Identity

Logo sheet

Every concept and every pass, kept on the page so the reasoning is visible. Five passes: four concepts, three second-pass attempts, two third-pass variants, one regression, and the mark that came out of it.

Concepts and iterations

concept-a-contour-island

Pass 1. The business from above — nested contours around a benchmark. Rejected: concentric rings read as a dartboard, and it is illegible by 24px.

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concept-b-leadline

Pass 1. The sounding line, marked at the fathoms, lead at the bottom. Rejected: reads as a download arrow, is vertical in a horizontal lockup, and says nothing about the furlong half of the name.

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concept-c-rose-scale

Pass 1. Half a compass rose over a scale bar — bearing over distance. Rejected: the half-rose reads as a tuft of grass.

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concept-d-datum

Pass 1. Land above a datum, a lead line below it — the whole name in one figure. Best of pass 1, but rejected: a symmetrical bell over a down-arrow reads as an umbrella.

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iter-2a-island-irregular

Pass 2. Concept A with the contours made irregular and the summit pushed off centre. Rejected: asymmetry was not enough — still a target at small sizes.

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iter-2b-datum-soundings

Pass 2. Concept D with an asymmetric coastal profile and staggered soundings instead of the arrow. Improved, not chosen: still faintly mushroom-shaped, and blurs by 24px.

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iter-2c-graticule-coast

Pass 2. New concept — a graticule says "map" with no interpretation needed. Nearly: instant map read, but the coast climbs across the frame and second-reads as a rising line graph.

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iter-3a-coast-filled

Pass 3. 2C fixed — the coast now encloses land, which a plotted series cannot do. The winning composition. Its hatch strokes hang off the coast like drips below 32px.

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iter-3b-coast-linear

Pass 3. The same fix drawn with no tint at all, land described only by hatching. Rejected: the hatching reads as fur.

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iter-4-survey

Pass 4. Rebalanced coast, offset contour replacing the hatching, corner-to-corner gradient. A regression: the even coast reads as a waveform and the gradient splits the mark into two colours.

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iter-5-survey-final

Pass 5. 3A’s composition back, pass 4’s offset contour kept, gradient dropped for two fixed inks. Adopted as icon-mark.svg.

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The suite

Six variants. The icon mark is verified at 24px and the favicon at 32px — the favicon is redrawn on a 32-unit grid rather than scaled, because the graticule and the offset contour both turn to wash at that size.

primary-lockup

Mark plus wordmark. This is the variant the theme ships as its logo: data URL.

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stacked-lockup

Narrow chrome and the mobile header. The name breaks rather than shrinking.

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icon-mark

The mark alone. Two fixed inks — verdigris surveys, copper marks the station.

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favicon

Redrawn for 32px, not scaled down: one centre cross instead of six graticule lines, no offset contour, heavier coast, larger station.

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monochrome

One colour via currentColor. Works inline in HTML — and not once encoded into a data URL, which is why the theme ships the two-ink lockup instead.

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reversed

For brand-coloured fields. Tint and graticule are both re-weighted upward: a knocked-out line reads weaker than a printed one.

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