Playbook · The mark
An argument with its conclusion removed.
The ∴ symbol means "therefore," so the mark is an argument with its conclusion removed. The gap where the conclusion goes sits open at the top. Brands starve the corner that compounds. The other two are funded and solid.
The mark
There is no triangle and no lines, so there is no shape for a corner to go missing from. Three plotted points, and the corner that matters is left open.
How it reads
The eye lands on the empty one. Among two solid nodes, the open one is the odd element, so it is the first thing you look at. I put it at the apex because the corner brands neglect belongs on top.
An open node is also a convention. In mathematics it marks an endpoint deliberately left out of the set. Here the top node is left out on purpose too, the same point the site argues.
Why not a triangle
Because the triangle is the obvious move, and the obvious move is not ownable. A bare triangle is one of the three primitive shapes: yield signs, deltas, play buttons and a thousand logos share it, and dressing it up with construction geometry only describes a triangle after the fact, it does not make it yours. I tried that first and threw it out.
The model is still a triangle, and it stays where it works: in the interactive tool, where a point you can drag around a real ternary plot does work a logo cannot.
Construction
The rules.
- Nodes
- Two funded corners solid, the unfunded one hollow. Which node is open is set by which corner sits at zero. Change the allocation and you get a different mark.
- Weight
- The hollow ring is drawn a touch larger than the discs, because open forms read lighter; at that size the three nodes look equal in weight while one is plainly empty.
- Never joined
- No lines, no triangle, no frame. It is a set of points, so it reads as a plot, not a shape.
The lockup
The mark sits left of the wordmark, base points on the baseline, the hollow apex at cap height, so the therefore-sign leads straight into the name.
Wordmark: Bricolage Grotesque SemiBold, sentence case, left untouched. I set the type plain because the mark already carries the idea.
Reduction
The hollow reads cleanly down to about 24px. The 16px favicon uses a fattened-hole master so it stays open; its floor, if a renderer fills the hole, is the three solid dots, and the hole returns at every larger size.
Colour and theme
One oxblood token, nothing else. The colour goes on the two solid nodes. The empty node gets none. It flips with the theme, and the hole is always the local background showing through.
- LightOxblood on bone
- #7C2D2A on #EAE9E3. Solid discs, one hairline ring, the hole is bone.
- DarkLifted oxblood
- The mark lifts to #C15A4E on near-black so it clears the non-text contrast floor; the hole shows the near-black through.
- NeverA second colour
- No node gets its own hue and the empty one never gets filled to "help"; position and absence do all the work.
The limits
At a glance it is three dots, a therefore sign. The hollow top is what makes it specifically mine, and that only shows up close. From across a room it reads as three dots. A mark this reduced only becomes recognisable through repeated use, over time. That is the trade-off with a restrained identity.
But that restraint is deliberate. The site makes the case for the corner brands leave unfunded, written by someone who came up funding the other two. The mark says the same thing with three points: colour on the two funded corners, and the corner that compounds left open.