Skip to content

Wordmark Lockups — Devonshire Digital LLC & Devonside Labs — Work Plan

Objective

Design and build production wordmark lockups (mark + brand name) for both Devonshire Digital LLC and Devonside Labs, sharing a common typeface per the Founder's explicit direction, and record the resulting decisions.

Scope

  • Interactive review of lockup candidates (case, orientation, single- vs. two-line text, text alignment) using the real approved mark vectors and a real embedded Montserrat Medium — not flattened mockups — so the Founder could judge legibility and proportion directly rather than from my description of it.
  • Iterating the review artifact in two rounds based on Founder feedback: first a case/orientation comparison (8 candidates), then — once ALL CAPS was confirmed — a single-line vs. two-line comparison with three alignment treatments (16 candidates), which surfaced a real finding (see Risks) rather than being purely decorative.
  • Building the four Founder-selected combinations as production vector files: glyphs outlined to paths via fontTools (no live font dependency), matching the standalone marks' own convention.
  • Recording the shared-typeface decision as a 2026-07-17 amendment to DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002 (per the Founder's explicit instruction to append there rather than draft a new ADR), and recording both marks' lockup candidates in their respective brand-assets.md registers.

Out of scope

  • Founder approval of the four production files themselves — the treatment (case, orientation, alignment) is Founder-selected from the interactive review, but the outlining step (live font → hand-built vector paths) is a new technical step that hasn't had its own visual sign-off yet. Tracked as the open decision below, not assumed.
  • Color palette and any further typography decisions (weights/sizes for body copy, captions, etc.) beyond the wordmark's Montserrat Medium — both remain open per each brand's brand-assets.md.
  • PNG raster exports of the lockups at a full size matrix (256/1024, matching the standalone marks) — only a single reference-size navy PNG per lockup was produced, for visual verification. A fuller export matrix can be produced on request once the vector files are approved.

Applicable authority

Files expected to change

  • brand/company/source/d-mark-lockup-{horizontal,stacked}.svg (new masters). Done.
  • brand/company/exports/d-mark-lockup-{horizontal,stacked}-{navy,white}.svg (new exports). Done.
  • brand/company/exports/d-mark-lockup-{horizontal,stacked}-navy-400.png (new, verification-only). Done.
  • brand/ventures/digital-products/source/b3-mark-lockup-{horizontal,stacked}.svg (new masters). Done.
  • brand/ventures/digital-products/exports/b3-mark-lockup-{horizontal,stacked}-{navy,white}.svg (new exports). Done.
  • brand/ventures/digital-products/exports/b3-mark-lockup-{horizontal,stacked}-navy-400.png (new, verification-only). Done.
  • docs/company/brand-assets.md (Typography section updated; new Wordmark lockup subsection; Asset register rows added). Done.
  • ventures/digital-products/docs/brand-assets.md (same treatment). Done.
  • ventures/digital-products/docs/decisions/DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002-mark-shares-devonshire-d-geometry.md (2026-07-17 amendment appended, recording the shared-typeface decision). Done.

Assumptions

  • The Founder's selection from the interactive review — Devonshire horizontal: two-line left; Devonshire stacked: two-line justified; Devonside horizontal: single line; Devonside stacked: single line — is treated as the final design decision. The remaining open item is sign-off on the specific vector-outlined rendering, not re-opening the design choice itself.
  • "Same typeface family is enough" (Founder, verbatim) is read as: both brands use Montserrat Medium for their wordmark lockups, with no additional typographic differentiation (weight, tracking, case) between them — differentiation is carried entirely by each mark's own decorative field (squares vs. data-stream), per the Founder's explicit "I wouldn't worry about differentiation too much."
  • Cap-height/gap/tracking ratios (documented in each production SVG's header comment) are treated as the working spec going forward for any future lockup variant (e.g. a favicon-style composite), not just this specific deliverable.

Risks

  • The two-line "justified" treatment does not generalize well: it reads fine for Devonshire ("DEVONSHIRE" / "DIGITAL LLC" are naturally close in width) but stretches "LABS" into "L A B S" when tried against "DEVONSIDE" (9 vs. 4 letters) — this is exactly why the Founder chose single-line for Devonside rather than a two-line/justified treatment there. Flagging so a future reader doesn't try to "make it consistent" by forcing two-line-justified onto Devonside Labs — that was tried, shown, and correctly rejected.
  • The four production files are vector-outlined (fontTools SVGPathPen) reconstructions of what the Founder saw as live browser text in the review artifact. The layout math (cap-height scale factor, tracking, justify-width-matching) was implemented independently of the browser CSS and should produce the same visual result, but has not been pixel-diffed against the review artifact — only visually spot-checked via rendered PNG. Founder review of the final files is the mitigation, not skipped.

Validation plan

  • Visual comparison of each production SVG (rendered to PNG via scripts/gimp_render_svg.py) against the interactive review artifact's corresponding candidate. Done for all four; all match the confirmed treatment.
  • python scripts/check.py after all doc updates. Done, passing.
  • No unittest discover tests impact expected (asset/doc-only change).

Progress checklist

  • [x] Build interactive review artifact, round 1 (case × orientation, 8 candidates); fix a default-centering/overflow bug found during review before sending.
  • [x] Founder confirms ALL CAPS.
  • [x] Build interactive review artifact, round 2 (single-line vs. two-line × 3 alignments, 16 candidates); fix a card-overflow bug found during review before sending.
  • [x] Founder selects final treatment per brand/orientation.
  • [x] Build four production vector lockup SVGs (fontTools glyph outlining).
  • [x] Render verification PNGs; visually confirmed against Founder's selections.
  • [x] Append shared-typeface amendment to DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002.
  • [x] Update both brand-assets.md registers (candidate rows, not approved).
  • [x] Run python scripts/check.py; passing.
  • [x] Founder sign-off on the four production files' rendered vector output — approved 2026-07-17.
  • [x] Flip both brand-assets.md registers' new rows to approved; update DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002's amendment wording from "pending" to approved.

Decisions required

  • ~~Founder review of the four production lockup files.~~ Resolved 2026-07-17: approved.
  • Whether a fuller PNG export matrix (matching the standalone marks' 256/1024 convention) is wanted for the lockups, or whether the single 400px-tall verification PNG per lockup is sufficient until a specific use case (e.g. a deployed asset) needs a particular size — not yet requested.

Handoff notes

All four production lockup files are approved (2026-07-17) and committed. Both brand-assets.md registers and DD-DIGPROD-ADR-0002's amendment reflect final approval. Remaining open item: no fuller PNG export matrix has been produced for the lockups (only one 400px-tall navy verification PNG per file) — produce on request when a specific deployed use case needs a particular size.

Report an issue about this page