The Altrocks — Look

Style: Torn Paper. Big flat shapes torn by hand. No outlines, no gradients, no small details. Five people, five colors, one leaning pile.

Color

One color per person, assigned for life. It never moves and never gets shared. Use it on cups, bins, backpacks, calendar entries, chore rows, door labels.

Coral tints and shades — states and charts only, never in illustration: #FFE3DE · #FFB8AE · #FF8676 · #FF6250 · #D8412F · #9E2A1C

Rules

• Max four colors in any one piece, plus paper.
• Ochre and coral never touch directly — separate them with teal, ink, or paper.
• Ink is never a large fill except as a full-bleed background.
• Paper is the default background everywhere; avoid stark white.

Typography

• Display: Fraunces — weight 900, optical size 120, SOFT 60, WONK on. Tight tracking (-0.02em), line-height 0.9. Sentence case for warmth; all caps for the wordmark. Names, headlines, and the wordmark only.
• Body: Hanken Grotesk — 400–500 for running text, 600 for emphasis, line-height 1.5. Everything functional lives here.
• Utility: Hanken Grotesk — weight 800, all caps, letter-spacing 0.18em, 11–14px. Labels, captions, small print, dates, locations.
• Never introduce a third family. Never use the display face below 20px.

Logo & shape

The Mark — "The Stack." Five torn vertical strips, one per person, tallest in the center, all sitting on a shared baseline. Gaps are roughly one-quarter of a strip's width. Rue's strip is short and wide, so the whole mark leans right — that asymmetry is intentional and keeps it from reading as a crest.

Order, height, and color, left to right:

Exact geometry (240×200 grid, baseline at y=180): Jovey x20 y88 w30 h92 · Lacey x58 y32 w32 h148 · Scott x98 y24 w32 h156 · Ivy x138 y104 w28 h76 · Rue x174 y140 w46 h40.

Rules for the mark

• Every edge is torn, never cut clean, except the shared baseline.
• Never outline it. Never add a shadow. Never reorder or recolor the strips.
• Below 24px, drop the torn texture — clean rectangles, same silhouette.
• One-color version: all five strips in a single color (ink or paper) for stamps, embroidery, engraving, and single-ink work.

Lockups: Primary — mark above the wordmark ALTROCKS. Horizontal — mark left, wordmark right, optically aligned to the tall strips. Mark alone — icons, stickers, tags, anywhere the name already appears.

Secondary marks: Torn Band — a ripped coral strip with ALTROCKS knocked out in paper, for anything wide. The Tear — a sheet ripped down the middle with a color showing through the gap; a layout device, not a logo. Never combine The Tear with the mark in one composition.

Space & layout

• Don't center everything; let the pile lean. Overlap shapes generously and let them crowd each other.
• Exactly one ink line per composition — the horizon.
• Paper is the ground. Coral is the loudest surface; teal is the calm field.

Imagery

Everything is drawn to five rules:

1. Every shape is one flat color with a torn edge and no outline.
2. Nothing smaller than a thumbprint — if it needs detail, cut it.
3. Faces are a single punched hole in paper color.
4. Overlap shapes generously; let them crowd each other.
5. Exactly one ink line per composition — the horizon.

Starter illustration kit, all built to these rules: house, tree, bell, mug, ball, sun. Add to it freely as long as the five rules hold. For the real thing, tear the strips out of cardstock and scan at 600dpi — real edges beat any digital filter.

Do / Don't

• Do tear every edge by hand and keep shapes big and flat.
• Do let the pile lean right and let shapes overlap.
• Don't use gradients, shadows, glow, or strokes around shapes — ever.
• Don't draw hands, feet, or fingers; imply them with shape.
• Don't exceed four colors plus paper, and never let ochre touch coral.

The Altrocks — Voice

The Altrocks sounds like a note left on the fridge: warm, plain, and short enough that a kid could read it and a grown-up could act on it. It never performs. If a five-year-old can't follow the instruction, rewrite it.

Principles

1. Plain enough for the whole house. Jovey and Ivy should understand every label. Short words, one idea at a time.
2. Warm, not precious. It's a family, not a corporation. Say the friendly, human thing.
3. Name the person, name the color. Ownership is the system — "Scott's bin (teal)," "Rue's tag (olive)." Color and name travel together.
4. Made by hand, said by hand. Copy is as unfussy as the torn shapes. No jargon, no hype, no exclamation stacking.

Tone by context

• Labels & tags: just the essentials — a name, a color, sometimes a place. "IVY · FIG." Nothing more.
• Chore rows & calendars: direct and doable. "Rue walk — Scott."
• Holiday card: warm and a little funny; sign it in the utility face.
• Instructions (the rules card): step by step, so anyone can make things that stay on style.

Vocabulary

• Say: tear, stack, pile, lean, by hand, everyone's, on the fridge, whose is it
• Avoid: synergy, elevate, curated, premium, seamless, brand experience

Grammar & mechanics

• Sentence case for warmth; ALL CAPS only for the wordmark and utility labels.
• Second person and warm first-person plural ("we," "ours").
• Present tense, active voice, one idea per sentence.
• Utility labels: all caps, wide-spaced, a name and a color. Dates and places live in the utility face too.

Examples

• Label — ✅ "SCOTT · DEEP TEAL" ❌ "Property of Scott — do not touch!!!"
• Chore — ✅ "Trash out — Lacey, Tuesday." ❌ "Kindly ensure refuse is actioned by EOD."
• Card — ✅ "Five of us, five colors, one loud pile. Happy holidays. — The Altrocks." ❌ "Season's greetings from our family to yours."