Logo and visual identity for an American granite memorial company
01 · THE BRIEF
Every headstone is kept for someone.
SuperNova International is a wholesale and custom granite memorial maker in Mason, Michigan. Headstones, blanks and memorial benches leave its own shop floor already laser etched or sandblasted. It sells to monument retailers, and the retailers sell to families who have just lost someone.
Brands in this trade tend to drift to one of two places. Some are all rock and machinery, as cold as a factory gate. Others are crosses, doves and lilies, as soft as a greeting card. The SuperNova mark sits in between, built from a heart, a star and a single cut. The heart is for the families. The cut is for the people who work the stone. The star belongs to the name.
02 · ANATOMY
Page A-01 of the guidelines names the four hearts: dedication, integrity, love and care, craftsmanship. The cut on each heart sets the mark turning, and in the manual's words, the turning itself forms the core, the supernova. Open the parts below one at a time.
03 · CONSTRUCTION
04 · LOCKUPS
The SUPERNOVA INTERNATIONAL letterforms were drawn for this mark. Look at the bars of S, P, E, R and A: each one ends in a slanted cut at 70° (A-03), almost parallel to the leg of the A. The letters and the symbol share the same blade. Below, both lockups are checked against the figures in the manual.
05 · COLOUR
There are two brand colours, gold and dark grey, used about sixty to forty (A-09). White, beige, reddish brown and grey support them (A-10). Try the backgrounds the manual allows.
06 · STAR WINDOW
The most recognisable move in the applications is to blow the star up to fill a poster, then fill it with granite or with the sparks thrown off by the saw (B-02). The name comes from the sky and the product comes out of the ground; the star joins the two. The frames below are assembled live from this page's master and generated textures.
07 · STONE & PRINT TESTS
A memorial brand does not end on a screen. It gets lasered into polished black granite and foil stamped into the corner of a business card. You can run both tests below yourself.
A laser burns fine pale dots into polished black granite and keeps the detail. Sandblasting roughens and deepens the surface, which suits big letters and outlines. The four tapering cuts in the mark are only 0.40a at their widest. A laser handles them easily; a sandblaster needs care.
A-05 sets the smallest lockup at 4 mm high and 16.8 mm wide, exactly 42 to 10. At that size a is 0.4 mm and the cut is about 0.16 mm at its widest. Offset holds it. Foil and laser are close to their limits. Work out this one number before anything goes to press.
08 · APPLICATIONS B-01 – B-07
The application series has seven items: business card, poster, envelope, letterhead, folder, flyer and shirt. The first panels are redrawn from this page's master to the manual's sizes, colours and finishes; they are concept illustrations and all text on them is placeholder. The photographs after them are renders from the proposal.
VOS 06.1 · Logo interpretation sheet, drawn live from the source master
VOS 06.2 · Vector path governance & parameter protocol
11 · METHOD
A headstone is a business and a very private matter at once. People who know the trade skip the proposal and walk the quarry, the shop floor, the retailer's sample wall and the cemetery first. Here is the order they would look in, and what this page has to say at each stop.
No polished deck. Just the first-hand material.
12 · MASTER & EVIDENCE
The vectors on this page come straight from the VI basics source file. Nothing was redrawn; they were only moved and scaled uniformly, then checked against the rest of the manual and the client's website. Every step below can be verified.
A star burns brightest at the moment it goes out.
The stone keeps that light for us.
“Xinming Design is a brand system design company.”
Xinming Design · SuperNova International logo parametric standard · application images are concept illustrations or renders