Design concept prepared by The Recording Club · see why
Brand book · concept

An engineering
document, warmed up.

Little Labs has no brand system today, only a template with a stale date on it. It does not need decoration. It needs a system that looks like what the company is: one engineer, measuring things, solving one problem at a time. This is that system.

01 · The idea

Lead with the problem, not the logo.

The single strongest thing Little Labs owns is a way of thinking: you do not sell a phase-alignment tool with adjectives, you sell it by describing the moment an engineer needs it. So the brand's organising device is not a mark, it is a sentence. Every product, every page, opens with the problem it solves, set in plain language.

The problem

Two mics on one cab, out of phase. The polarity switch only gives you 0 or 180.

Then, and only then, the box: the IBP, which sweeps continuously between them. The structure IS the pitch.

02 · Colour

Paper, ink, and one hot lead.

A single accent, signal red, the colour of a live lead on a bench. It marks the problem statements and the calls to action and nothing else, so it always means "this is the live part". The ground is warm paper ruled with a faint cool grid, so the whole site reads as something drawn at a workbench rather than rendered in a deck. The purple gradient is gone.

#C62F1BSignal red
on paper: 4.91:1 PASS
#F4F2ECPaper ground
#141519Deep · product shots
#17181CInk
on paper: 15.85:1 PASS
#E4E6EAGrid line · cool

Ratios computed against the #F4F2EC ground by the WCAG 2.1 formula, not estimated. Both accent and ink clear AA for body text.

03 · Type

A drawn grotesque, and a monospace for the specs.

Space Grotesk carries display: mechanical, slightly drawn, it reads like a modern faceplate. Inter carries the product logic and the history, because those are long and want to be read. IBM Plex Mono handles model names and I/O, the way the back panel of the actual box does. Oswald, the current template face, is retired.

Space Grotesk 700In phase
Space Grotesk 600Section heading
Inter 400Body copy and the product logic, 16.5px
Plex Mono 400IBP · REDEYE · I/O · +48V
04 · Photography

Their product shots are already right. Use them bigger.

The dark front-and-rear studio shots of each box are the best asset the company has, and the current site shrinks them. On dark panels, contained rather than cropped, they look like exactly what they are: precise instruments. The one rule is that a product photo always sits on the deep ground, never on paper, so the two registers stay distinct.

Use

  • Their dark gallery shots, contained on the deep ground.
  • Front elevation leading, rear panel as the second frame.
  • Signal-flow diagrams where they exist. This is a company that thinks in them.

Avoid

  • The purple gradient. It is the thing being replaced.
  • Product shots on the paper ground. Boxes live on the dark register.
  • Stock studio imagery. Little photographs his own boxes and that is the point.
05 · Voice

Plain, exact, and a little funny.

Little's own writing is unpretentious and technically precise, with the occasional dry aside (he links to a magazine profile "suitable for a laugh"). That voice is an asset. Keep it.

Keep: the problem-first framing, exact signal-flow language, the studio-tech history told plainly, the humour. Name the studios. Describe the moment the box is needed.

Fix: the copyright. It reads "1988 - 2023". Set the founding year as 1988 and let the current year update itself, so the site never again looks abandoned when it is not.

"You do not buy an IBP from a spec sheet. You understand it the moment you are standing in front of the problem."