01 · Primary mark
Primary mark
Use almost everywhere. App icons ≥ 64px, favicon at 32px+, footer signoff, product UI.
Brand book · Issue 14 supplement
One mark, measured out.
A lowercase italic h, set on a carpenter's-rule baseline. One letter for home, one rule for the workshop. The center tick rises through the stem like a plumb line. Everything else is a treatment of that.
No. 01 / The mark
Italic Fraunces opsz 144 · SOFT 80
Plumb tick aligns with the stem
Five-tick rule 1·2·4·2·1 grading
Why this
Editorial publications need a mark that survives at favicon size and still feels like an imprint at large. A single italic letterform — set in our display face — carries our voice without leaning on illustration.
The carpenter's-rule beneath quietly anchors the brand to its workshop motif. Three colors, two strokes, zero gradients. It reads as set in lead, not designed in Figma.
Construction
- LetterFraunces italic 380
- Optical sizeopsz 144
- SOFT axis80
- Rule stroke0.9 / 1.2 weight
- Clear space≥ 0.5× h-height
No. 02 / The system
Five marks. Pick the right one.
02 · Imprint
Imprint seal
The publisher's stamp. Use for the masthead, OG share cards, business cards, and ceremonial moments.
03 · Wordmark
The Home Renovation Blog
Vol. 01 · The Workshop Journal
Wordmark
The publication name in Fraunces with the volume eyebrow. Use without the mark in text-heavy contexts.
04 · Horizontal lockup
The Home Renovation Blog
Vol. 01 · The Workshop Journal
Horizontal lockup
Mark on the left, wordmark on the right. The default for site headers and email signatures.
05 · Stacked lockup
The Home Renovation Blog
Vol. 01 · The Workshop Journal
Stacked lockup
Mark above wordmark. Use for posters, hero plates, and any square-ish framing.
No. 03 / Color treatments
Four legal pairings.
Navy on cream
Default
Terracotta on cream
Editorial accent
Cream on navy
Inverted / footer
Mustard on navy
Postmark / rare
Anything else is off-system. Especially: no pure black on white (too cold for our paper), no mustard on cream (too low contrast), no terracotta on navy (the two warm colors fight).
No. 04 / Favicon
Sixteen pixels of presence.
The mark survives at 16×16. At small sizes the italic letterform reads as a friendly silhouette while the rule disappears into a single mark — which is the right behavior.
16×16
24×24
32×32
48×48
64×64
In context — browser tabs
The Home Renovation Blog ✕
Inbox · Gmail ✕
Docs · Workspace ✕
←→⟳ thehomerenovationblog.com
No. 07 / In the world
Off-screen, on paper.
App icon
iOS / Android · 1024×1024
Maya Ellsworth
Editor in Chief
The Home Renovation Blog
maya@
Editor's card
3.5 × 2 in · matte uncoated
Wax-stamp use
Imprint · ceremonial
Saturday letter · 14
You bought a whole house. You can definitely change a light fixture.
— The Editors
The Home Renovation Blog
Vol. 01 · The Workshop Journal
From the editor's desk
Sat · MMXXVI
Sat · MMXXVI
Friend —
This week's letter is short. Replacing a sink trap. The kind of project that takes twenty minutes when you know which way the threads go, and four hours when you don't.
— Maya
thehomerenovationblog.com
No. 08 / Do & don't
Treat it like letterpress.
Do
- 01Use the mark in one color at a time. The system handles colorways; the mark itself stays mono.
- 02Keep at least half an h-height of clear space on every side. Never crowd it with other marks.
- 03Use the Imprint where ceremony matters — masthead, share cards, business cards.
- 04Drop the rule beneath the h at sizes ≤ 24px. Below that it reads as noise.
Don't
- 01Don't outline, drop-shadow, or 3D-extrude the mark. It's set in lead, not floating.
- 02Don't rotate the wordmark or kern it manually. The Fraunces opsz settings already do that work.
- 03Don't pair the mark with mustard on cream or terracotta on navy. Use one of the four legal pairings.
- 04Don't recreate the h with another italic serif. Fraunces specifically — the SOFT axis is the personality.
— The Editors
One avatar across every feed.
Avatars use the stacked variant on cream over a hairline ring — recognisable whether circle-cropped (X, IG, Pinterest) or rounded-square (LinkedIn, app stores).
Patient guides for first-time homeowners. No gatekeeping. No power-tool bravado. Saturday letter on Substack.