Logo and Identity Judged at 32 Pixels, Not on a Wall

The test is 32 pixels. Most identity work is approved on a large screen in a quiet room, then spends its working life as an app tile, a profile avatar in a feed and a corner bug on a six-second bumper. We judge the mark where it will actually live, and we bring you the renders before we bring you an opinion. The test set we run: The mark at 16, 24, 32 and 60 pixels, rendered rather than scaled down inside a presentation. A one-bit cut in pure black and white, to see whether the silhouette carries once a video codec has finished with it. Placement over five stills pulled from your own live feed inventory, including the ugly ones. A circle mask, because most platforms will crop your avatar to one whether or not the mark survives it. And the mark at the end of a video, at the size and duration your bumper actually gives it. Bilingual lockups, drawn at the same time: Since 1 June 2025, Quebec's Charter of the French Language requires generic and descriptive terms inside a registered trademark to appear in French on product packaging and public signage, with French markedly predominant on signs. Whatever your legal position on a given placement, the working consequence for advertising is the same: the French lockup cannot be the English one with a translation crammed underneath. We draw both together, with the same optical spacing decisions, so neither one reads as the compromise. What is delivered: Vector masters with optical alignment corrected rather than mathematically centred. A monochrome cut and a reversed cut. An avatar cut, which is usually not the full lockup. A minimum size with the failure point named, so your team knows what breaks and why instead of obeying a number. Clear space defined in units of the mark. Contrast rules that cover video and user-generated backgrounds, not white and one brand colour. Type pairing for ad furniture: legal lines, price flags, disclosure text. What we refuse: Rebrands and naming. If what you need is a new company, this is not that engagement, and we will say so on the first call rather than expand into it. Trademark clearance. We do not run searches and we do not give an opinion on availability. Your counsel does that, and we do not start drawing until they have. Quiet compliance. If the existing mark cannot be made to work at ad sizes, you hear it once, plainly, with the renders that prove it, inside the first two weeks. We will still do the best work available inside the constraint if you decide to keep the mark. We will not pretend the constraint is not there. Not included: Packaging, environmental and signage systems, motion identity beyond a static end frame, print collateral, and the sound side of the brand, which is separate work with different tests. Who this is not for: Companies that have not settled what they sell and to whom. Identity work performed on an unsettled position is expensive procrastination, and we would rather you spent the money on settling the position. Also not for teams who want three routes to put in front of a board. We present one, with the reasoning attached and the discarded routes visible, because a designer who genuinely believes in three directions believes in none of them. Working method: One creative director, on your side of the table, for the length of the engagement. Decisions arrive written down with the argument attached, which makes the ones you disagree with easy to overturn on the merits rather than on rank. Two review sessions are scheduled and a third is available; more than that usually means the position underneath is unsettled, and we will say so and stop.