Splice

Study 04-splice for Dreavo Studios. Created 2026-11-14.

Idea

The cut is the one act that turns footage into a film. A monumental, heavy D is cut once by a straight horizontal line, and its upper part is shifted right by exactly the width of the cut: one edit, two shots, one film. The same cut runs through the whole lockup, so DREAVO above the line shifts with the top of the D and STUDIOS below the line stays with the bottom. For Dreavo it says: the work is decided in the cut, with precision.

Summary: A heavy, monumental D cut once by a horizontal line with its upper half shifted by the width of the cut, the edit that turns footage into a film.

Why it fits

• Positioning: "the weight of a studio picture" as mass and precision: a heavy slab that has been cut exactly once, with no wasted moves.
• Personality: "Serious, not grim" (hard geometry, no texture); "Quiet, not anonymous" (one cut is its whole signature); "Classic, not nostalgic" (the grammar of film rather than its hardware).
• Principles leaned on hardest: 2 (a heavy letter with one cut is the most robust small-size mark in the set), 4 (the shifted cut), 5 (one slab, one cut, one weight ratio), 3 (film without reels, slates, or lenses).
• Landscape: takes the open space "the grammar of filmmaking, not its hardware" and gives Dreavo the strong standalone avatar mark most prestige independents lack. Follows the black title-card convention.

Logo type and track

• Type: lettermark plus wordmark. The cut D works alone as the avatar and favicon; in the full lockup the cut continues through the wordmark.
• Track: svg. It is pure construction: rectangles, semicircles, one horizontal gap, one offset. It needs exact numbers.
• Ground: dark. The heavy bone-white slab on near-black is the title card at its most direct, and the cut reads as a hard black line of the ground showing through.

Form notes

• D on a 96-unit grid (height 96): outer shape = a rectangle from x 0 to 36 plus a half-circle of radius 48 centered at (36, 48); total width 84. Counter = a rectangle from x 24 to 36 plus a half-circle of radius 26 centered at (36, 48), so the stem is 24 wide and the bowl 22 thick at top, bottom, and right. Square corners everywhere; no rounding.
• The cut: a horizontal gap 6 units tall (the craft minimum at 96), with its center at y 47, a little above the geometric middle so it reads as optically centered. Everything above the gap moves right by exactly 6 units (offset = gap). No angle, no second cut, no color in the gap.
• Favicon version: at 16 px a 6-unit gap fills in. Use a heavier variant for 16 to 24 px with gap and offset of 10 units; record it in the guidelines at stage 8.
• Wordmark: DREAVO and STUDIOS in a condensed grotesk, caps, bold weight, tight tracking. Start from Archivo Narrow Bold via bun lf outline; compare with Schibsted Grotesk Bold. Two lines to the right of the D, flush left, with a gap of 0.6 × the D's stem between D and text. DREAVO's caps top-align with the D and end just above the cut; STUDIOS's caps start just below the cut and sit on the D's baseline. Both lines have the same cap height (about 38 units of the D's 96); because the cut sits slightly above the middle, the clearance above and below it may differ by up to 2 units. The two words already measure close to equal width at equal size; make them flush by small tracking changes.
• The system rule: the line of the cut extends through the lockup. DREAVO sits above it and shifts right by the same 6 units as the top of the D; STUDIOS sits below it and stays aligned with the bottom. The whole logo has exactly one cut.
• Weight logic: D stem to letter stem at a fixed ratio of 3:1. Adjust the D's stem (and the counter to match) after the wordmark is set, so the ratio holds.
• Mark (mark.svg): the cut D alone, centered for a circle crop. Runner-up for stage 4: the same D with a vertical cut, top-to-bottom, offset down; reject it if it reads as a "P" or a broken letter.
• Color direction: ground near-black graphite (around #111214); D and type in bone white (around #ECE8E1). A darkroom safelight red (around #A3241C) is a candidate accent for the ident's cut flash and key visuals only, never in the logo files.

Stage 4 outcome (2026-11-15)

• Chosen: c01, the D exactly as specified above: semicircular bowl, one horizontal cut 6 units tall centred at y 47, the top shifted right by 6. Runner-up: c07, the same cut on a wider D (elliptical bowl, 92 wide); rejected because the wider bowl drifts toward a display-font D and loses the compass-drawn geometry. Rejected: c02 (top shifted toward the stem; reads as the top block pulled back, not cut), c03 (offset 12; reads as two broken pieces), c04 (±3 split; reads as a printing error), c05 (the vertical runner-up from stage 3; reads as "ID" or a bracket, as feared), c06 (angled cut; reads as a crack, not an edit), c08 (cut through the bowl only; muddles the one-cut rule). A squared-bowl D (corner radius 36, see compare-09-marks.png) matched the type better but looked like a stock display face; the semicircle stays.
• Wordmark, changed from the plan above: bold condensed caps with tight tracking (compare-02-wordmarks.png) made the lockup look like an esports or agency badge, not a studio. The final face is Archivo Narrow 600, caps, DREAVO tracked +130 and STUDIOS tracked to the same ink width (+68), with small optical spacing corrections (D–R closed 0.6, U–D closed 1.0). Sofia Sans Condensed was the closest alternative; it was dropped because its softly rounded corners contradict the D's square corners.
• Lockup geometry: both lines have a cap height of 36: DREAVO's cap line sits on the D's top edge, STUDIOS sits on the D's baseline. That leaves 8 units above the cut and 10 below it. The name starts 18 units (3 cut widths) right of the D's widest point, STUDIOS 0.6 left of the stem line so the round S aligns optically. DREAVO and the top of the D are shifted right by 6 together, so the whole upper strip of the logo has slid one cut width.
• Weight logic, changed: the letter stem at cap 36 is 6 units, exactly the width of the cut, and the D's stem is 24: a fixed 4:1 ratio, with the cut as the module (stem 4 cuts, letter stem 1 cut, offset 1 cut, name gap 3 cuts). 3:1 needed a bold weight that looked loud.
• Favicon, changed: no heavier variant was needed. mark.svg uses viewBox -10 -1.5 104 104, which puts the cut exactly on a pixel row at 16 px and 32 px, so it renders as a crisp dark line (see primary-r05 renders and the sheet). The viewBox also places the D halfway between its bounding-box centre and its area centroid (x 39.3), so it does not look like it is drifting right.
• Rubric at the end of stage 4 (critique.md, judged on logo/sheet.png and primary-r05.png): concept 4 (one cut, with a second reading: the whole upper strip, DREAVO included, slides like a cut between shots); distinctiveness 3 (no D marks in the landscape audit apart from Dolby's double D, but sliced and offset letters are a known trope outside film); simplicity 5 (one slab, one cut; removing anything breaks the idea); craft 4 (geometry exact, mark on the pixel grid, spacing corrected; the type's squarish D and O bowls differ from the compass-drawn D, and DREAVO is airier than STUDIOS because both are set to equal width); scalability 4 (the cut is a sharp pixel row at 16 and 32 px, but goes gray at sizes off the 16-px grid, such as 20 px); one-color survival 5 (mono is identical to color); fit 4 (serious and classical, with the grammar of film; reads more as an institution than as spectacle).

Body typeface, revised (2026-11-15)

The user rejected bookish text serifs as "not sexy", so the body face Source Serif 4 was dropped. Six sans faces were set next to the logo using real application copy: the deck line, a synopsis paragraph, contact details, a credits caption, and the business card (logo/concepts/body-spec-1.png to -6.png). Chosen: Instrument Sans (400, 600, 400 italic). It is sleek and slightly narrow, contrasts with Archivo Narrow's condensed caps in width and case, and has a true italic for film titles. Runners-up: Albert Sans (elegant and airy, but its geometric roundness reads soft and friendly) and Schibsted Grotesk (confident, but too close in kind to Archivo Narrow, with a newspaper flavour). Also tried: Host Grotesk (too wide and quirky), Geist (reads as a developer product), and Archivo (correct but plain, close to Arial).

Risks

• Glitch aesthetic. Sliced, offset letters are a common digital-glitch look and a fintech and security cliché. Guard: one cut only, horizontal, offset exactly equal to the gap, no color fringes, heavy classical proportions. If it looks like an error at review, it fails.
• Split-letter cliché in general. Guard: the cut has a meaning (the edit) and runs through the whole lockup, not just the letter.
• Dolby association. From memory and unverified: Dolby's mark is built from D shapes and is everywhere in cinema. Guard: compare side by side at stage 4; a single D with a horizontal cut is structurally different from a mirrored double D.
• Reads as "P" or "B". The jog at the stem where the halves shift could suggest other letters. Guard: keep the offset small (equal to the gap) and test with the name hidden.
• Heavy and cold. A slab can feel corporate. Guard: generous clear space and the bone-on-graphite palette rather than pure white on black.
• Distinct from the other studies: the only lettermark, the heaviest shape language (a rectilinear slab against 01's thin curve and 03's organic mass), and the only condensed type; no light (01), no carving (02), no picture (03).

Sign-off

Approved by the user on 2026-11-15. No changes requested.

Study 04-splice. Version 1, 2026-11-15.

Overview

The cut turns footage into a film. The logo is a heavy D cut once by a horizontal line, with the upper part slid right by exactly the width of the cut: one edit, two shots, one film. The cut runs through the whole lockup, so DREAVO moves with the top of the D and STUDIOS stays with the bottom.

Personality: serious, not grim; epic, not bombastic; classic, not nostalgic; quiet, not anonymous. Scale comes from mass and space, never from effects.

This document is for anyone who places the Dreavo name: designers of posters, decks, and title sequences, the web developer, the printer, and the person who runs social accounts.

The system meets the strategy's five design principles like this:

1. Survives in one flat color. The logo is one color in every file. The cut is a gap, not a second color.
2. Holds in a billing block and a round avatar. The lockup reads at 120 px wide. The mark keeps its cut as a sharp line at 16 px.
3. No stock cinema and no levity. No reels, lenses, light rays, or bevels. The film reference is the edit, not the hardware.
4. One drawn feature you can name. "The D with one cut."
5. Two elements, one weight logic. The mark and the name only. Every measure is a multiple of the cut: the D's stem is 4 cuts, the letter stem is 1 cut, the offset is 1 cut, and the gap before the name is 3 cuts.

Logo

Versions

The contact sheet shows every file on white, black, and Cutting Room, plus the small sizes:

Construction

• Grid. The D is drawn on a 96-unit height. Outer shape: a rectangle from x 0 to 36 plus a half circle of radius 48 centered at (36, 48), so the D is 84 wide. Counter: a rectangle from x 24 to 36 plus a half circle of radius 26 on the same center. The stem is 24 thick, the bowl 22 at top, bottom, and right (horizontals 8% thinner than the stem, so they look equal). All corners are square.
• The cut. One horizontal gap, 6 units tall, from y 44 to 50. Its center is at y 47, one unit above the geometric middle, so it looks centered. Everything above the gap moves right by exactly 6 units. The gap has no color and no angle, and there is never a second cut.
• The module. The cut (6 units) measures everything else. D stem = 4 cuts. Letter stem = 1 cut (Archivo Narrow 600 at a cap height of 36 has a 6-unit stem). Offset = 1 cut. Gap from the D's widest point to the name = 3 cuts (18 units).
• Lettering. DREAVO and STUDIOS are outlined from Archivo Narrow 600 with bun lf outline. Both are caps, cap height 36. DREAVO is tracked +130. STUDIOS is tracked +68 so its ink width matches DREAVO exactly (215.5 units). Optical spacing corrections: D–R closed by 0.6 units, U–D closed by 1.0, and the other gaps opened by 0.2 to keep the width. STUDIOS starts 0.6 units left of its stem line so the round S lines up optically.
• Lockup. DREAVO's cap line sits on the top edge of the D. STUDIOS's baseline sits on the bottom edge of the D. That leaves 8 units between DREAVO and the cut and 10 between the cut and STUDIOS. DREAVO starts 6 units further right than STUDIOS because it sits above the cut and slides with the top of the D. The full lockup is 316.92 × 97.26 units.
• Mark. mark.svg is the same D with viewBox -10 -1.5 104 104. Rendered at 16 or 32 px, this places the cut exactly on a pixel row, so it shows as a sharp dark line instead of a gray smear. Horizontally, the D sits halfway between its bounding-box center and its area centroid.

Clear space

The clear-space unit X is the width of the D's stem (24 units, or 7.6% of the lockup's width; at 300 px wide, X is about 23 px).

• Keep 1X clear on all four sides of the lockup.
• Keep 0.5X clear around the D when the mark is used alone, measured from the D's edges, not from the viewBox.
• Intrusions include other logos, text, rules, the edge of the page or frame, folds, and busy image detail. In billing blocks, the 1X rule applies between Dreavo's logo and the neighboring company logos.

Minimum size

The smallest detail is the cut and the letter stem, both 6 units. The rule "the smallest detail should stay at least 1.5 px or 0.2 mm" gives 79 px and 11 mm for the lockup. At that size, though, the letters are only about 9 px tall, which is not enough for credits. The sheet shows the lockup reading cleanly at 120 px, so these are the limits:

Below 120 px or 20 mm, use mark.svg and set the name nearby in Archivo Narrow 600 caps. Rendered directly from mark.svg at 16, 32, 48, and larger multiples of 16, the cut lands on the pixel grid. The exported favicons (favicon.svg, favicon.ico, favicon-32.png) put the mark on a Cutting Room tile, re-padded to its ink, so the cut no longer lands exactly on a pixel row and reads as a soft line at 32 px. For a sharper tab icon, render mark.svg onto a Cutting Room square at 32 px.

Misuse

• Do not close the cut, fill it with a color, or put a line or glow inside it in a logo file. Light in the cut belongs only to the motion ident and key visuals.
• Do not add a second cut, change the cut's angle, or change the offset. The offset is always equal to the gap, and the top always moves right.
• Do not shift DREAVO back into line with STUDIOS. The step between the two words is the cut running through the lockup.
• Do not separate the mark and the name and rebuild them in a new arrangement, such as the D stacked above the words. Use the lockup or the mark alone.
• Do not put primary.svg on Paper or white. Use primary-alt.svg.
• Do not recolor the logo outside Print Stock, Cutting Room, pure black, and pure white. Never Safelight red.
• Do not add bevels, chrome, gradients, shadows, glows, or texture to the logo files.
• Do not stretch, skew, rotate, or outline the logo, and do not reset the name in another typeface or weight.
• Do not place the logo on a busy part of an image. Use a flat or darkened area with at least 3:1 contrast.

Color

Proportion on dark layouts: Cutting Room and Flatbed 65 to 75%, Print Stock and Leader 20 to 30%, Grain up to 10%, Safelight under 5% and usually none. On light print: Paper about 85%, Cutting Room about 15%.

Approved pairings (WCAG contrast, computed):

Never pair: Print Stock or Leader on Paper (1.07:1 and 1.34:1). Flatbed on Cutting Room for anything that must be read (1.11:1). Grain as small text on Paper (3.05:1, rules and large type only). Safelight as text on Cutting Room or Flatbed (3.06:1 and 2.75:1). Safelight anywhere in the logo.

Typography

Archivo Narrow 600 is the wordmark's face, so headlines and the logo share one voice. It is always set in caps. Instrument Sans carries everything you read: a sleek, slightly narrow neo-grotesque in sentence case. It contrasts with the display face in width and case and shares its sharp, unsentimental finish. Italic is for film and series titles only, as in The Salt Line. Never set Instrument Sans in caps; caps belong to Archivo Narrow.

Rules:

• Body text is left-aligned, never justified, with lines of 55 to 75 characters.
• Write dates as "12 March 2027" and times as "19:30". In display type, use lining figures in Archivo Narrow.
• Credits blocks follow film convention: names in Archivo Narrow 600 caps at full size, connecting words ("A FILM BY", "MUSIC BY") at about 65% of that size.
• Never set Archivo Narrow in lowercase or below 600, and never use a third typeface.

Imagery and key visuals

• Subject. Wide, quiet frames with a sense of scale: landscapes, architecture, a single figure small in the frame. Stills from Dreavo's own productions come first.
• Light and grade. Natural light at dusk or dawn, deep graphite shadows, highlights graded toward Print Stock bone rather than pure white, and very little saturation. Safelight red may appear once in a frame as a source of light, never as a filter over everything.
• The cut. A hero image may carry the cut: one straight horizontal line across the full width, in Cutting Room, 1.5% of the image height. The part above it moves right by the same amount. Place it through a strong horizontal feature (a horizon, a ridge, a building line) so the jog reads as an edit, not a fault. One cut per image, never on more than one image per spread.
• Effects. Glow, grain, and blur belong here and in the motion ident, never in the logo files. The ident's only effect is a single frame of Safelight along the cut line (see the title card).
• Logo on images. Use mono-white.svg or primary.svg on dark areas and primary-alt.svg on pale skies, with at least 3:1 contrast and 1X clear space. Darken the area under the logo with a Cutting Room gradient if needed. Never place the logo across the cut line of an image.
• Don'ts. No horror cues (dark corridors, hooded faces, red-washed frames). No lens flares, light rays, or chrome. No stock footage of cameras, clapperboards, or film reels.

Key visual:

Voice

Dreavo writes like a title sequence: names, verbs, facts. Short declarative sentences in the present tense. No exclamation marks, no superlatives, and never the word "epic". The cut is the model for the copy: say it once, in the right place.

Example lines:

• Headline: "Slate 2027."
• Button label: "View the slate"
• Social post: "The Salt Line wraps principal photography in Utah. Ana Ruiz directs. In cinemas 12 March."

Tone by context: on social, one fact per post plus the title in italics. In decks, numbers and names before adjectives. In legal and press text, plain, complete sentences with no voice tricks.

Applications

Key visual: film poster. The image carries the system's one cut through the mountain range, with the upper part slid right. The logo appears once, in the billing block, in mono-white.svg at 220 px wide, next to credits set to film convention.

Production ident, 2.39:1. primary.svg centered on Cutting Room at 32% of the frame width. This frame is the ident's single moment of light: Safelight runs along the line of the cut, through the D and between the two words.

Social avatar. mark.svg in a circle crop on Cutting Room, with the D at about 62% of the circle's diameter, at 600 px and at true 40, 32, and 24 px in a profile card.

Business card, 85 × 55 mm. Front: the mark alone on Cutting Room stock. Back: primary-alt.svg on Paper with 1X clear space, the name in Archivo Narrow 600 caps, and details in Instrument Sans 400, all aligned to the D's lower stem.

Pitch deck cover, 16:9. primary-alt.svg on the pale sky, the image cut once through the horizon, "SLATE 2027" in display type, and the line below in Instrument Sans 400.