Logo and mark

3.1 The double slash

The Since Labs identity mark is // — two forward slashes, italic, set in terracotta.

It is doing three jobs at once, which is why it works:

1. A comment marker. // opens a comment in every C-family language. The mark says written by people who write code without a single circuit board.
2. A forward slash, twice. Motion, and a directory path — the command center is a place things live under.
3. A wordmark abbreviation. At 16px in a browser tab, // is still legible where "Since Labs" is a smudge.

The mark is never explained on-surface. No tagline under it, no "the double slash represents…". It earns its meaning by repetition.

3.2 The asset set

Everything below is generated from the vendor masters in ../assets/logo/source/ by npm run assets, which measures each master's real ink and crops the art board away. Every file is trimmed to its own artwork. Align to the edge of the image and add the clear space in § 3.3 — there is no hidden padding to compensate for.

Lockups

Mark and tiles

Renders

assets/logo/png/ carries transparent PNGs of every lockup (800 / 1600 / 3200 px wide, 600 / 1200 / 2400 for the stacked one), the mark (256 / 512 / 1024) and the ink tile at 180, 192, 512 and 1024 — the sizes iOS, Android and social profiles ask for. png/since-social-card.png is the 1200 × 630 Open Graph card.

since-labs-logo-kit.zip is all of it, plus the terms, in one download.

✅ The wordmark is outlined

The lockups are outlined paths, not live text. They render identically with no fonts installed — in Canva, in a PDF, on a printer's RIP. This supersedes the old DM Sans <text> files, which needed the font present and fell back silently to a system serif when it was not.

The wordmark's letterforms are a serif, not DM Sans. That is the artwork. Do not rebuild the lockup by typing "Since Labs" in DM Sans beside the mark; § 3.6 covers this.

The mark, twice

The distributable since-mark.svg and the inline components/brand/Mark.tsx are the same geometry expressed two ways: two round-capped strokes on a 34 × 60 box, fitted to the vendor master and re-checked against it on every asset build. The component exists because the nav needs the mark to inherit currentColor, which a file behind an <img> cannot do. If the mark changes, both change.

3.3 Construction and clear space

The mark is drawn on a 34 × 60 box: two strokes 6.07 units across, sheared 0.18 units horizontally for every unit of drop, with round caps struck at the stroke's half-width. It is taller than it is wide — close to 17:30 — which is why it never sits in a square without a tile around it.

Clear space = the height of one slash stem (¼ of the mark's height) on every side. Nothing enters that box — no text, no rule, no image edge, no other logo.

        ┌─────────────────────┐
        │      clear space     │   clear space = 0.25 × mark height
        │   ┌─────────────┐   │
        │   │    / /      │   │   ← the mark
        │   │   / /       │   │
        │   └─────────────┘   │
        │                     │
        └─────────────────────┘

For the wordmark, the gap between the mark and the "S" of "Since" is fixed at one slash-stem width. Do not re-space it by eye.

Minimum sizes

Below the wordmark minimum, drop to the mark. Never shrink the lockup until "Labs" closes up.

3.4 Placement

• Top-left in an app shell or a document. Centred only on an auth screen, a cover, or a sticker.
• On the dark auth panel the lockup sits top-left with a 48px margin — see AuthLayout.
• One logo per surface. A slide does not need it on every page; a footer credit is enough.
• Against a photograph: use the tile, never the bare mark. A bare // on a busy image is unreadable.

3.5 Colour rules

On the dark auth panel the mark is rendered at 80% opacity so it recedes behind the wordmark — this is intentional and is the one sanctioned opacity change.

Grounds we do not control

A GitHub README, an npm page or an editor preview picks its own background, and most people read them dark. A transparent ink wordmark disappears there. Use since-wordmark-adaptive.svg: it carries a prefers-color-scheme rule and serves the light row of the table above by default, the ink row on dark — mark in #E07A38, text in #F5F1EA, both already sanctioned. Everywhere the ground is known, keep using the deterministic files.

3.6 Misuse

Never:

• ❌ Rotate, skew, or change the slash angle
• ❌ Change the gap between the slashes, or between mark and wordmark
• ❌ Recolour to anything outside § 3.5 — no blue, no purple, no gradient, no rainbow
• ❌ Apply a drop shadow, glow, bevel, or outline
• ❌ Re-set the wordmark in any typeface — the lockup is outlines, not text
• ❌ Use Title Case variants — "Since labs", "SINCE LABS", "SinceLabs"
• ❌ Add a tagline, a ™, or a strapline inside the clear space
• ❌ Place on a busy photo without a tile
• ❌ Stretch, condense, or scale non-uniformly
• ❌ Reconstruct it by typing // in a different font and calling it the logo
• ❌ Generate, upscale, restyle or "redraw" it with a model — see the terms § 5

3.7 The // as a typographic device

Distinct from the logo: // is also a texture the brand uses in running material. Set in Geist Mono, terracotta, it can:

• prefix an eyebrow label — // AI NATIVE LAB
• open a section in a deck
• mark a pull-quote or a stat callout
• act as a bullet in a list of proof points

This is not the logo, so clear space does not apply. But keep it to one per surface — the device stops meaning anything if it is decoration.

3.8 Favicon and app icons

Product apps do not get bespoke icons. They get an emoji (Sora is 🏗️) on a surface-mist or accent-soft rounded tile. See 01-foundation.md § 1.5.