Hacking Biology Foundation

Two identities, one family

The Foundation and the software are not two brands competing for attention. They are two roles in one story, and the identity should make the roles legible at a glance.

The rule that carries the whole system: shared skeleton, different weight. Same ring, same bar, same Jost, same ink. The Foundation simply uses them more quietly, and reserves the teal for the moments it refers to the thing it protects.

The mark — three directions

biohack.it's mark is the ring and the bar: the round O of biO, also a cell, paired with the bar of hacking — the cut. The Foundation's mark must be born from the same two shapes, or the family breaks. Three ways to do that, to be chosen:

A · The plinth

The bar widens into a base and the ring rests on it. Reads literally as foundation: the thing that holds. The most legible of the three at favicon size.

B · The steward ring · suggested

biohack.it's ring-and-bar, enclosed by a second ring. The Foundation is drawn as what surrounds and protects the thing it stewards — the mission lock, as a shape.

C · The lock

The bar passes through the ring and closes it. The most graphic of the three, and the most assertive — arguably too assertive for an institution.

Side by side with the sibling

Biohack.it Hacking Biology Hacking Biology Hacking Biology

Lockup

The Foundation's wordmark is HACKING BIOLOGY in Jost Light, uppercase, tracked .04em, with the mark to its left at cap height. The word Foundation is a tagline, not part of the wordmark — set in Jost Medium, tracked .18em, uppercase, at roughly half the wordmark size.

Hacking BiologyFoundation

Rules

Clear space of at least the cap height on every side.

Minimum width 120 px on screen; below that, the mark alone.

Ink on paper, or white on ink. Never teal on teal.

Never stretch, rotate, outline, or add effects.

Never rebuild the tagline in another typeface.

Never place the lockup on a photograph without a solid panel behind it.

Colour

The palette is inherited from biohack.it without a single change — that is the point. What changes is the proportion: the Foundation is monochrome by default, and teal is spent sparingly, on links and on references to biohack.it.

Supporting greys: muted #59636A for secondary text, faint #8B9398 for metadata, hairlines at rgba(37,41,44,.13). Body text always keeps at least 4.5:1 contrast.

Typography

Graphic language

The bar is the signature device, exactly as on biohack.it: section openers, dividers, the baseline under a heading. It is always ink, always the same 8 px weight, never decorative.

Navigation is static and typographic: a sticky hairline-bordered bar, the lockup on the left, uppercase Jost links on the right. No dropdowns, no hamburger animation, no colour on hover beyond the teal underline. The site should feel like a document, not an app.

Photography is used only where a person is involved — the Foundation is a human project, and the blog is written by a named individual. Photographs are never decorative fills.

Voice

biohack.it says transparent, open, scientific, human. The Foundation adds one word: accountable. It speaks in plain declaratives, publishes what it cannot guarantee as readily as what it can, and never uses the promotional register — the credibility of the whole project rests on the Foundation sounding like it can be held to its word.

Downloads

Every mark on this page is vector (SVG, in assets/) and is also rendered as PNG at several sizes, so anything that cannot take an SVG — a slide deck, a printed piece, a form that only accepts PNG — still has a correct file to use.

PNGs are rendered from the SVG geometry by tools/render_brand_pngs.py. If a mark's SVG changes, rerun that script so the PNGs stay in sync — they are not hand-exported and will not update themselves.