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Devonside Labs "B3" Mark — Work Plan

Objective

Create a first candidate mark for Devonside Labs (public brand of the digital-products venture): the approved Devonshire "D" glyph reused byte-for-byte, with the pixelation-square field replaced by a "melting data stream" field, matching the Founder's supplied reference image.

Status as of 2026-07-17: the mark, DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002, and the square badge / favicon composite are all approved. Paused mid-iteration after the 2026-07-16 session ("It's closer but let's stop here for now"), then the Founder manually cleaned up the data-stream field's path geometry in Inkscape and approved the resulting mark on 2026-07-17. The square badge composite was then built, recalibrated after Founder feedback that the first pass was too small/off-center, and approved. See the addendum below and ventures/digital-products/docs/brand-assets.md. Remaining open items are the ones listed in "Still open" there (wordmark, palette, typography) — none started, none requested yet.

Scope

  • Recording the Founder's approval of the Devonshire Digital LLC "D" mark in docs/company/brand-assets.md (stated explicitly by the Founder in this session: "This mark is approved to support Devonshire Digital").
  • Drafting ventures/digital-products/docs/decisions/DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002 recording the brand-architecture choice this task makes on the Founder's explicit instruction: Devonside Labs' mark deliberately reuses the parent company's "D" glyph geometry (a family-resemblance / hybrid visual relationship), rather than the fully independent-by-default model described in docs/company/brand-architecture.md. Proposed, not accepted — an agent may draft this, not ratify it.
  • Building brand/ventures/digital-products/source/b3-mark.svg (currentColor master): the Devonshire D path copied byte-for-byte from brand/company/source/d-mark.svg, plus a new data-stream group of rounded-rectangle bars and circular dots (not squares), per the Founder's construction spec (shoulder heights, radii, counts, asymmetric placement, selected streams running slightly under the D curve, D group rendered last so it masks those endpoints).
  • Producing brand/ventures/digital-products/exports/ colorway and raster exports, mirroring the Devonshire "D" mark's export convention (navy/white SVG + PNG at 256/1024), via the existing scripts/gimp_render_svg.py GIMP batch tooling.
  • A minimal ventures/digital-products/docs/brand-assets.md candidate-asset record (this venture did not have one yet), mirroring docs/company/brand-assets.md's structure, so this candidate has a documented home distinct from the company-level register.

Iteration history (the "data-stream" field went through three attempts)

  1. Rigid row/count spec. Built exactly to a textual construction spec (7 primary streams, 3 secondary, 3 dots; specific bar height/corner-radius rules; ~30% left/right variation). Once rendered, read as too mechanical — closer to a barcode/equalizer than "melting" data.
  2. Hand-drawn "melt-flag" guess. Looked at the reference image (zoomed 6x) and hand-authored cubic-Bezier teardrop shapes fused to the D's top-left/bottom-left corners, plus a hand-placed field of pill bars/dots. Better concept (the corners visibly "melt" into the field instead of a detached decorative scatter), but still a guess, not a measurement — the Founder asked to try tracing the actual reference image instead of continuing to hand-guess geometry.
  3. Registered trace + measurement (current, paused here). See the master file's own header comment in brand/ventures/digital-products/source/b3-mark.svg for the full technical method: registered the reference image to the exact D path (94.8% pixel overlap) to isolate the two melting-corner shapes and the 9 floating bar/dot elements; traced the corners (OpenCV contour + Douglas-Peucker simplification + Catmull-Rom-to-Bezier smoothing) and measured the bars/dots (connected-component bounding boxes). Two small filler rects were added behind the D at each corner to close a hairline trace-noise gap. Founder's reaction: "It's closer but let's stop here for now."

Out of scope

  • Founder approval of the new mark itself — it is a candidate only.
  • The wordmark lockup (for either Devonshire Digital or Devonside Labs).
  • Any further Devonside Labs visual-identity requirements (color palette, typography) beyond what this mark needs — those remain open per docs/company/brand-assets.md's "Still open" section and are not decided here.
  • Formal visual-identity requirements documentation for Devonside Labs (a full requirements doc was scoped out of the 2026-07-11 work plan and remains a separate, not-yet-done follow-up); this task proceeds directly to a candidate design on the Founder's explicit, specific instruction in this session, which is the documented exception path for skipping a normal requirements gate.

Applicable authority

  • docs/company/brand-architecture.md — venture brand independence model; this task's ADR records a deliberate deviation toward shared visual DNA.
  • docs/company/brand-assets.md — company-level approved- asset record, updated here to record the Founder's D-mark approval.
  • ventures/digital-products/AGENTS.md — venture operating contract (loaded; mostly governs product/workbook work, not directly applicable to a brand-asset task, but its "no agent marks anything approved" rule applies here too).

Files expected to change

  • docs/company/brand-assets.md — record Founder approval of the "D" mark. Done.
  • ventures/digital-products/docs/decisions/DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002-mark-shares-devonshire-d-geometry.md (new, status: proposed). Done.
  • brand/ventures/digital-products/source/b3-mark.svg (new master). Done — reflects attempt 3, paused.
  • brand/ventures/digital-products/exports/b3-mark-{navy,white}.svg, b3-mark-{navy,white}-{256,1024}.png (new). Done — reflects attempt 3, paused.
  • brand/ventures/digital-products/exports/b3-mark-reference.jpg (new) — a copy of the Founder's reference image, for provenance, matching the Devonshire mark's d-mark-crop-reference.png convention. Done.
  • ventures/digital-products/docs/brand-assets.md (new candidate-asset record). Done.

Assumptions

  • "This mark is approved to support Devonshire Digital" is treated as the Founder's explicit, specific, in-session instruction to mark the "D" mark asset approved for Devonshire Digital LLC use, satisfying CLAUDE.md's bar for an agent performing that mechanical status edit. If this reading is wrong, the edit is easy to revert.
  • The Founder's instruction to reuse the D path "byte-for-byte" is itself the brand-architecture decision being recorded in the new ADR; the agent is documenting a decision already made, not making one.
  • "B3" in "the Devonside Labs B3 mark" is taken as the Founder's/ChatGPT's working label for this candidate, not an established product or naming decision — used only as the source filename stem (b3-mark.svg), not introduced into any customer-facing copy.

Risks

  • Reusing the parent's exact glyph geometry cuts against brand-architecture.md's stated default (independent-per-venture visual identity) — flagged via the ADR rather than silently applied.
  • No Devonside Labs visual-identity requirements document exists yet (color palette, typography beyond the Montserrat/Inter decision already recorded for Devonshire Digital); this mark is built directly from the Founder's specific instructions for this task, not against a requirements doc, so a future requirements pass could still revise it.

Validation plan

  • Visual rendering check (GIMP batch render to PNG) before finalizing, checking against the Founder's reference image for overall composition and legibility at small size.
  • python scripts/check.py after doc/ADR additions.
  • No unittest discover tests impact expected (asset-only change).

Progress checklist

  • [x] Record Founder's D-mark approval in docs/company/brand-assets.md.
  • [x] Draft DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002 (proposed).
  • [x] Build b3-mark.svg master (D path preserved byte-for-byte + data-stream group) — three attempts, see Iteration history above.
  • [x] Render and visually check against reference each attempt; iterated twice.
  • [x] Produce colorway + raster exports (reflect attempt 3).
  • [x] Create ventures/digital-products/docs/brand-assets.md candidate record.
  • [x] Run python scripts/check.py; report result. See Handoff notes.
  • [x] Further iteration on the data-stream field — resolved 2026-07-17: the Founder manually redrew/smoothed the two melting-corner paths in Inkscape rather than asking for another agent-driven iteration; see the 2026-07-17 addendum below.
  • [x] Founder review of DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002 — approved 2026-07-17.
  • [x] Founder approval of the mark itself — approved 2026-07-17, see ventures/digital-products/docs/brand-assets.md.
  • [x] Square badge / favicon-style composite — first pass 2026-07-17 used scripts/gimp_compose_badge.py's plain defaults (no --mark-size/--offset); the Founder reviewed it and called it out as too small and shifted north of center.
  • [x] Diagnosed and fixed: the default request passes a square 154×154 box to GIMP's file-svg-load against a non-square (885:758) SVG, so keep-ratio letterboxes the actual content inside that box — the rendered ink ends up smaller than 154px and top-anchored rather than centered within it (the script's default offset centering formula assumes the full requested box is filled, which it isn't here). Measured the SVG's real content margins off b3-mark-white-1024.png (a render where width/height auto-match the true aspect, so no letterboxing occurs there) — 11.5%/9.9% left/right, 6.64%/6.64% top/bottom — and used those to solve for a --mark-size/--offset pair whose rendered ink lands centered and at a size matching the Devonshire "D" mark's own badge. Re-rendered with --mark-size 189 162 --offset 32 47; measured result: ink bbox ~149×128 centered at (127.5, 120) on the 256×256 canvas, vs. the D badge's ~147×124 at (127.5, 120) — same visual weight and placement now.
  • [x] Founder review of the recalibrated badge composite — approved 2026-07-17, see ventures/digital-products/docs/brand-assets.md.

Decisions required

  • ~~Founder review of the new ADR's framing.~~ Resolved 2026-07-17: approved.
  • ~~Founder approval of the mark itself before any customer-facing use.~~ Resolved 2026-07-17: approved.
  • ~~Founder approval of the square badge composite (recalibrated 2026-07-17 to fix the too-small/off-center first pass).~~ Resolved 2026-07-17: approved.

Handoff notes

Paused by explicit Founder request at the end of a single working session (2026-07-16), not blocked or stuck — pick this back up by asking the Founder what they'd like changed next on the data-stream field (attempt 3 is a measured trace of their reference image, not a guess, but it is not yet approved).

State of the repo at pause: - Devonshire Digital LLC "D" mark: approved (separate, completed piece of this session's work — see work/archive/2026-07-16-d-mark-clean-geometry-redraw.md). - Devonside Labs "B3" mark: unapproved candidate, mid-iteration. Current files (source + exports) reflect attempt 3 (measured trace), the closest of three attempts so far. - DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002 (D-geometry reuse): drafted, status: proposed, needs Founder ratification. - python scripts/check.py: passing as of this pause (see below). - No git commit has been made yet for any of this session's work — that's the next immediate action if the Founder wants this checkpointed before picking it back up.

2026-07-17 addendum — manual path cleanup synced across files

The Founder manually re-edited ../../brand/ventures/digital-products/exports/b3-mark-navy.svg in Inkscape (per its own inkscape:version metadata) to clean up issues in the two melting-corner paths: both paths were redrawn/smoothed, the bar/dot coordinates were adjusted to match, and the two filler <rect> elements described in attempt 3's step 4 (added to paper over a hairline trace-noise gap) were removed as no longer needed. Still the same overall attempt-3 shape and still unapproved — this was a geometry clean-up of the existing candidate, not a new iteration or Founder sign-off.

Per the Founder's instruction, that navy file's pathing was treated as the baseline and propagated (flattening the Inkscape file's transform="translate(30)" group offset into absolute coordinates, to keep the master/white files in their existing non-Inkscape, no-group-transform convention): - ../../brand/ventures/digital-products/source/b3-mark.svg (master) — data-stream group updated to match; header comment's step 4 marked superseded with a pointer to this note. - ../../brand/ventures/digital-products/exports/b3-mark-white.svg — data-stream group updated to match, with a short sync note added to its header.

The four raster exports (b3-mark-{navy,white}-{256,1024}.png) were then re-rendered from the updated SVGs via scripts/gimp_render_svg.py (GIMP 3.2.4), so all seven files (2 SVG + 4 PNG + master) are back in sync. Visual check of the 1024px navy render: the melting-corner shapes are smooth with no seam gap, consistent with the Founder's cleanup intent.

python scripts/check.py: passing after this sync (2026-07-17).

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