum measure of 66 characters. Never letter-space lowercase body text.

IBM Plex Mono · labels

Labels · captions · specification lines

09 — Do and do not

✓Keep the upper lobe wider than the lower

✓Draw the letter as negative space, one object

✓Hold the container's radius constant

✕Never introduce a straight edge

✕Never add a second colour that needs registering

✕Never narrow the channel between lobe and stem

10 — In application

A studio identity exercise. Mark, palette, type system and usage rules by the Print Peppermint design team.

Every identity we build ships with the file the press needs: vector mark, one-colour version, favicon set, Pantone Uncoated references and a guide like this one.

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A studio exercise. Ferrum, and every brand in this series, is invented — no client commissioned it and none of it was ever sold.