Brand direction (parked)
In short
Section titled “In short”This records the visual direction chosen as a starting point on 20 August 2026, and parks the rest of the brand work for its own session. The mark is a ring with a single dot on it: the ring is the letter Q, the dot is the companion, sitting on the edge and never inside. While the system is working the dot travels slowly around the ring with a breathing rhythm; when idle it settles back to rest. Everything is black and white apart from one brass accent, spent on exactly one object per screen. The owner’s verdict was honest — a good enough place to start, not loved — and he asked that the word and the symbol be treated as separate problems, with better tools researched before anything is refined further.
B. Orbit, breathing — chosen by the operator 2026-08-20 as the working
start, from four researched directions plus an operator-requested wave
study (vault: knowledge/research/qren-brand-directions-2026-08-20.md).
Operator notes (2026-08-20): “I don’t fully like the direction, but it’s good to start off with.” Then: the wordmark and the symbol can be completely separate — the symbol does not have to be the Q — and research a better way to make these before refining further. Branding is parked to its own session; nothing here is final. Research and boards:
vault: knowledge/research/qren-brand-directions-2026-08-20.md(A–E, E Crest re-admitted as lead by render evidence),docs/brand/boards/.
The mark
Section titled “The mark”A ring and one point on it. The ring is the Q; the point is the companion — on your circumference, never inside, never attached. Static: the dot rests at 4:30. Working: the dot travels the ring once every 24 s with a breathing cadence (speed rises and falls like a breath, sine-modulated over one revolution) and a faint three-dot trail that exists only while running. Idle: it eases back to 4:30 with a 2 % settle.
The wave the operator asked for lives here — in the motion, never as a drawn shape. A statically drawn wave is prohibited (it is the road to the note-taker look: Otter, Fireflies, Granola, Webex).
Monochrome everywhere, both modes. One accent, brass, spent on exactly
one object per surface — normally the dot: #B08D57 on dark grounds,
#8C6D3F on light. Light mode is first-class and is the default marketing
surface; product follows the OS.
Wordmark: the mark is the Q; ren set in Geist Sans 400 (open, OFL) —
Aeonik as a commercial alternative. UI: system stack on macOS; Geist Mono
for transcripts. Headlines 300.
Pairing rules
Section titled “Pairing rules”(how the symbol and the word sit together, and the sizes at which each may appear alone)
Symbol left, wordmark right; gap = half the symbol width; symbol height = cap height. Wordmark alone on marketing surfaces; symbol alone only ≤ 32 px, app icon, avatar, embroidery. Clear space = the bowl diameter. Never: gradients, glows, shadows, rotation of the mark, the mark inside a badge, a second accent element on the same surface.
Vector proof — 9 variants (3 stroke weights × 3 dot sizes) at 16/32/128/512 px and as a macOS app icon, light and dark, embroidery approximation, and the breathing animation — then the two-person non-technical read test of the light hero, then site → README → app icon → app tokens.