We read every mark at arm’s length

There are three pairs of green reading glasses in the studio, and on most days all three are on Tomás’s head. He puts one on for the last check of every mark we make.

It isn’t really about eyesight. Reading glasses make you hold things at arm’s length, and arm’s length is where people meet a brand.

The screen lies about size

On a monitor a mark is as big as you zoom it. In life it’s nine millimetres on a key fob or forty on a business card, glimpsed for a second while someone pays.

So before anyone signs off, we print every mark at the sizes it will really live at. It’s cheap, and it settles arguments a screen can’t.

Colour lies too. A green that glows on a monitor can turn to mud on uncoated card, so the proofs run on the paper the job will really use.

Our arm’s length test

Every mark goes through the same four checks before it leaves the bench:

1. Print it at the smallest size it will ever appear.

2. Hold it at arm’s length in daylight, by the window.

3. Turn it upside down and look again.

4. Show it to someone who hasn’t read the brief.

If it fails one, it goes back to Hugo’s desk rather than to the client. Most marks fail the third check: upside down, you stop reading a letter and start seeing a shape, and weak shapes give themselves away.

When a mark passes too easily

A mark that survives on the first try worries us almost as much as one that fails.

Felix has a point. Clarity is the floor, not the goal. We keep one rougher version pinned beside the finalist, to argue with until the end of the week. The rough one rarely wins, but it keeps the finalist honest.

Try it with your own logo

Print your logo the size it shows on your phone’s view of your website, which is usually about a centimetre. Hold it out, squint, and see what’s left.

Whatever you can still make out is your logo. Everything else is decoration, and decoration is the first thing a busy customer drops.

If less is left than you hoped, we can help.