Unforged brand book, marks

The set

Light and dark are the mark's own tone, not the ground it sits on. Both versions sit on paper. Only the light version sits on the flood.

Light version, on the flood The final logo, the original chrome cutout. At home here, 240 pixels wide or more. Its mean stop measures 5.26 to 1 against the flood, and the flood itself sits a hair away from the ground the chrome ramp was originally proven on.

Dark version, on paper Black chrome, the light source remapped through one curve, letterforms identical. 8.05 to 1 on paper as a mean, and no pixel under 1.25 to 1. This is the version for small sizes and for inline use, and it is the one in this book's own header.

The reserve A lighter remap of the same file, 5.65 to 1 on paper. It is not a builder's option. Without a ruling that the dark version is too dark on a specific surface, it is not used, because one dark version means the choice does not reopen on every page.

Icon, light version On the flood and in dark interface. The icon is the wordmark's own first letter, cropped straight out of it, so the two can never drift apart.

Icon, dark version On paper and in light interface. Favicon, browser tab, touch icon, avatar on white. The floor is 16 pixels, where the stems are still five pixels wide.

This page is a specimen sheet, and it is the exception

Rule 9 below allows the mark once per viewport and at most twice per document. A specimen sheet carries six, the way the misuse sheet in the proof folder does, because the mark is the subject rather than the signature here. On any other surface, count.

The icon changed on 2026-08-28

Until then the U shown everywhere was a separately generated serif letter, a different drawing from the logo's own. Andreas caught it in the favicon set. It is now cropped out of the wordmark, and every derivative is rebuilt from that crop. The letter is sturdier than the drawing it replaced: its thinnest feature is 21.2 percent of its width against the old 9.8, which at a 16 pixel favicon is the difference between two pixel stems and five.

Which version where

Eleven rules. Each is a yes or no test, and each has a measured reason.

01 Two grounds carry a mark Paper and the flood. Nothing else. The raised step and the trough are element grounds, and a signal never carries a mark.
02 On the flood, the light version at 240px or wider Below 240 pixels, use the icon instead. The construction gave the floor its number. At 240 the chamfer is 1.73 pixels and the rim 0.36. Below that the light version is a grey ramp with no edge.
03 On paper the light version appears in one place The hero header, alone in its row, with a full mark height of air on every side, at 240 pixels or wider. 45.3 percent of the light mark's pixels sit under 3 to 1 on paper. It reads as a badge lying on the sheet and needs a bounded place.
04 Everywhere else on paper, the dark version Under 240 pixels, or inline with type: a document header line, a footer, a signature line, a deck corner. 8.05 to 1 as a mean, just above the secondary ink, so it holds against black type instead of floating on top of it.
05 The reserve is not a builder's option It is used only where Andreas has ruled the dark version too dark for that surface. One dark version, or the choice reopens on every page.
06 The icon follows the same split Light on the flood and in dark interface, dark on paper and in light interface. On paper the light icon leaves 28.7 percent of its pixels under 3 to 1 and 12.7 under 1.25; the dark one leaves 7.6 percent under 3 to 1 and none under 1.25.
07 Never on a signal field Not on vermilion, not on blue, not on acid, not on heat. A field never carries a mark. Recognition lives on the field, not on the logo. The mark's mean measures 1.85 to 1 on vermilion.
08 Next to a client's mark, the client's is larger Always. Measure both widths. The client is the brand on their own surface.
09 Once per viewport, at most twice per document The header and one flood colophon. The type block is the loudness. The mark is the signature.
10 Under five percent of any surface Never repeated, never tiled, never a background. A signature, not a pattern.
11 Never live type UNFORGED is never set in a font at any size step. In prose the name is Unforged, sentence case, in the text face. There is no size token for the mark, because the mark is an image of its own drawing and carries no typeface outline.

Sizes, clear space, and the air a hero needs

Floors and ceilings, measured on the drawing itself
Measure	Wordmark, light	Wordmark, dark	Icon
Floor on screen	240px wide	120px wide	16px as the built favicon, 32px on the sized cuts
Floor in print, tonal	64mm	32mm	9mm
Thinnest stroke at the floor	The E's middle arm, 4.4px	2.2px	A 5px stem at the 16px favicon
Narrowest gap at the floor	F to O, 2.6px	1.3px	The counter, 5px at 16
Clear space	One mark height on all four sides	The same	A sixth of the letter height on every side
Ceiling	1600px on the sized cuts. Above that, re-render from the source cutout. Never upscale a sized cut	The same	The letter is 419px natively. Larger asks interpolate

Clear space, stated once

One mark height on every side, measured from the drawing's own box. Nothing enters it: no type, no rule, no chrome object, no edge of a field. At 240 pixels that is about 30 pixels. At 400 it is about 50.

The hero order is fixed

A header row carrying the mark and nothing else at its height.
Air. Measured at 88 pixels on the render the ruling was made on. It is not a token yet: 88 is not a multiple of the 26 and 28 pixel line box, and the proof page renders three boxes instead. Three numbers exist for one rule until a token is cut.
The flush display block, then the vermilion band, then the sub row. The band never carries the mark, and a flood never touches the band.

A floor for any medium follows from two numbers: the thinnest feature the medium can hold, divided by 0.0109 for the wordmark or by 0.212 for the icon. The print table in the logo document works every common process out that way, from offset at 32mm to embroidery at 90mm.

What breaks it

Each line is a yes or no test. Any yes is a defect. Six of them are rendered small on the misuse sheet at 04_PROOF/marks.html, with the same assets.

Outlined, embossed, arched, rotated, mirrored, stroked, shadowed or glowing.
Recoloured. No ink fill, no cream, no flat grey raster, no hue. The one flat fill is the single colour print path, and it reaches processes, never screens.
A vector version of the chrome shipped as the mark on any surface, screen or print. The raster is the source; the constructions are a comparison record.
The outline path used as a mark. It takes whatever colour the page gives it, which is a recolour.
A path file edited by hand. The change goes into the outline or into the build.
Chrome as live type or as a gradient on letters. The only chrome letterforms in the system are the logo.
The mark inside a chrome frame, or a chrome explainer object inside its clear space. A second chrome object against the mark is a fill by accumulation.
On a signal field, on the raised step, on the trough, or on a photograph. There is no protected zone variant, so there is no photographic lockup.
Under 240 pixels on a flood. The light version on paper outside a hero header. The dark version under 120 pixels. The icon under 16 pixels.
The slogan or a tagline inside the lockup. The slogan is a flush block with its own rules.
Stretched. The drawing's box is the aspect ratio, 7.80 to 1. Two mismatched dimensions on an image tag, or a transform, both distort.
Animated, revealed, faded or shimmering. Both motion tokens are zero, and the mark is included in that.
Any file from the retired derivatives archive or from a comparison working folder.

Which file for which job

Never cut a mark by hand. Every production file is built by a script and gated by it.
Job	File
Web, app, deck, a PDF made from HTML	The sized production images in `01_BRAND-LAYER/marks/`, in the version rule 02 to 04 picks.
Email, and any client that drops vector	The 800 pixel cuts. Dark on paper, light on a flood.
Favicon, touch icon, app icon, avatar, social preview image	The derived set in `02_ASSETS/01_MARKS/derived/`, generated by script, in both versions since 2026-08-28.
Print, tonal	The raster sources, rendered at the printed size, up to 280mm. Above that the need goes to Andreas.
Embroidery, engraving, screen print, emboss, cutter	The single colour path file. There is no icon path file any more: those were retired with the drawing they traced.

The two gates

Run node 05_TOOLS/build-marks.mjs --check and node 05_TOOLS/build-derived-marks.mjs --check from 01_IDENTITY/. The first checks the built path files and the sized icon cuts against their canvas and glyph box. The second checks all nineteen derived files, their pixel sizes, their icon container frames and the byte copies. A hand edit fails on the next run.

Print

The chrome ramp is achromatic by measurement, so both versions print as black tone with no conversion and a monochrome print loses nothing of the mark.

The split is the same as on screen: the dark version on paper stock, the light version on a printed flood. Where the flood is the last ink down, the knockout path cuts the mark out of it. For any process that lays down one material, the single colour path file is the file, matched by lightness rather than by a nominal ink percentage, because dot gain moves the tint per stock and the proof's number wins over the nominal one.

Open: no foil, metallic ink, Pantone or thread reference is ruled. Until one is, match by lightness. Nothing tonal exists above the source cutout's own width, so a larger tonal need goes to Andreas.