Aperture · identity

Logo sheet

Three concepts, three iterations on the survivor, then the shipped suite. Everything here is hand-authored SVG — real arc geometry, no traced clip-art, and no font referenced anywhere in the mark. Each variant is a separate file in logo/.

1 · Three concepts

Drawn side by side before anything was chosen. The brief for all three: symmetry and clean line (the healthcare convention), and something a practitioner would recognise as belonging to their trade rather than to medicine generally.

Concept A, an iris diaphragm of six blades

A · Iris diaphragmSix blades, hexagonal opening. Instrument-made.

Rejected. Reads camera before optician — the register lands on photography, the wrong trade. Its hexagon was the right idea in the wrong container.

Concept B, a lens cross-section with a round pupil

B · Refraction pairA biconvex lens in cross-section — the root-3 vesica.

Winner, but not as drawn. The outer geometry is exactly right; a vesica with a dot in it is every third optician logo in Britain. It needed a second idea inside it.

Concept C, five bars descending in size like a Snellen chart

C · Acuity stackSnellen lines stepping by the LogMAR ratio, 10−0.1.

Rejected. The most original and the least legible: at 24px it collapses into a signal-strength icon, and signal bars are someone else's language. Its ratio survives as the type rhythm in favAcuityExams.

2 · Three passes on the survivor

Each pass fixes one named fault. Nothing here is a restyle.

Starting point: lens outline with a round pupil

Pass 0 · as proposedGeneric. It is an eye.

Iteration 1: the round pupil replaced by a hexagon

Pass 1 · hexagonal apertureConcept A's opening dropped into B's lens.

Now a lens outside and an instrument inside — and no longer an eye, which was the point.

Iteration 2: an optical axis line runs through and past the lens

Pass 2 · optical axisThe construction line every ray diagram is measured from.

Unseals the capsule, fills the horizontal, and drops to a 1.6 stroke so it reads under the object, not as part of it.

Iteration 3: the lens thickened to fill a square box

Pass 3 · icon proportionRatio 1.73 → 1.35, width unchanged.

Found by testing at 24px: the true vesica letterboxes in a square slot, leaving 11px of drawn mark. A thicker lens is still a true lens — it is a shorter focal length. Lockups keep 1.73; the icon uses 1.35.

3 · The shipped suite

Aperture primary lockup: mark beside the wordmark

Primary lockupHeader, and the logo data URL in the theme file.

Aperture stacked lockup: mark above a graduated scale above the wordmark

Stacked lockupNarrow chrome. Divider is a dioptre scale, not a rule.

Aperture icon mark alone

Icon markAlone. Size-tested below.

Aperture monochrome dark version

Monochrome, darkOne ink, for light grounds.

Aperture monochrome light version on a dark ground

Monochrome, lightStrokes 0.15 heavier — light-on-dark optically thins.

Aperture reversed out of a brand-coloured field

ReversedKnocked out of a brand plate.

4 · Size tests

The icon mark must survive 24px and the favicon must survive 32px. Both are shown at their real pixel sizes below — not scaled up for the sheet.

Icon mark at 96 pixels
96
Icon mark at 64 pixels
64
Icon mark at 48 pixels
48
Icon mark at 32 pixels
32
Icon mark at 24 pixels
24 ← bar
Icon mark at 16 pixels
16
Favicon at 96 pixels
favicon 96
Favicon at 48 pixels
48
Favicon at 32 pixels
32 ← bar
Favicon at 16 pixels
16

Why the favicon is a different drawing: a 3.2 stroke at 32px is 1.6px, which lands between device pixels and greys out. The favicon is therefore a solid silhouette with the hexagon knocked through it, and the optical axis is dropped — under 2px it reads as dirt.

5 · The mark on all six palettes

The logo ships as a data URL and cannot read page CSS, so it carries a self-sufficient cobalt→copper gradient rather than currentColor. Measured against every background below: the cobalt stop scores 3.96–4.66:1 and the copper stop 3.20–5.89:1, so both ends of the mark clear the 3:1 graphic bar on all six, in both modes.

Lockup on the Cobalt and Copper light paletteL1 Cobalt & Copper
Lockup on the Verdigris and Ochre light paletteL2 Verdigris & Ochre
Lockup on the Aubergine and Brass light paletteL3 Aubergine & Brass
Lockup on the Cobalt and Copper dark paletteD1 Cobalt & Copper
Lockup on the Verdigris and Ochre dark paletteD2 Verdigris & Ochre
Lockup on the Aubergine and Brass dark paletteD3 Aubergine & Brass