Logo Lab · labs.llc

A mark, a logotype, and the ground you will actually put them on.

The mark comes out of a seeded geometry engine: the same number always draws the same shape, so a direction can be written down, sent, and drawn again. The logotype is set from one table of numbers that the screen and the exporter both read, so the specimen, the caption and the downloaded file agree.

Both sit on an artboard whose ground you choose — white, black, or nothing at all — independently of which edition of this site you are reading. That is the whole reason the lab exists: a mark judged only on the colour of the page it was designed on has not been judged.

8 engines 24 faces 20 sizes 5 grounds 4 finishes


One — the mark

Draw it from a seed.

Eight engines, one scene model, two renderers. What you see on the artboard and what comes out of the SVG button are the same geometry read twice — masks, carved negative space and all.

Ground
Ink
Applies to the mark, the logotype, the lockup and every export on this page.

Engine

6
42
55
0
a 16-unit designer grid
Advanced
6
4
35
#FF7A1A
0

Glow is a canvas shadow and grain is a pixel pass; neither can be a vector, and the SVG file says so in its own description. Grain is skipped entirely on a clear ground, because a pixel pass over transparency paints the transparency.

Embed an image

A picture laid over the generated geometry. It is never carved and never clipped, and an uploaded one is read in this browser and goes nowhere.

36
88

The brief

Used for one thing and printed here so it is not mistaken for more: it names a direction when you save it.

Adjectives

Each one is a nudge to the sliders and nothing else — press it and watch them move. Hover for the exact amounts.

Constraints

turns the accent off and keeps it off
re-rolls until it clears 2.5/5

The second one is a real gate: Generate, Mutate and True random try up to twenty-four seeds, take the first that measures 2.5 or better at sixteen pixels, and tell you when none of them did.

G generate · M mutate · R random · [ ] walk the seeds you have seen

Down the sizes

Real renders at 16, 24, 32, 48 and 64 pixels — drawn at those sizes, not scaled down from a big one.

In place

LABS Tab
App icon
Avatar
On white
On black

Directions

Score it by hand
3
3
4
4
3

Saved in this browser and nowhere else — twenty-four directions, newest first, each carrying its whole state.


Two — the logotype

One word, twenty-four faces, twenty sizes.

Every rung below is the same wordmark. Height, type size, side padding, corner and tracking all come off one number — the height — so this is a size system rather than twenty separately drawn objects. The caption under each rung prints the numbers it was drawn from, and the exporter reads the same ones.

“Jayg” is there on purpose: it has a descender, and a pill that centres on the word rather than on the face moves when you type it.
Finish
Corner
Mono
The ground and ink chosen above apply here too.

The faces — press one to set the whole ladder in it

The ladder

A big rung is wider than this column; each one scrolls inside its own box rather than pushing the page. PNG exports at three times the rung’s own size, SVG keeps the type live, HTML copies one self-contained element.


Three — the lockup

Put them together.

The mark from the first section and the logotype from the second, on one ground, exported as one file. Neither half is re-implemented here: the mark is the same scene the artboard draws and the type is the same pill the ladder sets.

Arrangement

160
40

Both are percentages of the logotype’s height, so the lockup holds its proportions at any rung.

The SVG nests the two documents inside a third. Its geometry is real vector; its type is a live font reference, and the file’s own description says which is which.


Four — notes

What is measured, and what is not.

Three numbers under the artboard are measurements, taken from a render made for the purpose and thrown away afterwards. Ink is the share of a 64×64 transparent render whose alpha clears 24. Balance is how far that ink’s centre of mass sits from the centre of the frame. @16px is the standard deviation of the luminance of a real sixteen-pixel render — a mark with nothing to see at favicon size has a low one.

Nothing else on this page is a score. There is no counter of marks generated, no frame-rate target and no quality grade; where a figure appears it was counted at the moment it was printed.

Same seed, same mark

One seeded generator drives the whole scene, so a seed and a set of controls always draw the same geometry. Copy link puts all of it in the address — the engine, the seed, every slider, the ground, the ink, the word, the face, the size, the finish and the lockup’s arrangement — so the link restores what was on screen rather than an approximation of it.

What each export contains

  • Mark SVG — real geometry, including the monogram mask and the carved negative space. Glow and grain cannot be vectors and the file says so.
  • Mark PNG — 512 or 1024 square. PNG transparent is 1024 with a genuine alpha channel whatever the artboard is showing.
  • Logotype PNG — three times the rung’s own size, on the chosen ground, or with real transparency on a clear one. A knockout finish exports its letters as actual holes.
  • Logotype SVG — a real vector shape with live type. It needs the named face; the PNG needs nothing.
  • Logotype HTML — one element carrying every value inline, plus the stylesheet link for its face. No framework, no classes, no build step.

The ladder, in full

Generated from the same table the page draws from, for the face and corner currently selected.

RungHeightTypeSidesRadiusTrackingWhere it goes

Where things are kept

Saved directions live in this browser’s local storage and are never sent anywhere. An image you upload is read by this page and stays in the tab. The only requests this page makes to another host are the typeface stylesheet at the top and the font files it names — fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com, which the page preconnects to — and the site’s analytics tag.


Five — contact

Bring a hard mark problem.

Identity systems that have to survive contact with real users, generative tooling, or a two-edition property that needs to ship clean. One address, and it is a real mailbox: labs@labs.llc.

With JavaScript off the form posts normally and the server answers with a page. Either way the answer you see is the server’s own, not the page guessing. One exception, and it is deliberate: the hidden trap field above is answered with a thank-you and nothing is sent, because a bot that is told it was caught learns how to stop being caught.