A hundred and forty capacity basement under a carpet shop. Jamie Reid cut every letter from a different newspaper so no two shared a face, a size or an angle. That was an anonymity device before it was a style, and it still reads as one, which is why the venue uses it.

Client
Fictional, self-initiated
Sector
Small music venue
Scope
Mark, cut system, posters, tickets, screen
Method
After Jamie Reid
Built
CSS, six faces, one generator
01

The mark

Five letters, five faces, five angles. It is redrawn every time it is used, so there is no master artwork and nothing to put in a brand guidelines PDF.

One cut of the mark, of many

No master
There is no single approved lockup. Each use is a fresh cut from the same six faces and four grounds.
Constraints
Five letters, no two adjacent letters sharing a face, rotation between minus nine and plus nine degrees.
Shadow
Every scrap carries a hard drop at six hundredths of an em. That is the paper lifting off the page, not a style choice.
Never
Never draw it once and reuse the file. The moment it is fixed it stops being cut and starts being a logo.
02

The cut

Six faces, four grounds, and a rule that no two neighbours match. Press the button and the headline is cut again. Every result is legal and none of them is the approved one.

Faces
Six, drawn from what a photocopier in 1977 would have had to hand. A seventh has to replace one, not join them.
Grounds
Four. Black, newsprint, red and tape yellow. A scrap is never transparent.
Rule
No two adjacent scraps share a face or a ground. That single constraint is what stops it looking like a font.
Angle
Between minus nine and plus nine degrees, never zero. A level scrap reads as a mistake in a system built on wonk.
03

Colour

What a photocopier and one spot colour can do. The yellow is parcel tape and behaves like it: it holds things down and it is never a background for reading.

Copier black#17171AThe ground of every poster. Slightly warm so it prints grey, not dead.
Newsprint#E7E3D8The paper. Its tone is part of the palette.
Spot red#E1261COne pass, printed deliberately out of register.
Tape#FFE600Prices and warnings. Never behind more than four words.
Register
The red sits between one and three millimetres off. It is specified as a range, not corrected.
Generation
Artwork is output, copied, and the copy is scanned. Two generations minimum before anything goes to print.
04

The six faces

Chosen because they do not belong together. A grotesque, a typewriter, two condensed posters, a book italic and a machine mono. Any two of them in one word looks like an error.

Aa
Grotesque, black
Aa
Typewriter
Aa
Condensed poster
Aa
Condensed caps
Aa
Book italic
Aa
Machine mono
Practical type
Listings, times and prices are set in the typewriter face only. The mixture is for headlines and never for information.
Case
Whatever the scrap came as. Mixed case within a word is correct and is not to be tidied.
05

Poster series

Three gigs from one month. Same rules, three different cuts, and no two posters that could be mistaken for a template with the names swapped.

A3, photocopied, flyposted

06

Applications

The cut is for the name and the headline. Everything a person has to act on, times, prices and door policy, is set in the typewriter face and left alone.

Static Kings Fri 14 Mar · Doors 8 · 14+ with an adult
Adm £8 No refunds

Ticket, 150 × 65 mm

ListingsTicketsHireBar

Downstairs,
most nights

A hundred and forty in. No guestlist, no photo pit, no barrier. Tickets on the door unless it says sold out.

This month
FRI 14Static Kings8
SAT 15Blank Pages7
THU 20Nera6
FRI 21Two Winters8
SAT 22Open floorFree

Website

March

  • FRI 14Static Kings8
  • SAT 15Blank Pages7
  • THU 20Nera6
  • FRI 21Two Winters8
  • SAT 22Open floorFree
  • SUN 30Matinee, all ages4

Doors eight unless stated. Cash on the door. The lift is broken and has been since 2019.

Monthly listing, A5 handbill

Member 0412
Since March 2019
Two pounds off, always

Membership card

07

What breaks it

All four of these are tidying. Tidying is the only thing that can kill this system, and it is what everyone reaches for first.

×
Do not use one face Five letters in one typeface is a wordmark with a rough edge. The mixture is the anonymity, and the anonymity is the point.
×
Do not level it Set square on a baseline the scraps stop reading as cut paper and start reading as a font someone bought.
×
Doors eight unless stated. Cash on the door. The lift is broken and has been since 2019.
Do not set copy on tape Yellow holds four words. A paragraph on it is unreadable under a bare bulb in a basement, which is where it gets read.
×
Do not clean it up Sharp edges, no grain and no shadow gives a vector imitation of a photocopy. Two generations through a real machine or do not bother.