Sheet Z-01 · Identity

The mark

A circle drawn freehand. My father could draw a perfect one bare-handed; this one is generated the way a hand draws, and closes past its own start.

The wobble is four low-frequency harmonics, not random noise — the tremor of a wrist rather than a shaky line. The dot at the centre is the datum: pin your hand on the paper and let your mind do the spinning.

Download the kit

01Horizontal — the default

Colour · on vellum or white SVG PNG 1600 PNG 3200

Reversed · on ink or photography SVG PNG 1600 SVG mono white

02 · Stacked SVG PNG Reversed

03 · Mark alone SVG PNG 1024 Mono

The type is outlined in every file. A logo that needs a font installed is a logo that arrives as Times New Roman on somebody else’s machine.

04 · Using it

Clear space, minimum size, and the two rules that matter.

Please do

Leave clear space around the logo equal to the diameter of the circle.
Use the horizontal lockup by default; the stacked one where the space is square or narrow.
Drop to the mark alone below about 140 px / 40 mm wide — under that the role line stops being readable.
Use the reversed or white version on anything dark or photographic.
Use the mono version for engraving, embroidery, stamps and single-colour print.

Please do not

Recolour the mark outside the four colourways.
Redraw the circle, or “tidy” it into a perfect one. The imperfection is the entire point.
Stretch, skew, rotate, outline or add effects.
Put the colour version on a busy photograph — use white.
Set the name in a different typeface and call it the logo.

Minimum size for the mark alone is about 24 px / 8 mm. Below that the overshoot where the stroke closes stops resolving, and it reads as an ordinary circle.

Where it comes from

The circle is not a graphic. It is the whole argument.

Read the story Try to draw one