Parlette Studios is the name Andrew Parlette’s software and photography go out under. It is part of the parlette.net family, with an identity of its own. The brand should read as precise, thoughtful, creative, understated, and capable.
The full written guide, with the reasoning behind each rule, lives with the
source files in this site’s repository at sites/studio/brand/README.md.
Logo#
The mark is a P built on a strict construction. A hidden A is cut into its foot, and a thin aperture ring surrounds it, split into four blades by cuts that run tangent to the bowl, the way an iris’s blade edges do. The P matches PARLETTE in Midnight Navy; the ring matches STUDIOS in Steel Blue.
Use the files as supplied. Keep clear space equal to the width of the mark’s stem on every side. The lockup should be at least 120 px wide and the mark at least 24 px. Below that, use the one-colour mark. Don’t recolour, stretch, outline, shadow, or rebuild the logo from a font. The tagline is never part of the logo.
The SVGs are trimmed tight to the art. Padded PNGs are alongside them in /brand/logo/png/, and print PDFs in /brand/logo/pdf/.
Colour#
Mostly navy, slate, and white. Signal Blue is the only saturated colour, and it is reserved for links, focus, and selection.
- Midnight Navy #0F1720 Logo, headings, dark backgrounds
- Deep Slate #334155 Body and secondary text
- Steel Blue #64748B The ring, STUDIOS, graphics
- Light Steel #94A3B8 Steel on dark backgrounds
- Cool Gray #D1D5DB Borders and rules
- Soft White #F8FAFC Light backgrounds
- Signal Blue #3B82F6 Accent: links (#2563EB as text), focus. Never in the logo
Steel Blue is for graphics and large type. Use Deep Slate for small secondary text on light backgrounds, and Light Steel in place of Steel on dark ones.
Type#
Archivo — headings and labels
Create thoughtfully. Build well.
IBM Plex Sans — body and interface
Tools that solve a real problem, described honestly. Body copy sets in IBM Plex Sans at a comfortable reading size, with normal tracking.
These are the parlette.net family’s typefaces, which tie Studios to the rest of Andrew’s sites. Headings use Archivo at weight 600 with slightly tight tracking. Labels, like the one above, are Archivo in capitals at weight 600, set a little wider and tracked very wide. This is the STUDIOS treatment. The wordmark itself is custom lettering, not a font.
Icons#
Line icons on a 24-unit grid with a 1.5 stroke, drawn from the mark’s own geometry rather than generic camera or code symbols.
Components#
Buttons are square-shouldered, set in the label style, and never shadowed: solid navy for the one thing to do next, and an outline for the alternative. Sections are divided by 1 px Cool Gray rules rather than boxes. Where separate things need a grid, cards are a hairline border with no shadow.
Imagery#
Photography is Andrew’s own, shown with plenty of negative space and the logo kept out of the frame.
For backdrops, his photographs are graded into the palette: nearly colourless, toned from slate to soft white, low contrast and hazy, with a gentle lift in the centre for the logo to sit on. The home page uses one from the Grinnell Glacier Trail in Glacier National Park; that’s Andrew on the ledge. A few decorative images, like the social card’s background, are AI-generated illustrations. They are never presented as photography.
The watermark on finished photographs is the mark alone, white or black at low opacity, small, in a corner: a signature, not an advertisement.