Direction A · Vigil — considered watchkeeping
MainsKeeper identity, Direction A: Vigil
A mark for an instrument someone cares about. The ring is the watch; the line running level through it is the mains — observed, recorded, and left untouched.
The idea
Why a watch ring, and why not a bolt.
The kept log
MainsKeeper does one thing: it keeps watch. It notes when the mains was present, when a UPS took over, when contact was lost and when it resumed — and it says plainly how sure it is of each entry. The identity treats the fleet as a log that someone keeps, entry after entry, in the manner of a ship’s watch or an observatory notebook.
The ring is the watch: a continuous round of observation with a single tick at twelve marking the watch position. It is open at the horizon — the keeper does not close the loop on the thing it observes. Through that opening runs a steady horizontal line: the mains, level and longer than the ring, passing through untouched.
Not a bolt in a shield
The lightning bolt in a shield promises two things this product must never claim. The shield says protection — but MainsKeeper switches nothing, shuts nothing down and sends no commands; it only observes. The bolt says event — a surge, a strike, drama — while the real work here is continuity: hours of quiet, well-kept readings that make the rare incident legible.
A level line is the honest picture of healthy mains. When the line is steady, all is well; the ring around it simply shows that someone was looking. The mark works flat, in one colour, without gradients or glow, and it survives down to sixteen pixels.
“Nothing is protected by this mark. Something is being watched, carefully, and written down.”
Wordmark, lockup & logomark
Three editable SVG files; the wordmark is live text.
- Ring
- r 22 on a 64 grid, 4 stroke, butt caps
- Opening
- 20° either side of the horizon
- Watch tick
- Twelve o’clock, inside the ring
- Mains line
- Level, 60 of 64 wide, teal
Light, dark & monochrome
Colour carries the mains line only. In one colour the mark loses nothing structural.
On paper · #F4F5F2
Colour, one-colour ink, one-colour lockup. logomark-mono.svg uses currentColor.
On night ground · #101317
Ring and type in #E8EAE6; the mains line lifts to #5FB3AB. lockup-dark.svg, logomark-dark.svg
App icon & favicon
The icon keeps the ink ground of a night watch; the favicon takes teal so it can be found in a crowded tab strip.
Small-size proofs
Rendered at actual 16 px and 32 px in the places the mark will really live.
Browser tab strip · favicon at 16 px
Light and dark browser chrome. The teal tile holds its edge on both; the white mains line reads as a single level stroke.
App list & dock · app icon at 32 px
In a list and on a dark dock. At 32 px the tick is a single pixel column — present, not relied upon.
Drawn on the 16 px grid
Enlarged sixteen times with the pixel grid overlaid (a vector enlargement, not a screenshot). The mains line occupies rows 7–8 exactly, so it rasterises as a crisp two-pixel bar with no anti-aliased fringe.
The ring opens 40° at this size — twice the full-size opening — so a clean pixel of air separates arc from line. The twelve o’clock tick is dropped; at 16 px it would read as noise.
16 px actual32 px actualicon 16icon 32Palette
Paper and ink do the work. Teal, amber and red are reserved for meaning, and always travel with a word and a glyph.
Day · light ground
Body ink on paper is about 16:1; Ink 2 on paper about 7:1; teal, amber and red on paper each clear 4.5:1, so status words can be set in their colour at text size. On night ground, all three night accents clear 4.5:1 against #101317.
Typography
A book face for the account, a mono for the readings, small caps for the labels. All system-resident on macOS; no web fonts.
Duplex is back in contact; its history is still arriving.
BW Rack UPS on battery
The collector recorded the UPS switching to battery at 14:03; that record reached us at 15:17. Observation ended at 14:30. At least 27 minutes on battery; endpoint unknown.
On utility/Last known/Not reported/History gap
Clear space & care
Short rules for keeping the mark as drawn.
Keep at least one ring radius (r) clear on every side — in the lockup, measured from the ends of the mains line. Minimum sizes: logomark 16 px (use the favicon drawing below 24 px); lockup 120 px wide.
- Do: Keep the mains line level and unbroken; it always extends past the ring.
- Do: Use a single colour when colour is uncertain — the mark needs none.
- Don’t: Close the ring, fill it, or make it a shield or badge.
- Don’t: Tint the mains line red or amber to signal status. The mark is not a status light.
✕Closed ring — the line no longer passes through.
✕Waveform or zig-zag — the mains is drawn steady.
✕Status colours in the mark.
✕Tilted — a level line is the whole point.
Concept A · Vigil — design proposal for MainsKeeper, round one. Marks are editable SVGs in concepts/a/assets/; the wordmark is live text in Iowan Old Style and should be outlined before print.