Brownout presents · every night until the lights come up
Power
after dark.
MainsKeeper — the back room of a club at 3 a.m., quietly minding the city’s switchboard. It watches every socket in the house and never lays a finger on one.
The idea
Why a keyhole socket, not a bolt in a shield.A wall socket is where the mains enters the room. Set it in a lozenge of black lacquer, tilt its two slots into a wicked V, and let the ground pin become a keyhole — and it stops being hardware and becomes a face at the door of a private room.
The keyhole is the product’s promise: MainsKeeper looks in; it never reaches in. No bolt (that’s the power, not the watching), no shield (that promises protection this product doesn’t give). The mark is a doorman, not a bouncer.
All the nightclub business — chrome gradient, lacquer sheen, magenta glow behind the keyhole — is lighting. Switch the lights off and the mark is three cut-outs in one flat shape: two slots and a keyhole. It holds at 16 px, in one ink, on a wristband or a fax.
- ALozenge — a rotated square with softened corners: a nameplate, a booth, a diamond on the door.
- BFaceplate — separated from the lozenge by a hairline cut, so it survives in one colour.
- CSlots — rotated ±14°. Live and neutral; read as eyes.
- DKeyhole — the ground pin redrawn. Read as a mouth, or a way in.
Wordmark & lockup
Didot, tight, with a drawn swash K whose tail sweeps under “eeper”.
The mark, lit and unlit
Light and dark usage. The flat versions are the real mark; the lit one is the costume.
App icon, favicon, small sizes
Rendered at real pixel sizes. The favicon is redrawn for 16 px, not shrunk.
Inbox — MailMainsKeeper — The floorDuplex · back roomMainsKeeper — The floorBroadwaterSettings32 px16 pxfav 32fav 16mono 32mono 1632 px16 pxfav 32fav 16mono 32mono 168× enlargement, 16-px grid — slots sit on whole pixels (2 × 3), the keyhole keeps a dark pupil, and a 1-px lacquer keyline holds the diamond on white and on black. The faceplate ring is dropped below 24 px.
Palette
Six inks. Two jobs: decoration, and telling the truth.When the house lights come up
Critical — white on #D8102C, flat, filled triangle.
Warning — lacquer on chrome, flat, hollow triangle.
Recovering — acid keyline and block, circular arrow.
The rule
Glow, gradients, velvet noise and neon are the club’s lighting: allowed on the ground, the marquee, the booths and the marks. Alarm plates, status text and charts are flat, high-contrast and shaped — they must read the same with the lights off. Body text is chrome or near-white on dark (≥ 4.5 : 1); magenta and chartreuse are for large type, marks and accents. No purple gradients. Ever.
Type
macOS-resident faces. No web fonts.DISPLAY
Didot → Bodoni 72 → serif · italic, tight
Everyone’s still standing.
The back room · Booth IV · Duplex
124 / 64 / 44 / 28 px · tracking −0.02 to −0.03 em
BODY & URGENT COPY
Futura → Avenir Next → sans-serif
Broadwater — BW Rack UPS on battery since 15:09.
Plain words for plain facts. Urgent messages are set in this face, bold, never in italics and never in the display serif.
20 / 16 / 14 / 12 px · 700 for plates
DATA
Menlo → SF Mono → monospace · tabular
1,248 pending · 15:21:48
charge 78% runtime 29 min [EST] 14:52 ±90 s
22 / 16 / 13 / 11 px
On the premises
The mark stamped, struck and engraved — all from the flat artwork.Wristband stamp
Back roomOPERATOR · ALL NIGHT
One-ink stamp: the flat mark proves the cut-outs survive a smudgy rubber stamp on velvet.
Matchbook
We watch;
we don’t touch.
Welcome plate
MainsKeeper · by the door
Welcome to the back room.
Four booths. Six UPSs. Nothing in here has a switch.
Engraved chrome: the nameplate language used for every site on the dashboard.