How do you make a two-colour logo work in one colour?

Convert the second colour to negative space rather than a second shape, and keep every knockout at one consistent width.

Why did the ear need a cut-line?

Once the body is a single flat colour, an overlapping ear has no edge. A white cut-line gives it one without breaking the silhouette.

What mesh count suits this mark?

156 holds the channel cleanly on kraft. Finer mesh risks the narrow white lines bridging with ink.

Longfellow

Hot Dog Stand

Brand guidelines
Version 1.0
↓ scroll

01 — The idea

A two-colour animal mark usually breaks the moment you reverse it to one.

Client

A hot dog stand

Construction

One closed black silhouette with the mustard squiggle cut out as a white channel that never touches the outer contour.

02 — Primary lockupStacked · symbol over wordmark

Hot Dog Stand

03 — On light

Hot Dog Stand

Ink on Cream

03 — On dark

Hot Dog Stand

Mustard on Ink

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

05 — Clear space

Clear space equals the height of the dog's body on all four sides.
Minimum 18 mm wide. Below that the wordmark drops and the dog stands alone.

06 — Scale

48 MM

24 MM

12 MM

FAVICON

Favicon: the dog's head in profile. Below 12 mm the wordmark is dropped and the symbol stands alone.

07 — ColourPantone from the Solid Uncoated book

Cream#EFE7D6RGB 239 231 214CMYK 0 3 10 6

Ink#1A1A18RGB 26 26 24CMYK 0 0 8 90

Mustard#D9A32BRGB 217 163 43CMYK 0 25 80 15

08 — Typography

Anton · 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 every white element in the mark at one width

✓Cut the ear in with a white line, never an overlap

✓Reverse the whole mark as a single silhouette

✕Never draw the squiggle as a second shape on top

✕Never let the channel touch the body's outline

✕Never break the dog's back to fit the squiggle

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.

Start a brand project →

Prev All studies Next

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