# Logo — Aleris Brand OS concept bundle Sources in order; each file follows as it stands in the corpus, frontmatter first. --- title: Logo and identity status: accepted label: shareable passed: 2026-09-26 type: principles/identity-element layer: principle lang: en depends_on: - foundation/colour - foundation/typography - foundation/voice - foundation/constant-contextual - foundation/emotional-modes - foundation/imagery propagates_to: - communication/web - communication/presentations - communication/print - physical/interior - baseline last_verified: 2026-09-22 --- # Logo and identity Our logo is the symbol and the word Aleris in combination. The symbol is three lines, like the year rings of a tree, whose form suggests the shape of an A. It is our most distinctive graphic element, and it can be used on its own as a design element that carries the brand's personality. What recognition of the logo should produce is trust, competence and responsibility — not simply that someone knows who sent this, but that they are in steady hands. The form of the logo is constant. What the symbol is filled with is contextual. That split is the whole of this page: one mark that never changes so that people can rely on it, and one element that lives, so that the brand does not feel like a filing cabinet. --- ## The logo ### Primary and secondary variant **Rule.** The logo exists in two variants: horizontal and vertical. The horizontal is primary and is always used unless a constraint of space makes the vertical the better choice. **Why.** We build recognition around one logo, not two. **Test.** The constraint is a space so tight vertically that the horizontal logo cannot fit without dropping below 32px in height. That is a measurement, not a preference. ### Safe zone **Rule.** The minimum clear area around the logo is 50% of the logo's height, on all sides. **Why.** The safe zone protects the logo's legibility and impact wherever it appears. It is a minimum area that must stay free of other elements — text, images, other logos. The purpose is to make sure the mark can always be seen, read and recognised instantly, in any context. Without that buffer a logo gets visually tangled with nearby content: letterforms blend into background images, edges align awkwardly with other shapes, and at small sizes it can become almost unreadable. Over time that erodes recognition, because people never get a clear, repeated impression of the mark. **Test.** Measure the clear space against the logo's own height at the size it is reproduced, not against the page. The ratio travels with the mark, so a logo that passes at 24px passes at 240px. ### Minimum size **Rule.** The logo is never reproduced below **24px** in height. Below that height the favicon is used rather than shrinking the horizontal logo. **Why.** Below the floor the wordmark stops being readable, and a mark that cannot be read identifies nobody. **Test.** The wordmark's letter height is 0.4933 of the logo's total height, measured on the rendered SVG. The 14px floor in `principles/typography.md` corresponds to a cap height near 10px, which gives a measured floor of 20.4px. 24px is the rounded rule with margin. If the 14px floor changes, this number changes with it. A test in Brand OS recomputes it from the artwork on every run rather than trusting the number written here. ### Prohibited — how the logo may not be used **Rule.** - Do not rearrange the logo or place anything inside its clear space. - Do not use part of the logo as an element in text or other communication, for example by replacing the letter A with the symbol. - Do not distort or stretch the logo. - Do not change the logo's colours. - Do not add effects such as shadows, glows or outlines. - Do not place the logo on a busy or low-contrast background. - Do not rotate, tilt or animate the logo unless specifically stated. - Do not place the logo too close to other elements; respect the clear space. **Where the list comes from.** *Aleris Brand Guidelines 2025*, p. 8. The 2025 guidelines are a historical input: the corpus states these rules in its own words, and the English above is the rule. The original wording, kept as the source it was taken from: > Arrangera inte om logotypen och lägg inte in något i dess frizon. · Använd inte en del av logotypen som element i text eller annan kommunikation (t.ex. byta ut bokstaven A mot symbolen). · Förvräng eller sträck inte ut logotypen. · Ändra inte logotypens färger. · Lägg inte till effekter som skuggor, sken eller konturer. · Placera inte logotypen på rörig eller kontrastsvag bakgrund. · Rotera, luta eller animera inte logotypen om det inte är särskilt angivet. · Placera inte logotypen för nära andra element (respektera frizonen). **Why.** These are practical applications of the safe zone above. They protect recognition; they are not rules for their own sake. **Test — the misuses that actually happen here.** Shown wrong beside right, because a gallery of invented failures teaches nothing: - The symbol used instead of an *a* or *A* in running text. - The symbol with "Aleris" set beside it in a different typeface. - A product, unit or specialist-area name added to the logo, or placed inside its clear space. - The symbol alone, at low contrast, on photography. - A self-assembled lockup of the symbol and the logo text. - The symbol alone in the corner of a digital service or a letterhead — the position the logotype owns. - The logo set in the wrong colour. --- ## The symbol ### The living symbol **Rule.** The symbol is Aleris's most distinctive element. It is flexible and can be filled with content: full-colour photography, a petrol gradient, motion graphics or video. The fill makes the symbol living, and lets it adapt across formats and audiences while staying immediately recognisable as Aleris. **Why — a deliberate choice, not a default.** The living symbol makes the brand approachable, creative and likeable. It is warm and present rather than institutional, and that is what ties it to the Present Expert. This runs against the norm in our field: conservative healthcare brands lock their symbol down, and many never let it stand alone or carry an image at all. We take the opposite position deliberately, because a mark that can hold a real photograph of a real place says something an abstract shape cannot. It is a position with a reason, not the obvious choice, and it should be defended as one. **Gate.** The fill is an imagery decision, not a logo decision. What may go inside the symbol — real environments, natural light, the person at the centre — is governed by [[imagery]], and this page does not restate those principles. What this page governs is the boundary: the symbol may be filled, and it may not be turned into a substitute logotype by putting text beside it. When a new fill is proposed, imagery decides whether the content is right and this page decides whether it is still the symbol. ### Animated symbol **Rule.** The animated symbol has a subtle, repeating motion intended to convey a present and personal feeling. The lines in the animated version are slightly thicker than in the static ones. **Why.** The motion carries the presence. Being decorative and soulful, it communicates the spirit of Aleris more evocatively than a still image does. **Test.** Whether motion fits at all is an emotional-mode question, not a logo one — see [[emotional-modes]]. Motion suits presence and aspiration; it does not suit a surface someone has reached while anxious, and on those surfaces the static symbol is correct. ### The symbol as pattern **Rule.** The symbol may be used as a pattern for decorative surfaces — graphic design, clothing and textiles, interiors, for example frosting on glass. **Why.** As a pattern the symbol becomes context rather than sender. It communicates the presence of Aleris without calling attention to itself. **Gate.** A pattern decorates; it never identifies. So a surface carrying the pattern still needs the logotype wherever a sender has to be stated, and the pattern is never scaled down to where it reads as a mark rather than as a texture. In physical environments the material and placement are governed by the interior guidance rather than here. ### Digital identity — the symbol alone **Rule.** The symbol may stand alone where it works as decoration — large and solitary on sand or petrol, filled with image or gradient, or as the mark in a browser tab, an app icon, a notification avatar or a profile image. Where it stands for Aleris as an account or an app, it is the symbol in sand on petrol. On a tote bag, a poster or similar, the symbol may also stand alone as the design, when the full logo is close by — on the other side of the bag, on the material beside it, or in the premises where it hangs. It may not stand in for the logotype. A symbol at middle size, carrying text beside it or inside its clear space, is a substitute logotype and is prohibited at every size. **Why.** The mark is what identifies; the drawing is how the mark is carried. Where a surface has room for the wordmark, the wordmark is what a reader recognises, and the symbol on its own asks them to work it out. The same reasoning sets the 24px floor above: fidelity to the drawing matters only while the drawing can still be read. **Test.** Will the reader meet the full logo — on this surface, on its other side, on the material beside it, or in the premises around it? If not, and the surface has room for the wordmark, use the logotype here. **A note on small sizes.** At sizes where the symbol's three rings cannot be resolved, a variant drawn to hold the same silhouette is used. This is supplied as an asset rather than as a rule someone follows: the 16px tab icon is generated from the mark itself by a script in Brand OS, and 32px and above use the mark unchanged. Nobody redraws anything by hand. A test asserts the threshold in both directions, so widening it past 16px fails a test rather than passing a review. --- ## Sender architecture **Rule.** The sender is always Aleris, never a sub-brand, and the sender is always the full logo — symbol and word together. No product, unit or specialist-area name is added to it. The logo sits in one of the four corners, most often top left, and in much printed material bottom right; the format decides which. **Why.** One sender builds trust; sub-brands fragment it. A person who has been referred between three Aleris units should not have to work out whether they are dealing with one organisation or three, and every mark that claims to be a sender makes that harder. **Reach.** This governs the mark. It also governs the sender name in notifications, which is always Aleris. Email signatures follow their own guidelines and are not set here. --- ## Constant and contextual ### Constant — what always holds The logo's form and colour. The two variants and the rule that horizontal is primary. The clear space. The prohibition list. The sender: Aleris, the full logo, in a corner. That the symbol never substitutes for the logotype. ### Contextual — what adapts The choice between horizontal and vertical. Which corner the logo sits in, most often top left or bottom right. The symbol's fill — photography, gradient, motion, video — by context and emotional mode. Animated against static. Pattern use. Which drawing of the symbol a given size calls for. --- ## Quick test - Is it the horizontal variant, unless a constraint of space says otherwise? - Does the logo have its clear space, measured against its own height? - Does Aleris stand as the sender, rather than a unit or a sub-brand? - Is this symbol decorating — or is it standing in for the logotype? --- The logo belongs in Foundation rather than in production guidance because it is where the brand is most easily lost and least easily recovered. One constant mark, a symbol that lives, one sender: get those three right and a person knows who they are dealing with before they have read a word. ## Related - [[imagery]] — what may fill the living symbol - [[colour]] — the palette the mark and its grounds are drawn from - [[typography]] — the 14px floor the 24px minimum height is derived from - [[constant-and-contextual]] — the reasoning tool this page's last section applies - [[emotional-modes]] — where motion fits, and where it does not