Identity · Own studio · 2026Real identity

Nirvana StudioCut to the good part

Studio identity

Studio Luck becomes Nirvana Studio. The steel, ink and signal-yellow from the portfolio site stay. What's new is a mark built from the language of the edit, plus a system that works from a 16px favicon up to a wall sign.

Client: Nirvana Studio (own practice)
Scope: Name transition, logo, palette, type, usage rules, applications
Location: Melbourne, working anywhere
Domain: nirvanast.com (planned, not live yet)

The brief

The name changed. The site's look was already doing its job, so the brief was to give it a proper mark and rules without starting from zero.

Change the name, keep the look

Clients who know Studio Luck should still recognise the portfolio. The site's palette (light steel, ink, one signal yellow) and its extra-wide Archivo headlines carry straight over.

The old logo was a clip, not a name

The site's yellow clip with a playhead said "video", but it didn't say the name, and it couldn't work alone as an avatar. The new mark needed to hold the N and still feel like the edit.

Stay away from the obvious

"Nirvana" pulls toward lotus flowers, meditation gradients and the band's smiley. None of that is what the studio does, so the mark had to come out of the work itself.

The idea

Cut to the good part

“In, out, and the good part.”

Every edit is a choice between an in-point and an out-point. The mark is an N built from exactly that: an in-bracket, an out-bracket, and the yellow selection between them, which is the only part of the footage that makes the cut. It keeps the old clip-and-playhead logo's DNA (yellow selection, ink frame) and finally spells the name. In the lockup it does exactly that: the mark is the N, so the logo reads [N]IRVANA STUDIO.

Logo

Primary lockup with the mark standing in for the N, the mark on its own, one-colour and reversed versions, and a plain full-text backup for tiny sizes. Every file is hand-built SVG: outlined, geometric, no effects.

Primary

Reversed

Mark

One colour

Mark, reversed

One colour lockup

Small-size backup · plain wordmark

Below 240 px wide the mark-as-N gets too thin to read as a letter, so footers, email signatures and end credits switch to the full-text NIRVANA STUDIO. The favicon stays the mark on its own: no text survives 16 px.

96px

48px

32px

24px

16px

320px

180px

120px · backup

lockup.svg ↓lockup@2x.png ↓lockup-reverse.svg ↓lockup-reverse@2x.png ↓lockup-mono.svg ↓lockup-mono@2x.png ↓mark.svg ↓mark-mono.svg ↓wordmark.svg (small-size backup) ↓

Construction

Drawn on a grid, not traced. Measurements are in grid units of the 120-unit master.

Built on an 8-unit grid inside a 120-unit square.
Stems and arms are 24 units (3 modules). Arms run 48 units, twice the stem.
Every gap is 8 units: the "cut". In the lockup a double cut (16 units) separates STUDIO from its rule.
The selection band is 24 units wide, matching the stems, and rises at 7:4.
In one colour the band turns ink and the N still reads, because the gaps carry the shape.
In the lockup the mark replaces the N. It is scaled to the cap height of Archivo Expanded Black, sits on the baseline, and is kerned 13 units into the I (about 0.8 of a stem). That is tighter than the font's own N-I, to make up for the mark's lighter stems and the notch under its right arm.

Colour

Contrast ratios are measured against white and black text, so the safe pairings are listed on each swatch.

Aa 14.7:1AA

Signal

#FFD400 · RGB 255 212 0

The selection. CTAs, highlights, the band in the mark. Keep it under ~10% of any layout.

Aa 17.9:1AA

Ink

#15171C · RGB 21 23 28

Type, the mark, dark surfaces.

Aa 17.2:1AA

Steel

#E6E9ED · RGB 230 233 237

Default page and paper.

Aa 15.4:1AA

Steel 2

#D9DDE3 · RGB 217 221 227

Cards, panels, secondary surfaces.

Aa 5.1:1AA

Clip Blue

#3B5BFF · RGB 59 91 255

Timeline clips, links, UI accents. Never inside the logo.

Aa 5.9:1AA

Graphite

#5E6570 · RGB 94 101 112

Secondary text, captions.

Rough proportions in a typical layout.

Type

Open-licence fonts only (SIL OFL), embedded from local files.

Display

Archivo Expanded Black

Archivo · wdth 125 · wght 900

Cut to the good part.

Aa Bb Cc Gg Kk Qq Rr 0123456789 & ?!

Text

Archivo

Archivo · wdth 100 · wght 400 to 600

Nirvana Studio edits, animates and builds for creators and brands. Melbourne-made, delivered anywhere.

Label

JetBrains Mono

JetBrains Mono · wght 500 to 700, labels and timecode

SHOWREEL 00:01:12:08

Usage

X is one stem width (⅕ of the mark's height). Keep 1X clear around the mark and 2X around the full lockup.

Clear space

Minimum size

Lockup: 240 px wide on screen · 50 mm in print. Below that, use the plain wordmark, or the mark alone in square slots.
Small-size backup: Plain full-text NIRVANA STUDIO (wordmark.svg) for footers, email signatures and credits under 240 px.
Mark: 16 px · 5 mm. At 16 px the band can go ink (one-colour version).
Favicon: Mark on Signal, 32 and 16 px exports. Never the lockup or wordmark: text doesn't hold at 16 px.

Don't stretch or squash

Don't recolour the band

Don't rotate

Don't add shadows or glows

Don't set it on low contrast

Don't set the mark before the full nameIt already is the N, so this reads N-NIRVANA.