Set “one” and “group” from the glyph library; the parent mark is “akribis group”
Context and Problem Statement
The delivered AKRIBIS One lockup set “one” in IBM Plex Sans Light next to the “akribis” wordmark, so the lockup mixed two type constructions. The parent brand (the company, at akribis.group) had no mark of its own and could be told apart from the AKRIBIS unit only by colour. With a glyph library that already holds o, n, e, g, r, u and p (ADR-0008), which construction do “one” and the parent’s descriptor take, and what is the parent mark?
Considered Options
- “one” and “group” from the glyph library; parent mark “akribis group”
- “one” and “group” in IBM Plex Sans (Light or Regular), as the delivered lockup
- Parent mark: the wordmark alone, told apart from the unit by colour only
Decision Outcome
Chosen: the glyph library for both words, and “akribis group” as the parent mark (Demian, 2026-10-04).
- Every word of the family is one construction: the nine unit marks, the One lockup and the parent mark are all composed from the same 19 glyphs and the same spacing table.
- The parent mark is published like a unit mark, at
/marks/akribis-group/, in ink and white until its colour is decided (topic 2.1 → 2.4). - The lockup’s separator keeps the delivered geometry: the dot or the ring is centred in a slot of 100 original units (641.6 grid units) after “akribis”, and “one” starts at the end of the slot. The dot-only lockup keeps the delivered dot (radius 16 original units). Inside the ring that dot proved too big and the delivered ring’s dot (13/79 of the radius) too small; the proposed centre dot is as wide as a letter stem (radius = stem / 2), a dimension the mark already has, with the ring stroke at one third of the stem. Three lockup versions are drawn (ring, dot, letters only) for the usage decision that remains open on topic 2.2; a stacked version was drawn and rejected.
Consequences
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Good, because nothing in the marks depends on a typeface any more; typography (2.5) is decided for text alone.
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Good, because “group” and “one” inherit the harmonised spacing automatically.
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The IBM Plex outlines generated for comparison were removed from the repository.
Note, 2026-10-05. ADR-0019 adds a stacked form of the parent mark, “akribis” over “group”, centred, by the rule of the stacked One lockup.