The lockup

Eleven letterforms. Five words. One question, asked twice before you finish reading it.

Construction

How it reads

The mark is not a wordmark with a clever crop. It is a reading puzzle that resolves the moment you stop trying to solve it. Two columns carry two letters each, stacked. Five of the eleven letterforms are read twice. None of them are drawn twice.

Take the top of both columns and you get if not, then then. Take the bottom of both and you get if now, then when. Read the columns together, top to bottom, and the whole question is already there: if not now, then when.

sharedshared
Two columns, two letters each. A column is one position read two ways: the T above gives NOT and THEN, the W below gives NOW and WHEN.

IF

NOT

NOW

THEN

WHEN

Five words, sixteen letters, eleven letterforms. NO is read twice — once with the T above it, once with the W below. HEN does the same in the row beneath. Nothing is drawn twice.

Letterforms

Drawn, not set

Every stroke is brush-drawn and none of them repeat. The two N forms lean differently. The O is an ellipse that never quite closes the way a typeface would close it. Stems thin where the hand sped up and pool where it hesitated.

That irregularity is the argument. A question about acting before you are ready should not look like it was kerned. Do not redraw it, do not smooth it, and never set the phrase in a typeface and call it the mark.

Clear space

Give it a fifth of itself

The clear-space unit is the height of the W inside either shared column — one fifth of the mark. Keep that much empty on all four sides. No type, no rule, no image edge, no other logo inside it. The mark is meant to sit alone, and at least once in any layout it should sit alone and large.

xx
x is the height of the W in the shared column: 138 units on the 652.73 grid.

Minimum size

Below this it stops being drawn

The thin points of the brush strokes are the first thing to go. Under 32 px the W in the shared column starts to fill in and the mark reads as a black square with texture. If you need it smaller than this, you need a different asset — ask before you invent one.

32 px

Digital minimum

48 px

Comfortable on screen

96 px

Where the hand reads

In print, hold the mark at 10 mm or wider. Embroidery and debossing need more — 20 mm, and a simplified stitch file rather than this vector.

Colourways

Five, and no sixth

One flat colour on one flat ground. The mark is high-contrast artwork and it should stay that way — the moment it is tinted down or set on something busy, the brush strokes stop being strokes and start being noise.

Black on paper

Mark #000000
Ground #FAFAF8

White on cobalt

Mark #FFFFFF
Ground #024FDA · Pantone 293 C

White on black

Mark #FFFFFF
Ground #000000

Cobalt on paper

Mark #024FDA · Pantone 293 C
Ground #FAFAF8

Accent brown on cream

Mark #85431E · Pantone 7517 C
Ground #DAD3C8

Never

  • Shine #FFA300 or Green #006C3F as the mark. Both are sanctioned brand colours; neither is a mark colour.
  • Two colours inside one mark, including colouring the shared columns differently to explain the trick.
  • Any tint, screen or opacity below 100%. If it needs to recede, make it smaller.
  • A gradient, an outline, a shadow, a glow, or a keyline box.
  • Directly on photography, unless the area behind it is flat and clears 4.5:1 against the mark.

Usage

One right way

Everything below the first plate is the same mark with a single rule broken. None of it is exaggerated to make a point — this is what those decisions actually look like.

Alone, at size

The default. Nothing inside its clear space.

Stretched

The artwork is square. Scale it proportionally or not at all.

Rotated

It reads top to bottom in two rows. Tilted, it reads as neither.

Outlined

The weight of the stroke is the drawing. Hollowed out, it is gone.

On pattern

The counters fill with whatever is behind them.

Tinted back

Below full strength the thin points disappear before the thick ones.

In a box

No keyline, no container, no badge. It holds its own edge.

Assets

Take the files

Vector in five colourways, plus the transparent PNGs for anywhere that still will not take an SVG. Use the vector wherever the vector will go.

Working files, product imagery and the full press pack live on INNTW Press.