How do you slice a wordmark without it looking broken?

Make every band the same height, every gap the same width, and every step the same distance. Any variance reads as an error.

Does a sliced wordmark reduce well?

No. Specify a solid variant for small sizes rather than scaling the sliced artwork down past its gap limit.

Why separate closed shapes?

Clipped objects can lose their edges in RIP and trapping. Separate closed paths are predictable on press.

Kelp

Seaweed Farm

Brand guidelines
Version 1.0
↓ scroll

01 — The idea

Equal bands, equal gaps, equal step. One rule produces the lean; nothing is warped to get there.

Client

A seaweed farm

Construction

A heavy condensed wordmark cut into horizontal bands, each stepping right by the same fixed amount as the one above.

02 — Primary lockupStacked · symbol over wordmark

Seaweed Farm

03 — On light

Seaweed Farm

Deep Sea on Sea Foam

03 — On dark

Seaweed Farm

Tidal on Deep Sea

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

05 — Clear space

Clear space equals one band height on all four sides.
Minimum 25 mm wide. Below that, the unsliced variant.

06 — Scale

48 MM

24 MM

12 MM

FAVICON

Favicon: the K's top band. Below 12 mm the wordmark is dropped and the symbol stands alone.

07 — ColourPantone from the Solid Uncoated book

Sea Foam#DCE4D2RGB 220 228 210CMYK 4 0 8 11

Deep Sea#0E3B3ARGB 14 59 58CMYK 76 0 2 77

Tidal#7FA88CRGB 127 168 140CMYK 24 0 17 34

08 — Typography

Archivo Black · 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.

Spline Sans Mono · labels

Labels · captions · specification lines

09 — Do and do not

✓Keep band height, gap and step all constant

✓Draw each band as a separate closed shape

✓Specify a solid variant for small sizes

✕Never warp or distort a band to make the lean

✕Never scale past the gap limit

✕Never build the bands as a clipped single object

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