SVERA

SVERA is a body, sound and mind studio in Berlin. The brief was an identity that could hold those three ideas at once without illustrating any of them.

The answer was to make the identity almost entirely atmospheric. One logotype, set once and never decorated. One typeface. A colour system carried not by flat swatches but by a set of photographed gradients: soft organic masses, out of focus, grain left in. They read as a body, a breath or a sound chamber depending on where you meet them, which is the point. The type stays flat, small and exactly level on top, so the atmosphere never becomes noise.

Delivered as a complete handover: layered source files, print-ready stationery, social templates and this specification.

The wordmark is the name set in the brand typeface, unmodified, in caps. There is no symbol, no lockup variant and no stacked version. It is the only permanent element in the system — everything else changes colourway season to season.

Primary. Dashed line is the minimum clear space; the grey square is one cap height, to scale.

Reversed, white. For the deepest part of a gradient field.

Reversed, ink. The default on a high-key field. Square 1080 master.

Construction

Set in ABC Permanent Book, caps, no manual kerning

Clear space

One cap height on all four sides, minimum

Minimum size

24 mm wide in print · 120 px wide on screen

Proportion

Wordmark width = 3.8 × cap height. Never re-space to fit

Permitted colours

Black · white · the ink tone of the active colourway

Square format

1080 × 1080, wordmark at 85% of canvas width, optically centred

On a post

Top right, one cap height in from the top and right edges

On a photograph

Omitted. The title block carries the name instead

One typeface across the whole identity: ABC Permanent, Book. A neo-grotesque with a narrow set width and flat terminals — it holds its shape at 2 mm on a card and stays quiet on top of a gradient, which is the only job it has here. No second family. No weights above Book except where a single line needs to hold against a dark field.

Family

ABC Permanent — Book is the only cut used

Case

All caps, everywhere, including the handle

Tracking

+20/1000 em on all set text

Leading

1.2 × size

Card size

≈8 pt — cap height 1.95 mm measured on the 85 × 55 mm card

Alignment

Flush left, or set on one shared baseline across the width

Never

Italic, bold, condensed, outlined or letter-spaced beyond +20

Production note. The portfolio specimen uses a substitute grotesque. Production artwork should use a licensed copy of ABC Permanent.

Three colourways, one structure. Each runs from a deep tone that can carry type, through a mid, to two pale tones that make up most of any surface. The pale end does the work: these are near-white materials with colour pooling in them, not coloured backgrounds. Values below are sampled from the delivered artwork.

Paper

#FFFFFF — the shared ground under every colourway

Type on gradient

The ink tone of that colourway, never pure black

Type on flat

Pale tone of the same colourway on the ink flat

Print

Artwork supplied CMYK at 300 ppi. Match to the ink tone first

Mixing

One colourway per surface. Colourways never meet on the same piece

The gradients are the identity. Each is a photographed organic mass thrown far out of focus, bloomed toward white at one edge and holding a dense pool at the other, with film grain kept rather than cleaned off. The grain is load-bearing — it stops the image reading as a digital gradient mesh and keeps it material.

Green. Two masses, high-key, white bloom bottom-left.

Lilac. Mirrored masses, deepest tone through the centre.

Blue. Sweeping bands, the coolest and most open of the three.

Source

Photographic, defocused. Not a generated mesh or a filter

Grain

Retained. Never denoise, never upscale a plate past 100%

Value range

Must reach near-white at one edge and the ink tone at another

Crop

Free, but keep one clear high-key field for type to sit in

Layering

Nothing sits on a gradient except type. No scrims, no overlays

Masters

202405_Template_Gradient.psd — layered, recolourable

Photography is the gradient system's other half: the same soft masses, only now they are bodies. Shot on film in daylight, in a bare room, with the figure low to the floor and a lot of empty wall above it. That empty wall is where the type goes, so the frame is composed for the type before it is composed for the body.

The grade is the discipline. Colour is pulled almost out — the delivered frames run at 6–12% mean saturation, so skin, concrete and cotton all drift toward the same cool neutral. Highlights are held off pure white and shadows off pure black, which is exactly what the gradients do, and why a photograph and a plate can sit on the same page without arguing.

Figure low, wall empty. The body reads as one continuous mass, like a plate.

Daylight only. Hard window light is welcome; added light is not.

Stock

Film. Grain visible, matching the gradient plates

Light

Daylight only. Window shapes and floor reflections are kept

Saturation

6–12% mean. Never a saturated garment or prop

Tonal range

Highlights held off white, shadows off black — never clip either end

Framing

Figure in the lower half; the upper half is reserved for type

Wardrobe

Black, grey, slate, olive. The colourways stay in the graphics

Location

The bare studio. No styling, no props, no equipment in frame

One rule holds the whole system together: all type on a surface sits on a single shared baseline, set small, tracked open, and spread across the full width. The gradient moves; the type does not. On the card that line carries the three-word strapline and the handle at once, which is the entire front of the piece.

The baseline, marked. It sits at 56% of the card height — optically centred, not mathematically.

In a tall format the rule repeats: three fixed lines, each one flush and level.

Strapline

BODY  SOUND  MIND — in that order, evenly spread, one line

Handle

@SVERA.STUDIO — always the last item on the line, flush right

Baseline

56% of surface height on the card; optically centred elsewhere

Margin

Type may run close to the trim. The gradient always bleeds

Hierarchy

Three levels maximum: title, detail, handle

Centring

An announcement may centre as one block, title and detail together. The strapline and the handle never do

Stationery was delivered print-ready in all three colourways so the studio could run a season in one and switch without a redraw. The reverse drops the gradient entirely for the flat ink tone — the only place in the system where flat colour is allowed to fill a surface.

Card front — lilac.

Card front — blue.

Card reverse — flat #2A4421, address and contact only.

Card front — green, the primary.

Post — blue, flush left on the dark mass.

Post — green, two classes centred as one block.

Story — single-line title.

Story — handle only, for stills and reposts.

Campaign. Where a photograph carries the type, it sits on the empty wall the frame was composed to leave — flush left, two levels, ink on daylight.

Business card

85 × 55 mm, CMYK, 300 ppi, full bleed, uncoated stock

Card reverse

Flat ink tone, pale type, two lines, no gradient

Story / reel

1080 × 1920, RGB, gradient full bleed

Feed post

1080 × 1350, RGB, wordmark top right at 1 cap from each edge

Campaign

Photograph, type on the empty upper half, never over a body

Editable masters

Layered PSD per format, type live, gradient on its own layer

Delivered 28 May 2024, with a recorded walkthrough of the layered files so the studio could produce new pieces without coming back to me.