Why did the cross read as two shapes?

Unequal arm lengths and a narrowed centre. The eye groups the two long arms and loses the cross.

How much rotation can a symmetrical mark take?

Only as much as keeps the underlying figure readable. Past that you have a different shape, not a variant.

Does the mark need more than one colour?

No. It was drawn as a single flat shape so it can be applied by any process, including vinyl and powder coat.

PLUS

Climbing Gym

Brand guidelines
Version 1.0
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01 — The idea

Four arms of identical length and width, meeting at a centre that stays full width.

Client

A climbing gym

Construction

A soft heavy cross with rounded arm ends and a slight rotational twist held short of breaking the plus reading.

02 — Primary lockupStacked · symbol over wordmark

Climbing Gym

03 — On light

Climbing Gym

Ink on Bone

03 — On dark

Climbing Gym

Safety Orange on Ink

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

05 — Clear space

Clear space equals one arm width on all four sides.
Minimum 10 mm wide. It holds as an app icon.

06 — Scale

48 MM

24 MM

12 MM

FAVICON

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

07 — ColourPantone from the Solid Uncoated book

Bone#F2EDE4RGB 242 237 228CMYK 0 2 6 5

Ink#1C1B19RGB 28 27 25CMYK 0 4 11 89

Safety Orange#E2551ERGB 226 85 30CMYK 0 62 87 11

08 — Typography

Archivo Black · display

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789

Archivo · 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

✓Hold full width through the junction

✓Keep all four arms identical

✓Match the wordmark's angle to the cross

✕Never pinch the centre

✕Never rotate past the cross reading

✕Never add a second colour or a gradient

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