Identity systems

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Clear space and minimum sizes

Lesson 9 of 18 in Identity systems.

What Is Clearspace For Logos? · Will Paterson
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These are the two most quoted rules in any set of guidelines and the two most often broken, usually by people who never opened the document. Clear space stops other material crowding the mark. Minimum size stops it being reproduced below the point where it stops being itself.

xclear space = the height of the markderived from the mark, so it scales
A mark with an exclusion zone measured from the mark itself.
A doodle of a triangle logo on a business card with a thin margin, the same thin margin on a building where windows crowd it, and the building again with a wider margin equal to the logo's height.
A fixed margin works on a business card but lets windows crowd the mark on a building. A margin measured in the mark's own height grows with it.
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  1. Question 1, locked

    A set of guidelines states clear space as ten millimetres around the mark. Where does that rule fail?

    • Everywhere except the size it was written for, because it stays fixed while the mark grows or shrinks
    • Only in print, since screen placement is measured in pixels instead
    • Nowhere, provided everybody measures from the bounding box
    • Only in reversed versions, where a light mark expands optically
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Where a shape appears to end, which is rarely where its bounding box ends.”

    • Graphic device
    • Ligature
    • Optical edge
    • Maskable icon

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