v1 was five sets built from maths. They were correct and none of them
were beautiful, which Amit said plainly. These came from the image model instead. They
are not shippable files: a raster cannot be a 22 pixel mark. They are a choice of
LANGUAGE. Pick one and the three marks get drawn as vectors in it.
Fluid fire
Each is a single flame, not a set. Asking the model for three related
marks at once returns three unrelated drawings that happen to share a colour, so the
family gets built afterwards, by hand, in whichever language you pick.
01BrushstrokeOne unbroken stroke, made in a single breath. The weight swells at the base and dies to a point. The most confident of the six and the one that would survive being shrunk hardest.02LiquidFire with the physics of water: a rising form, a curling crest, one droplet leaving at the tip. Delicate, and the busiest of the six at small sizes.03RibbonA band of silk turning as it rises, showing its face and then its edge. Weightless. The closest to fluid in the literal sense.04UnfurlIt begins as a tight coil at the base and opens upward, the way a fern frond does. The only one with a beginning and an end rather than just a shape.05BraidThree strands winding around each other and meeting at one point. Reads as several things becoming one, which is close to what the three verbs describe.06WaveA crest curling over, drawn as fire rather than water. The boldest and most logo-like. Distinctive, and the least quiet.
The chambered spiral
The drawing beside “Growth is a staircase of broken ceilings”.
Four of these are on the brief. Two are dimmed: they are elegant spirals with no chambers
and nothing breaking, and the chambers and the break are the entire point, so they are
here to be rejected rather than to be chosen.
01NautilusThe real thing: chambers spiralling outward, each sealed by its own wall, the outermost cracked open and parting. Every element of the idea is present and nothing is decorative.02RadialThe same structure drawn as an architectural diagram, chambers divided by fine radial walls. Cooler and more engineered than the nautilus.03ShardsA golden spiral with the outer wall broken and three shards leaving. The clearest statement of the breaking, and the cleanest at a small size.04Ember edgeThe shell stops being shell and becomes flame at exactly the point where it breaks open. It is the only one that ties the diagram to the fire language above.05Ringsoff the briefElegant, and off the brief: no chambers and no break. A spiral is not the idea. The sealed chambers holding up the newest one, and the outer wall giving way, are the idea.06Crescentoff the briefSame objection. Beautiful line, but nothing is chambered and nothing is breaking, so it says growth without saying what growth costs.
Pick a number from each. For the fire I will draw Build, Buy and Back in
that language as clean vectors and show them at 22px before anything ships. For the
spiral I will trace it to a single-line SVG so it matches the rest of the page, unless
you want the raster as it is, which would be the first photographic element on the site.
If none of these are right either, say what is wrong with the closest one and I will run
the model again against that. It is cheap.
