SS-GALLERY · Aperture · Brand Guidelines

01

The direction

What this identity claims, and where it stops working.

The mark contains no letters at all. Six blades and a hexagonal opening — the one part every camera in the bag has in common — drawn at a single stroke weight so it holds from a stadium banner down to a favicon. The trade is deliberate: the studio gives up its initials in exchange for a symbol nobody has to read.

Precise
Technical
Calm
Optical

Tone of voice

State the settings. Name the lens. Explain the choice, not the feeling.
Numbers before adjectives: 400 mm, 1/2000, f/2.8, ISO 1600.
Answer questions about method in full. The craft is the pitch.
No superlatives. If the frame is good, it does not need to be called good.

Use this direction for

Gear-literate audiences: clubs with in-house media, agencies, other photographers
Workshops, teaching, technical write-ups
Neutral third-party work where the brand should not pick a side
Digital-first delivery, apps, portals, favicons

Do not use it for

Markets already saturated with camera and aperture icons — check the competitors first
Contexts where the mark sits next to real camera hardware and reads as a manufacturer
Audiences who need to remember the name, not the symbol — it carries no initials

02

The logo

Four arrangements of one mark. Everything else is a variation of these.

Primary lockup, on the brand surface. This is the default.

Primary lockup, on paper. Identical geometry, inverted values.

Horizontal lockup — for wide, shallow spaces: headers, signatures, banners.

Monogram — avatars, favicons, watermarks, embroidery, stamps.

03

Construction & clear space

The geometry the mark is built on, and the space it needs to hold.

Construction grid. The module is X/2, where X is a quarter of the monogram height. Every terminal, gap and rule lands on this grid.

Clear space. X on every side, measured from the outermost point of the mark — not from the edge of an export file.

Measurement	Definition	Value in this mark
X	Monogram height ÷ 4	75.0 units at the drawn size
Clear space	X on all four sides	25% of mark height
Monogram ratio	Width : height	1.00 : 1
Optical centre	Vertical placement in a square	52% from the top, not 50%

Nothing enters the clear-space box: no type, no rule, no image edge, no other logo. When the mark sits in a corner, the box defines the margin.

04

Versions

One file per situation. Pick by surface and by reproduction method.

Full colour · darkDefault. Brand surface or photography.

Full colour · lightPaper, white UI, light photography.

One colour · whiteSingle-ink print, embroidery, etching, video overlay.

One colour · blackFax-grade reproduction, newsprint, stamps, legal documents.

Monogram · darkAvatar, favicon, watermark, badge.

Monogram · one colourFoil, deboss, laser, single-needle embroidery.

05

Minimum sizes

The point where each asset stops reproducing, and what replaces it.

Primary lockup

260 px — comfortable

170 px — minimum digital

120 px — below minimum, descriptor must be dropped

Monogram

96 px

48 px

32 px — minimum

Asset	Minimum digital	Minimum print	Below that
Primary lockup	170 px wide	32 mm wide	Use the horizontal lockup
Horizontal lockup	200 px wide	40 mm wide	Use the monogram
Monogram	32 px	10 mm	Nothing. Do not go smaller.
Embroidery	—	30 mm	Single-colour monogram only

06

Backgrounds

Approved surfaces, and the contrast floor every placement must clear.

Brand surfaceyes

Paperyes

Brand colourwhite only

Pure blackwhite only

Over photography: place the mark only where the underlying image is even in tone. If it is not, add a scrim rather than moving to a second colour.

Contrast floor

Every placement must clear 4.5:1. Measured in this system:

Ink on brand surface	17.5 : 1
Ink on paper	17.5 : 1
White on brand colour	5.0 : 1

The descriptor line is the first thing to fail. When it does, drop it rather than enlarging it.

07

Misuse

Eight things that will happen if this page is not read.

Do not stretchScale proportionally. Hold Shift.

Do not squashVertical distortion breaks the stroke contrast.

Do not rotateThe lockup sits on the horizontal. Always.

Do not recolourOnly the palette on the colour page is approved.

Do not add effectsNo shadows, bevels, glows or gradients on the mark.

Do not redrawNever hollow it, thicken it or thin it. Use the supplied file.

SPONSOR

Do not crowdRespect the clear space. Nothing enters the box.

Do not drop contrastMinimum 4.5:1 against its background.

08

Colour

Five colours, fixed values, and the proportion they hold across a campaign.

Optical Black Primary surface. The mark is a light source on it.

HEX: #0C0E0D
RGB: 12, 14, 13
CMYK: 14, 0, 7, 95
Pantone: Black 6 C

Bright The blades, the wordmark. Slightly cool, never warm.

HEX: #F2F4F1
RGB: 242, 244, 241
CMYK: 1, 0, 1, 4
Pantone: Cool Gray 1 C

Lens Green The brand colour. The rim, and the descriptor line.

HEX: #3F7B55
RGB: 63, 123, 85
CMYK: 49, 0, 31, 52
Pantone: 348 C

Steel Technical text: settings, EXIF, captions, UI labels.

HEX: #7E8A84
RGB: 126, 138, 132
CMYK: 9, 0, 4, 46
Pantone: 444 C

Focus Amber Confirmation only — focus lock, live, delivered. Under 5%.

HEX: #C9922E
RGB: 201, 146, 46
CMYK: 0, 27, 77, 21
Pantone: 1245 C

Proportion

Hold these ratios across a full campaign, not inside a single frame.

Optical Black 42%
Bright 24%
Lens Green 20%
Steel 9%
Focus Amber 5%

CMYK values are an uncoated-stock starting point converted from RGB without an ICC profile, and the Pantone entries are nearest visual matches — approve both against a printed proof before any production run.

09

Typography

Two families, both open-licensed, with the scale that ties them together.

Display

Aa

Space Grotesk

Technical grotesque. Medium 500, widely tracked, for the wordmark.

SIL Open Font Licence 1.1 — free for commercial use, embeddable in apps and documents, redistributable with the licence file.

Text

Aa

Outfit

Geometric sans, Light. Neutral enough to disappear behind the data.

SIL Open Font Licence 1.1 — free for commercial use, embeddable in apps and documents, redistributable with the licence file.

Type scale

Role	Family	Size / line	Tracking	Case
Display	Space Grotesk	72 / 76 px	−0.01em	Sentence
Heading 1	Space Grotesk	44 / 50 px	0	Sentence
Heading 2	Outfit	26 / 34 px	0.02em	Sentence
Standing label	Outfit	12 / 16 px	0.28em	Uppercase
Body	Outfit	16 / 27 px	0	Sentence
Caption	Outfit	13 / 20 px	0.01em	Sentence

Frame the moment

SPORTS EVENT PHOTOGRAPHY

Two hundred frames from the second half, culled to eleven, graded overnight and delivered before the morning briefing. The archive holds every match since the club's first season, catalogued by fixture, minute and shirt number.

Baku · 14 March · 1/2000s at f/2.8, 400 mm

10

Photography

The look the mark was designed to sit on.

Grade	Neutral and accurate. True blacks, no colour cast, highlights held.
Framing	Long lens, compressed. The subject isolated against a clean field.
Moment	The decisive one. Nothing staged, nothing after the fact.
Crop	Native ratio, uncropped where possible. State it when you do crop.

Watermark

Bottom-right, iris only, Bright at 45% opacity. Never the wordmark.

A watermark is a signature, not a security device. If an image genuinely must be protected, deliver it at a lower resolution instead.

The tiles above are grading targets, not photographs — match real frames to these tonal ranges before they enter the brand library.

11

Applications

The mark in the places it will actually be used.

Social avatarMonogram only, centred optically at 52% from the top. 1024 × 1024 px master.

Business card, face85 × 55 mm. Lockup at 40 mm, clear space held on all sides.

Studio

hello@ss-gallery.com

ss-gallery.com

Business card, reverseContact set in the text face, monogram bottom-right at 10 mm.

Delivered frameWatermark placement on a client gallery image. One placement only — never repeated across the frame.

Backdrop / accreditation wallMark repeated on a grid of 4X, staggered by half a step on alternate rows.

12

Asset index

Everything in this folder, and what each file is for.

Vector — `logo/`

Outlined paths, no font dependency. Use these for print, signage, cutting, embroidery digitising and anything that will be scaled.

Raster — `export/`

Ready-made sizes for platforms that will not take SVG.

The typefaces sit in the fonts/ folder alongside this one, each with its SIL Open Font Licence. Send that folder to any collaborator who needs to set type in the brand.