BRAND IDENTITY GUIDELINES

THE SOUNDZIPPER BRAND.

This document defines the major usage guidelines for Soundzippers visual identity. It should be seen as SOUNDZIPPER BRAND GUIDELINES 2013 Soundzipper All rights reserved All collaborators working with the Soundzipper brand The current version of this document has been published September 6 2013. To download the most recent version of these guidelines, please refer to Soundzippers corporate website. The Soundzipper brand and guidelines have been designed in 2013 by Eduardo Nunes, in collaboration with Soundzippers inhouse design team, under supervision from its creative director, Tah Wei Hoon. Because these guidelines are subject to change over time, we also advise that you seek to download the most up-to-date version of these guidelines from Soundzippers website. 3 should seek to always adhere to the guidelines set forth by this document. However, because our company is a living thing, that we do expect to evolve, we know this book may fail to account for all possible future use cases. Whenever that happens, we ask that you please refer to the last section of this document, where instructions on how to proceed in those situations are provided. the ultimate resource for designers and collaborators looking to make use of our brand, as it allows everyone to take part in shaping the values and principles the company exudes to its current and future partners.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.
3 4 6 6 8 11 12 15 16 17 20 FONT WEIGHT AND TRACKING  22 READY-MADES  IN GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR.  KEEPING IT BALANCED  ACOUSTICS ILLUSTRATED.  ILLUSTRATION GUIDELINES  24 26 28 30 32 BODY COPY AND SUBHEADINGS  49 ONE MORE FOR ADDED CLASS  53 MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL.  SLOGANS & SUBHEADINGS  PROTECTION AREAS  MINIMUM ACCEPTABLE SIZE  USE OVER BACKGROUNDS  WHAT NOT TO DO  EXAMPLE APPLICATIONS  GETTING IN TOUCH.  56 58 60 62 63 64 68 80

THE SOUNDZIPPER BRAND.  TABLE OF CONTENTS.  INTRODUCING SOUNDZIPPER.  HOW DID WE GET HERE?  HERES TO A BRAND NEW FACE  AND A MATCHING TYPE(FACE)  ALL TOGETHER NOW  BUILDING OUR LOGO.  COMMON VARIATIONS  CONSTRUCTION RULES  MARK STROKE WEIGHT 

BEHAVIOR ON BACKGROUNDS  36 COMBINING ILLUSTRATIONS  ILLUSTRATION ARCHIVE  SAY IT IN WRITTING.  CORPORATE FONT  38 43 45 46

INTRODUCING SOUNDZIPPER.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Soundzippers logo consists of an abstraction of two different types of sound waves (a sine and a sawtooth), which resemble, respectively, an uppercase S and a Z (as in SoundZipper... get it?). These two shapes are superimposed and enclosed together in an open circle.

Sine

Triangle

Square

Sawtooth

HERES TO A BRAND NEW FACE

Its around the combination of these three elements that Soundzippers new visual identity is built: a strictly geometric shape, inspired by traditional visual depictions of sound waves, that come together to form a stencil-friendly and unique seal. Although it uses single-width strokes, the generous spacing on the inside allows for very flexible uses: the strokes weight can be freely adjusted (but hey, be reasonable!) according to the features of each specific medium for more on how to do that, you can skip a few pages ahead.

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AND A MATCHING TYPE(FACE)

Our font says just as much about our company as

MAKING LIFE SOUND BETTER.

our logo does. Thats why weve chosen, as our main corporate typeface, a fresh, nocompromise, modern sans-serif, designed by Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, two of the worlds most renowned living typographers. Soundzipper, please meet the extremely charming Verlag a very complete and fine-tuned family of fonts, suitable mainly for large type, in both digital and print use. Its what well be using for our logotype, titles and very big applications (like the one right there to the left, see?). Dont worry, though, it can serve other purposes as well tread lightly, be sure to follow our advice and youll be just fine! EXTRA LIGHT EXTRA LIGHT ITALIC LIGHT LIGHT ITALIC BOOK BOOK ITALIC BOLD BOLD ITALIC BLACK BLACK ITALIC VERLAG FAMILY

11 VERLAG BOOK & BLACK

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ALL TOGETHER NOW

Because both the type and logo are essentially geometric-based and present little to no stroke variation, the final lock-up makes for a fairly balanced composition. Considering how spacious the mark is, weve decided to loosen the texts tracking quite a bit, to allow the composition to breathe freely. This ensures the text is perfectly readable, even though its substantially smaller than the mark itself. The final, official logotype does not include any slogans, but fear not: youll find instructions on how to add subtext to the composition (Slogans & Subheadings section, page 58). Read on... Tracking is the name given to the space in between the various characters in a word.

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BUILDING OUR LOGO.

Right now, you should be saying thats all fine and dandy, but how do I use this thing?. Its a good question but, really, who says things like fine and dandy anymore?! Fear not, though, our dear idiomatically obsolete friend, were here to help! We understand a good logo should stand its ground on any occasion, regardless of medium, scale, context and orientation. Thats why were not just offering you logo variations for the most popular use cases, we want to teach you how to account for those unforeseen situations, when you just have to take matters into your own hands. Simply follow our lead and youll be applying the logo blindfolded in no time. Just remember: in case something goes wrong, be quick to hide all evidence you tried and politely ask someone else do it for you. Just kidding, please do not attempt to use our logo while blindfolded.

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COMMON VARIATIONS
Before we start, lets list the main variables we can manipulate in our logo: these are features you can tweak, according to the needs of each specific use case. Although there are many more possible variations, well just take into account the ones you can actually mess around with. If you thought of an awesome tweak that would make the logo heaps better, but it isnt accounted for in this list, you can safely assume we dont want you to do it, so please dont. Some of these variations are, as youll learn, linked together. For example, everytime you mess around with the logos scale, it might be a good idea to make sure the strokes weight is adjusted accordingly. As a general rule, we could say our logotype has two different versions: horizontal and vertical, the first one of which comes in two flavors: large and small. To design one from scratch, we start out by defining the size of the type, and then scale and position the mark accordingly, following these rules... TEXT SIZE FONT WEIGHT POSITION TRACKING POSSIBLE TYPE VARIATIONS SCALE STROKE WEIGHT POSITION POSSIBLE LOGO VARIATIONS

CONSTRUCTION RULES
5x x

8y

LARGE HORIZONTAL LOCK-UP Marks diameter should be 8x the height of the capital E; The horizontal space between mark and type should be 5x the width of the capital E; Both elements vertical centers should be aligned across an horizontal axis. 17

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8y

2x

8y

3y

3y y

SMALL HORIZONTAL LOCK-UP Marks diameter should be 3x the height of the capital E; The horizontal space between mark and type should be 2x the width of the capital E; Both elements vertical centers should be aligned across an horizontal axis.

VERTICAL LOCK-UP Marks diameter should be 8x the height of the capital E; The vertical space between mark and type should be 3x the height of the capital E; Both elements horizontal centers should be aligned across a vertical axis. 19

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MARK STROKE WEIGHT

Although you can change the marks stroke weight, we reccomend that you do this sparingly, and only if faced with no other choice is firing the designer completely out of the question? Just kidding, we can all get along! Weve provided with you an expanded vector version of the mark, that you can freely scale up and down (within the logos own scalability limits, remember) without having to worry about anything else. For some cases, however, you might need to adjust the strokes weight to account for specific features of the medium (e.g. thermal printers or low pixel-density screens). For these cases, youll find an Adobe Illustrator file featuring a single-stroke version you can adjust. The chart to the right shows the range of acceptable stroke weights for a mark with 20x20mm. To calculate the equivalent to these stroke weights (STROKE, in pt) for a mark with any other size (SIZE, in mm), it just takes some basic math: SIZE x STROKE 20 These look alright! Go ahead and use them, no one will come chase after you. These could do the trick, but youll have to be careful. Make sure the final reproduction size and the mediums features will not distort the shape (you should, for example, make sure the final medium can handle really thin strokes, or that both halves of the circumference dont touch each other). What were you thinking?! These are definitely NOT OK! 21 The expanded vector version uses closed shapes, instead of single strokes, for the mark. This means whenever you scale it, the strokes weight scales accordingly.

0.5pt

0.75pt

1pt

2pt

3pt

4pt

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FONT WEIGHT AND TRACKING

We really shouldnt be saying this, but weve met more than twenty pages ago, so what the hell: there will be times when youll want to trash this logo completely. Thats just the way it is. Weve tried to think about all potential use case scenarios, but were only human ...or are we?! Just kidding, we are... so its more than likely that, sometimes, those large spaces in between all of the letters just seem like a terrible idea. Like, for example, when youre trying to cram it into a tiny space on the bottom of some poster youre designing were sure its turning out really nice, by the way! Well, we wouldnt want to just go ahead and destroy your

wonderful work, so heres the deal: if youre really, really cautious with our baby, you can go ahead and tweak the tracking a little bit and, if you really feel like theres absolutely no other way, you can even bring the text weight up or down a little bit. Of course, there are a few rules. First of all, you cant do this for really large applications, or situations where the logo is being shown for the first time or any application in which the Soundzipper logo plays a central role (e.g. business cards, social media profiles, our own website, etc.) Secondly, you should only manipulate the tracking, and not the spacing between each individual character (also known as kerning). And, finally, to ensure the final result is within the limits of brand recognition, you should only use combinations of font weight + tracking within the following chart:

VERLAG BOOK

VERLAG BOOK

VERLAG BOLD

VERLAG BOLD

VERLAG BLACK

VERLAG BLACK

120 140

160 180 200

120N D SZ O IP UP NE D RZ I P P E SR OUND SZ OIU PN PE DR ZIPPER SOU S Z O IP UP N ED R Z I P P ES RO U N D SOU 140 N D SZ O IP UP N ED RZ I P P E SO SZ OIU PN PD ER ZIPPER SR OUND SZ OI U PP NE D R ZIPPE R UND SOU 160 N D SZ O IU PP NE D RZ I P P E SR OUND SZ OIU PN PE DR Z I P PS EO RUND SO ZI U PN PD ER ZIPPER SO ZI U PN PD EZ RIPPER SOU SZ OI U PP NE DR Z I P PS EO R UND SO Z IU PN PD ER Z I P PS EO RU N D 180 N D SOU SZ OIU PN PE DR Z I P PS EO RUND SO Z IU PN PD ER ZIPP SE O RU N D SO ZU IP N PD EZ RI P P E R 200 N D

TRACKING

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READY-MADES
Because we dont want your head to explode everytime you need to use our logo, weve put together a set of readymades you can safely use in the most common situations. Depending on where you got this document from, youll probably find these files attached if not, please contact us, and well be happy to send any files you need your way. This works pretty much like a mail order catalog: just have a look at these logos and, if it looks like any of them fits your needs, feel free to go ahead and use it. Please be reminded, however, that you cannot tweak them in any way (except, maybe, adjusting the scale ever so slightly, obviously making sure not to change the aspect ratio), and that their use must still adhere to the rules defined further down on this document. VERTICAL Youll find our contacts in the last couple of pages of this document. WHEN TO USE > Total logo width is between 200px and 400px OR it is not possible to ensure a sufficient amount of white space around the logo. WHEN TO USE > Total logo width is smaller than 100px. REF. HS REF. HXS

SOUNDZIPPER

HORIZONTAL REF. VL REF. HL WHEN TO USE > WHEN TO USE > Total logo width is larger than 400px AND the brand protection area is at least equal to the diameter of the circumference. Total logo width is larger than 100px AND the brand protection area is at least equal to the radius of the circumference. WHEN TO USE > Total logo height is smaller than 100px OR it is not possible to ensure a sufficient amount of white space around the logo. 25 REF. VS

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IN GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR.
Our brand new corporate color scheme draws inspiration from what has long been our legacy: brown and beige. Its worked fine for us in the past, because it portrays us as a serious, dedicated and very professional bunch of people. So were keeping that. But because were also fun and easy-going, and because we truly love what we do, weve introduced the wonderful, bright yolky yellow youll find in the cover of this document and made it our main corporate color. We spent a good deal of time finding the color combination that we believed portrays our companys core values, so feel free to use any of these colours any way you like, when youre working our brand. If youre unsure, this very simple motto will help you in your journey: if it looks good, it probably is but, when in doubt, you can always ask around. It doesnt rhyme, but its true nonetheless.

YOLK YELLOW PANTONE: 7548 C HEX : #FFC600 R: 255 G: 198 B: 0 C: 0 M: 22 Y: 100 K: 0

SULFUR BEIGE PANTONE: 50/50 7548 C + White HEX : #FFF0A6 R: 255 G: 240 B: 166 C: 1 M: 2 Y: 43 K: 0

LIGHT IVORY PANTONE: 70/30 4545 C + White HEX : #E3D9BA R: 227 G: 217 B: 186 C: 11 M: 11 Y: 28 K: 0

CLAY BROWN PANTONE: 7505 C HEX : #83603F R: 131 G: 96 B: 63 C: 40 M: 57 Y: 78 K: 25

DARK NUT BROWN PANTONE: 7533 C HEX : #483627 R: 72 G: 54 B: 39 C: 53 M: 64 Y: 76 K: 57

PURE BLACK HEX : #000000 R: 0 G: 0 B: 0 C: 70 M: 50 Y: 30 K: 100

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KEEPING IT BALANCED

CLAY BROWN 10% DARK NUT BROWN 15% Good for subtle text highlighting, Good choice as a complementary color to yellow highlights. especially on white backgrounds.

Heres the deal: if were to enforce our brand through color-use, we need to make sure we keep some level of hierarchy. This means we need to make sure certain colors are regarded as really important, and should be used whenever possible, while others provide ways for us to introduce balance and contrast, but should be used sparingly. To help you make sense of all of this, we created this useful infographic, thats supposed to help you understand the relation between these different colors . The bigger the circle, the more you should try to use its color in our visual communication. The closer the circles, the more you can combine their colors. BLACK 25% First choice for text color and illustration stroke. Great for backgrounds and as first choice for highlighting text and titles. Number one choice for illustration detail highlighting. YOLK YELLOW 30%

SULFUR BEIGE 10% Nice to use as a light background LIGHT IVORY 10% Potential choice for background highlighting. for highlighted areas. It should go without saying, but whites our main choice for backgrounds especially if you intend to use text. 29

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ACOUSTICS ILLUSTRATED.
Were in the business of making rooms sound absolutely flawless. Its something were incredibly passionate about, and something we really know how to do well. Unfortunately, reaching out to our customers through sound-based communication isnt always practical, so were going for the next best thing illustration. Because ours is such a complex craft, weve had our share of hard times trying to explain it to people at parties and family gatherings alike. So were introducing a level of visual communication thats crisp and clear, without getting overly technical. Please meet Soundzippers clear, striking, quasi-metaphorical visual grammar.

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ILLUSTRATION GUIDELINES
This is fairly simple: illustrations should always be strippeddown depictions of real objects, having to do with whatever it is were trying to depict. The connections established between the matter in question and the illustrations should be clear enough as to be immediately understood by the target audience, but not blatantly obvious (e.g. if you need to depict social networking, a like hand is nice, a network of computers is ok if slightly meh , a collage of social networks logos is a major no) or technical depictions (e.g. actual audiowaves extracted from a digital sound file to represent sound). If you need one rule of thumb, this would be it: simple, stripped-down, duotone depictions of real-world objects used as simple metaphors, with clear relations to the subject matter. To make it even clearer, lets have a look at some examples. These are all actual illustrations were using for several communication materials, and are all included as fully editable vector files, that you can use as visual reference and even as starting point for your own creations. Spelling out any word and calling it an illustration is, of course, not ok!

HEADPHONES Universal symbol for studio-quality audio and a tool under any audiophiles (i.e. our clients) belt.

No matter how complex the objects were depicting are, illustrations should always be completely flat and bidimensional. This means no shadows, blurs, bevels, reflections and absolutely no tridimensional views. 33

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SOUND MIXER A nice metaphor for sound treatment and equalization.

LIGHT BULB An acceptable (if slightly clich) metaphor for ideas and creativity in general. Black, mediumweight stroke, with white fill (even on white backgrounds).

Every object should have at least one detail in yolk yellow. Depending on the size of the object, more than one detail could be highlighted. As a general rule, between 5% to 10% of the entire object should have a yellow background. Make sure theres consistency in both form and size of all objects. This is particularly important for objects with curves. 35

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BEHAVIOR ON BACKGROUNDS
Illustrations will often be the most striking visual feature of our brand communication, so please make sure to only use them when its safe. And, in this case, the rule is simple: these can only be used on white or yolk yellow backgrounds no exceptions. When using them over yellow backgrounds, make sure the insides are filled with white.

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COMBINING ILLUSTRATIONS
Because sometimes one single illustration isnt enough, you can combine various objects into one massive illustration. We only need you to follow a couple of rules we know, we know, all these rules are really annoying, but please bear with us, were almost done.

1. DONT BE A SQUARE! If youre using more than two objects in the same illustration, try to include some with curves you know, to balance things out. So, while the illustration to the left is still pretty ok, wed like it better if it mixed things up a little bit, like the one on this page.

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2. GET A GRIP ON THAT SPACING Try not to leave objects randomly flying around on the page (or screen, mind you). Its better that you make everything tidier by having all of the objects equally spaced from each other. Check the mad spacing skills of the designer who put together the one to the right...

y 41

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ILLUSTRATION ARCHIVE
We hope these guidelines help you design your own objects, that seamlessly match our style, whenever you need to. However, keep in mind thats now always going to be the case! Lets say, for example, you needed an illustration of a microphone. Chances are someone needed a similar one in the past, and had to design it, so why not just reuse it? To make things easier for everyone, weve put together an illustration repository, from which you can download objects weve needed in the past, to use however you see fit. You can even upload your own, in case you really couldnt find that mic you were looking for... Access to the repository is, for obvious reasons, limited, so please contact Soundzippers graphics department and theyll be happy to set you up with a password to access our wonderful world of flat, yellow-ish acoustics. 3. SPICE IT UP JUST A LITTLE BIT To make things just that little bit more interesting, we suggest you consider adding these nice little shapes wherever you think they fit. Because they help disrupt the illustration symmetry, they ensure a more interesting composition. We dont want to shut your creativity down or anything, but we ran some tests and think circles and squares work best. 43 We feel this should almost go without saying, but here goes anyway: use of these illustrations is exclusively granted for the purpose of portraying Soundzippers brand within its own (or its partners) official communications. In fact, we even think reusing illustrations on different communication materials helps reinforce brand recognition, so dont feel bad about it...

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SOUND

SAY IT IN WRITTING.
Picture this: youre at a club, trying to make your way through the dancefloor, and you stumble into this guy dancing aimlessly in front of you. You want to ask him to move, but the musics really loud, so its hard to get to him. Youre not mad or anything, but youre probably gonna have to scream right at the guys ear, if you want him to even notice youre there. Now imagine youre in one of our own expertly designed, acoustically perfect rooms, and youre trying to say something to a friend sitting across the room. Anything slightly louder than a whisper will probably do the trick. Moral of the story is: different conditions call for different approaches. And thats as true for your tone of voice, as it is for our style of writing and typefaces. Thats why we have not one, but three different typefaces: so our brand can scream just as much as it can whisper. Dont take it literally screaming is rude.

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CORPORATE FONT
As you should know by know, Verlags our main corporate font. Its in our logo and in most of our printed communication (usually in the headings). You can safely use any of these weights, whenever you feel like they fit, as long as you make sure to match the font weight to their purpose and media do not use Extra Light with very small text, nor Black text for subheadings. As a rule of thumb, you should just stay away from italics altogether, but there is one exception: if you want to make one single word (or, at best, a couple) within a heading stand out, but you cant change the font weight, then its ok.

Crazy Fredrick bought many very exquisite opal jewels. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
Verlag Extra Light & Extra Light Italic

Verlag Light & Light Italic

Verlag Book & Book Italic

Verlag Bold & Bold Italic

Sixty zippers were quickly picked from the woven jute bag.

Sphinx of black quartz: judge my vow.

Verlag Black & Black Italic

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When using Verlag for headings, we think it works better if you use all caps, or capitalize sentences (not words). Were not just being picky: because Verlag has a relatively small x-height, mixing upper and lowercase a lot causes sentences to produce uneven shapes, that look unbalanced and, most of the time, require the brain to work harder to read the text. x-height is the value used to define the lower-case characters height, and is usually defined by the height of the lowercase x.

BODY COPY AND SUBHEADINGS

Despite being a charming and efficient modern sans, Verlag doesnt just work everywhere, so we need something else: a typeface for body copy, that works in print as it does on the Web, and that is balanced and readable at tiny sizes. For that, we chose Lato, an opensource sans-serif with a considerably larger x-height and a couple of features that make it quirky yet highly flexible. Use it for body copy, in print or on the Web. It can go up to relatively large sizes, but try not to use it for headings. Also, whenever possible, do not leave it all by itself; try to pair it up with one of our other typefaces.

Sixty Zippers Were Quickly Picked From the Woven Jute Bag
This is nasty. Theres a huge contrast between upper and lowercase characters heights, so stay away.

Sixty zippers were quickly picked from the woven jute bag
Thats nice. Theres a very tall capital S at the start, but the sentence is, overall, very balanced.

SIXTY QUICK ZIPPERS

For smaller sentences, or for very small uses, consider using all-caps. It looks good and makes for a very uniform outline. Keep in mind, however, that itll take up more space than a lower-cased sentence.

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections.

Lato Hairline

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As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly stay in place and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes. What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet within its four familiar walls. Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and spread outSamsa was a traveling salesmanhung the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty gilt frame.

Lato Light

Lato is a pretty nice fit for most informational text or body copy, and it could just as well be used for subheadings. Besides the very text youre reading (which is set in Lato Regular), here are some other examples, to get you going...

Lato Regular & Italic

THIS IS A HEADING
It works fine with this sub-heading
Nice contrast and hierarchy: heading is larger and Lato Bold & Bold Italic heavier than the sub-heading...

Verlag Black + Lato Italic

This is a heading
IT LOOKS KINDA AWFUL
Lato Black & Black Italic All messed up! Sub-heading is not only heavier than the heading, making it all-caps draws attention to it first, when it should be the other way around.

Verlag Light+ Lato Black

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As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

Lato Regular 12/18pt

ONE MORE FOR ADDED CLASS

It wont be often youll need a third font but, when you do, weve got your back covered with a classy, transitional serif called Playfair Display. Its tailored for screen-use, but that doesnt mean

This body copy looks real nifty. Its set in Lato Regular, with 1.5x spacing (in this case, 12pt spaced at 18pt).

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

Lato Regular 12/24pt

you cant occasionally use it in print. It shouldnt be used for small body copy or any body copy at all, for that matter. It shines as an occasional stylistically complement to the rationality of our sans serifs, and it can even be mixed and matched with them, if used carefully.

This one, spaced at 2x (12/24pt) barely holds itself together. Notice how the sidenote is starting to mess up the composition. This is acceptable, just as long as elements around the text are not closer to it than lines are between each other.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
Setting text with any line-spacing below 1.5x is definitely a major no.

Lato Regular 12/12pt

Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil Queen and Jack.

Playfair Display Regular & Italic

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Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil Queen and Jack. Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil Queen and Jack.

Use Playfair sparingly, and only in very specific use Playfair Display Bold & Bold Italic cases quotations, large slogans, headings or tiny details come to mind.

SOUNDZIPPER

Verlag Light + Playfair Display Black

Making life sound better.

Playfair Display Black & Black Italic A balanced lock-up of our name and slogan. Because the fonts have contrasting features and weights, they complement each other nicely.

TIPS & TRICKS

One lone ampersand set in Playfair, in an otherwise Playfair Display Regular, Bold & Black Verlag text, can make all the difference, adding a dash of unexpected sophistication.

Verlag Black + Playfair Display Black

&&&

HERES SOUNDZIPPER
Ouch! We did say contrast is nice, but this is just ridiculous. Tone it down a little bit, please. Also, dont use Playfair in all-caps especially in italic! Ugh...

Verlag Black + Playfair Italic

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MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL.

We understand all of the stuff weve covered so far may be a bit overwhelming, so allow us to try and make things easier on you. This section will hopefully help you make sense of all the information weve been bombing you with, so you can go and do amazing things with our brand. Besides laying out the DOs and DONTs, were going to put the brand in context, so you can see how all of this is actually used in real-world scenarios. Well even throw in a couple of application examples, so you can see how weve done it in the past. Make us proud!

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SLOGANS & SUBHEADINGS

Wed prefer it if you didnt combine slogans with our logo, but if you really need to, you still can.

Making life sound better

Making life sound better

Dont set type next to any of the smaller versions of the logo, no matter how much you want (or need) to.

Slogan should be set in Lato Italic, at a rate of 2/3 the main face (in the example, Soundzipper is set at 24pt and slogan at 16pt) and spaced at 1.5x the height of a capital M set in Lato. Same rules apply for the vertical version. Making life sound better
SOUNDZIPPER

Making life sound better

Making life sound better

SOUNDZIPPER
Making life sound better

Making life sound better

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PROTECTION AREAS
Our brand is sensitive, so wed appreciate it if you could give it some space to breath. When using it next to text, images or other logos, you can make sure ours is comfortable by keeping a safe distance. And the rules are simple: you should keep a distance equivalent to the marks radius from the outermost point on each side, regardless of the logo version youre using.

LOGO

LOGO

LOGO

LOGO

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MINIMUM ACCEPTABLE SIZE

Whenever space is extremely limited, you can scale down the logotype to its minimum acceptable size. We reccomend, however, that you seek to use it at larger sizes whenever possible.

USE OVER BACKGROUNDS

When using the logo over photo or color backgrounds, always make sure our logos perfectly readable.

SOUNDZIPPER

20mm 60px

34mm 80px

If the photo has such a hue and contrast variation, that you cant seem to find a way to add our logo, you may add a background frame, at least the size of the logotypes protection area (see page 60).

Please bear in mind that, at such a small scale, you should always use the S (REF. VS) version of the vertical lockup and the XS version (REF. HXS) of the horizontal lockup. If you have no idea what were talking about, please refer to the Ready Mades section on page 24. 63

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WHAT NOT TO DO
Were fairly flexible with our brand, but theres some stuff you simply shouldnt do.

soundzipper
Do not set our name in any font other than Verlag (not even our two other official fonts) nor in lower-case.

soundzipper

Do not stretch our logo or change its proportions in any way. If you need to change the size, make sure it scales proportionally.

Do not mix colors; logo and type should be the exact same color at all times.

Do not add drop shadows, bevels or any other type of

soundzipper

special effect to our logo. Flats just fine, thank you. 65

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66

Do not use a logotype scale ratio not covered under Construction Rules (page 17).

Do not mix type and mark in any way.

Do not rotate, skew or otherwise distort the logo shape or the type in any way.

Do not position our logo within rules or frames.

Because orientation is important to decoding the logo, Do not create an outline around the logo or type.

soundzipper

try not to use it on its side.

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EXAMPLE APPLICATIONS
Seeing our logo in place, and in context, is probably the best way to understand what all of these rules and reccomendations amount to. Use these as inspiration, or in case you just need that extra push to get you going.

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< PREVIOUS SPREAD Left: Envelope Right: Custom business cards

THIS SPREAD > Right: Custom business cards

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< THIS SPREAD Left: Envelope & Letterhead

NEXT SPREAD > Brand guidelines book, business card, letterhead and folder

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< THIS SPREAD Left: Use on social media platform

NEXT SPREAD > Use on corporate website

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GETTING IN TOUCH.
GENERAL ENQUIRIES If you got this far without skimming though the document too much, you should be prepared to tackle the challenge of using our visual identity. However, because there will always be those cases when you cant tell whether some idea youve just come up with is ok or not, you can be sure well be around to help you out. Just get in touch, using one of the contacts to the right, and well do our best to work through your doubts and suggestions together. We truly respect and appreciate anyone whos willing to tackle the challenge of helping shape our companys future, and were eager to see what you make of it. Thank you! Tah Wei Hoon Soundzipper Creative Director tahwei@soundzipper.com Eduardo Nunes Visual Identity Designer helpme@eduardonunes.me (351) 93 480 81 91 GRAPHICS DEPARTMENT (65) 6509 3529 We hereby award you the honorary, and very fictional, title of Soundzipper Brand Expert. 8 Ubi Road 2 Zervex Industrial Building, #08-03 Singapore, 408538 acoustics@soundzipper.com

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