Four strokes, turning around one centre.
Mithril’s whole brand fits on one page: logo, colour, type, graphic language, interface and architecture. Everything a designer needs to use it correctly, and nothing they have to guess.
A brand only works if people use it correctly, and most guidelines are eighty-page PDFs nobody opens. Mithril needed a system a designer could understand in one sitting and apply without asking.
Fewer, stricter rules. One mark that holds at any rotation, colour as ladders with fixed roles, three typefaces with fixed jobs, and the whole brand on a single page.
Where Mithril sits.
Before anything was drawn, we agreed one sentence. Every design decision after it was checked against it.
Turn it a quarter. It’s still itself.
Rotational symmetry. Four identical arms, each a bar plus a quarter-circle, all pointing in. Balanced from every side.
Built from the wordmark. The arms share the weight and rounded ends of the letters, so mark and name read as one family.
One rule for space. Clear space is a quarter of the mark, on every form. Easy to remember, hard to get wrong.
Colour comes as ladders, not swatches. Each step has a job, from background to text, so interfaces stay consistent without anyone picking shades by eye.
A serif for character, a sans for clarity, a mono for anything technical. Three roles, never swapped.
Work in progress, in good light.
Real teams at real desks, graded cool toward the grey ladder. The mark sits on top as a quiet watermark, and green is used once per frame.
Real teams at real desks. No posed handshakes.
Grade cool, toward the grey ladder.
One green accent per frame, never more.
Example photography from Pexels, used to show the direction.
Liked what we did for Mithril?
Book a free 30-minute session. Tell us where your brand is now and where you want it to go, and we’ll tell you honestly what it would take. Got a quick question instead? Just ask.