These recommendations exist to help our work be consistent. Stick with them by default, but use your judgement and taste to deviate where necessary to make us look our best.

Hyperzine

The logo files can be found in a Hyperzine asset called LBS Logo.

The official canonical original-recipe accept-no-imitations source version of the logo is an SVG drawn by Ivan in late 2018 titled lbs-logo-ex-cathedra.svg. This SVG is ready to be used as-is in browsers or imported into graphics apps.

Feel free to add other versions (PNG, JPG, AI, PSD, etc) to the asset, but please treat the SVG version as the original and best.

Logo Color

The logo must always be light-on-dark, and preferably pure white.

Please help us find any places that use dark logos and replace them with a light logo.

Stick with full #FFF white as much as you can. In some contexts it's totally fine to color the logo. For instance, if the logo is sitting next to a bunch of silver logos, of course you should give our logo that same silver color. Avoid coloring our logo when it's on its own, or simply to create visual interest.

The reason we don't ever want to use a dark version of the logo is simple: The logo has eyes, and when the logo is dark-on-light, it has glowing eyes, which makes it look spooky, which is inappropriate. We want to be seen as friendly and approachable.

Logo Background

Stick with the website colors unless you have a reason not to: a linear gradient with #384c94 (darker blue) at the sides and #406abf (lighter blue) in the center.

You are encouraged to use this gradient in creative ways — as an angular gradient, or a mesh gradient, or with sharp-edged transitions. Go to town!

If you want to tightly crop the logo but don't want to overemphasize the gradient (which looks bad), you can change the darker color, using something more similar to the lighter color.

If you're going to change the lighter color, or use a flat background rather than a gradient, do so together with the thought, "This isn't the same brand as our website", whatever that means to you.

If you're using the logo alongside other graphical elements (eg: on the cover of a binder, or next to other logos), go ahead do whatever you need to do to make the logo look good in that context — a contrasting background, no background, whatever.

If you see banding, dither the gradient! (Gradients in Photoshop have an option which is on by default, called Dither — select the Gradient tool and see on the tool properties bar on top, right next to Reverse and Transparency.

Logo Shapes

You can put the logo in any desired shape.

Squares and circles are common. YouTube thumbnails use a custom angled box. Binders use a nice pointed triangle on the spine. Go with whatever looks good to you, given the context.