Visual identity · Revision 01
SERT ENGINEERING

sert — Turkish. Solid, unyielding, not easily bent, crushed, or cut. The word describes the material and the standard. It also reads as Syrian Excellence Research and Technology.

Discipline
Subcontract sheet metal
Also
Heavy iron · Recycling technologies
Floor team
4 masters · 2 apprentices
Stage
Procurement · pre-production

The wordmark

01 — Wordmark

Type only. No icon, emblem, monogram, gear, arrow, bracket, or decorative shape — ever. The mark is three parts: SERT set in an extended geometric grotesque, a 1px rule exactly its width, and ENGINEERING tracked out until it measures exactly the same.

SERTENGINEERING
Full lockup · cap 76px
SERT
Reduced mark · cap 24px

Proportions

ENGINEERING cap height is 1/7 of SERT's. Gap above and below the rule is 0.137 × cap.

At a 190px SERT cap: 26px gap, rule, 26px gap.

Width match

ENGINEERING is tracked to about 0.6em, then adjusted until its total width equals SERT exactly.

The width match wins over the nominal tracking value. Measure it; never hardcode it.

Why a reduced mark

Below roughly cap 40px, ENGINEERING computes under 6px and reads as a smear, not as type.

Use SERT alone. The ratio stays inviolate wherever the full lockup is actually used.

Palette

02 — Colour

Five core values, four derived because five cannot carry an interface. Contrast ratios below are computed live on this page against Graphite Slate — they are not copied from a table.

The contrast trap

Cold Steel Blue and Molten Bronze both fail AA for body-size text on the dark background. They are for rules, borders, large display type, and non-text UI.

For blue text on dark use Blue Tint. On light use Blue Deep.

One accent per view

Blue is the default technical accent. Bronze appears at most once on a page or in a carousel, as a single deliberate highlight.

Bronze never appears in the wordmark.

Typography

03 — Type

Archivo, shipped as two static families rather than one variable width axis. Expanded for display, normal for everything else. Arabic is set in IBM Plex Sans Arabic, which Archivo does not cover.

Display
Expanded · 400
Solid, unyielding, not easily bent.
Heading
Expanded · 400
Cut, bend, weld. One building.
Body
Archivo · 400 · 1.6
Minimum bend radius is not a preference. In mild steel it typically starts around one times material thickness. Aluminium is less forgiving; some tempers need two to four times before the outer fibre cracks.
Technical label
13px · 300 · 0.32em
01 — Capabilities · Sheet · 03
Arabic
Plex Arabic · zero tracking
الصاج الرقيق يعوجّ بسهولة.
تحت 2mm، خط لحام طويل بلا توقف سيقوّس القطعة.
Turkish
decimal comma
Kalınlığın 2,5 katı kadar uzak tut.

Never letter-space Arabic

Arabic is cursive; letters join to their neighbours. Letter-spacing forces gaps between letters that must connect and the shaping collapses into unreadable output.

This is a technical fact, not a style preference. Zero tracking, always.

Two families, not one axis

A width axis works on screen but does not survive canvas export — the exporter measures with the DOM font and paints with the canvas font, leaving false letter gaps.

A real expanded cut removes the whole class of bug.

The sheet

04 — Layout

Every layout is a drawing sheet. A title block along the top, a 54px drafting grid behind everything, and the content set against the bottom margin. 1080 × 1350 for social; the same anatomy scales to a web page.

SHEET · 03SERT
The cut line must be a closed loop.
If the ends do not meet, the machine cannot tell inside from outside.
01Sheet label — 0.32em tracking, Blue Tint. The signature device of the whole identity.
02Corner mark — SERT alone, sharing one rule with the label. A title block.
03Margin — 108px, exactly two grid modules, so type lands on the grid.
04Content — bottom-aligned, ragged end. Never centred body, never justified.
05Dimension arrow — ISO leader and filled head. Drafting notation, not an icon.
06Grid — 54px. If you notice it before the text, it is too strong.

Rendering rules

05 — Discipline
Always
  • Flat colour. Square corners, globally.
  • Elevation through a raised surface and a 1px hairline.
  • One accent per view; bronze once at most.
  • Technical labels as the section marker.
  • Logical CSS properties, so RTL survives without a second stylesheet.
  • Self-hosted, subset fonts.
  • Real machine and part photography, desaturated and cool.
Never
  • Gradients, bevels, glow, drop shadows, noise, 3D.
  • An icon in the logo, or anywhere decorative.
  • Icons as feature bullets or section illustrations.
  • Rounded corners, on anything.
  • Parallax, scroll-jacking, spring easing.
  • Stock photography: handshakes, hard hats, circuit overlays, CGI sparks.
  • Invented specs, client names, statistics, or certifications.

Permitted icons

Interface only: menu, close, file upload, external link, form validation. 1px stroke, square corners, monoline.

Never next to the wordmark.

Motion

Linear or cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 0, 1). 150–250ms. Opacity and small translations only.

Mechanical, not organic. Reduced motion respected.

When a section looks thin

Add a technical label or a rule. Never an illustration, never an icon, never a placeholder image.

What we do not claim

06 — Honesty

The factory is being equipped now. No client list, no project count, no certifications, no testimonials, no invented tolerances. This constraint outranks every other rule in this document, including a direct request.

Instead of proof-of-track-record

The process control that makes the first part right. The specification of what will be installed. The named skills of six people. Advice that saves the reader money.

Being new is only a weakness if you hide it.

The dividing line

Is this a fact about metal, or a claim about SERT? Facts about metal are free. Claims about SERT must be true today.

Where a real number is not yet decided, mark it [TBD] and list it. Never guess.