What is emboss showthrough?

The debossed impression visible on the reverse of the sheet. On single-ply stock it is unavoidable; duplexing hides it but adds cost and thickness.

Can hand-lettering be blind embossed?

Yes, if the stroke weights are consistent. Thin flourishes flatten out under the die while heavy strokes hold, which reads as a mistake.

Why lock the arrangement?

A lockup that rearranges per format is not a lockup. One canonical version, then defined variants — never a floating one.

Hollow & Hearth

Cremation Services

Brand guidelines
Version 1.0
↓ scroll

01 — The idea

The lockup is fixed to one arrangement. One swash, entering above and exiting below, once.

Client

A cremation service

Construction

Two stacked lines of hand-lettered condensed caps, crossed by a single continuous swash that is never mirrored or duplicated.

02 — Primary lockupStacked · symbol over wordmark

Cremation Services

03 — On light

Cremation Services

Ink on Sage

03 — On dark

Cremation Services

Ash on Ink

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

05 — Clear space

Clear space equals the cap height on all four sides.
Minimum 24 mm wide. The swash thins out below that.

06 — Scale

48 MM

24 MM

12 MM

FAVICON

Favicon: the ampersand alone. Below 12 mm the wordmark is dropped and the symbol stands alone.

07 — ColourPantone from the Solid Uncoated book

Sage#DDE2D5RGB 221 226 213CMYK 2 0 6 11

Ink#2A2A28RGB 42 42 40CMYK 0 0 5 84

Ash#6E7A63RGB 110 122 99CMYK 10 0 19 52

08 — Typography

Libre Caslon Text · display

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789

Work 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

✓Use the canonical two-line arrangement everywhere

✓Match the swash weight to the lettering's stems

✓Design the reverse around the emboss showthrough

✕Never mirror or duplicate the swash

✕Never rearrange the lockup per format

✕Never blind emboss with a flat die

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. Hollow & Hearth, and every brand in this series, is invented — no client commissioned it and none of it was ever sold.