Artrix Studio

One of four surfaces of the same firm: the system that keeps the website, the investor deck and the LP report looking related.

Brand system · pitch concept

One firm, four surfaces, one system.

A brand system is not a logo file. It is the small set of decisions — how much space the mark gets, which color is allowed to mean "look here", what the fifth-largest piece of text is — that let five different people produce work that still looks like one company. It codifies direction A of the website; direction B was the type-led alternative shown alongside it.

Wordmark

clear space = cap height
HELIXA
Primary · on paper
HELIXA
Reversed · on ink
HELIXA
Accent · social, covers only

Color, and what each one is for

Ink#0E1116
Every body text, every dark surface. The default, not a choice.
Paper#F7F6F3
Warm off-white. Pure white reads clinical and blows out in print.
Signal#E8552D
One use per view. Marks the single thing that matters. Never decoration.
Deep#1B2A4A
Secondary ground for social and covers. Never behind body text.

Type scale

Early capital for new therapeuticsNewsreader 400 · display
Fewer companies, followed furtherNewsreader 400 · section
Five companies, one in Phase 2bInter 700 · subhead
We lead the first priced round, take a board seat and hold reserves, so each company can finish its next study without waiting on a new investor.Inter 400 · body
Lead investor · 01Mono 500 · label

Shape — corners, strokes, elevation

The part that drifts first. Everyone agrees on the logo; nobody agrees on how round a card should be, and six months later there are nine radii on the site.

Radius — four values, no others

0Images, rules
4pxInputs, tags
10pxCards, panels
999pxButtons, pills

Photography and data tables stay square — a rounded corner on a chart reads as decoration on something that should look measured.

Strokes

Hairline — 6% ink

Between rows in a table. Present, not visible.

Rule — 10% ink

Card edges, section dividers. The default.

Marker — 2px signal

Marks the one active thing. Never decorative.

Elevation — four steps, and mostly step zero

Flat0
on paper, on ink
Raised0 1 2 / 7%
cards at rest
Lifted0 4 14 / 9%
hover, active card
Floating0 14 38 / 14%
modals only

Shadows are always neutral ink at low opacity — never colored, never a glow. On the dark ground there are no shadows at all: separate surfaces with a 10% white hairline instead, because a shadow on near-black is just a smudge.

Photography

The brief in one line: science as it actually looks, photographed like architecture. Quiet, structural, unpeopled unless the person is the subject.

High-key macroInstrumentation, glass, crystalline structure. Cool gray-blue, blown highlights, shallow depth. Reads clinical without reading cold.
Deep ground, single lightOne warm source against near-black. Used behind headlines and on covers, where the signal orange can come from the image itself.
Structure and repetitionRacks, arrays, sequencing plates, facades. Pattern carries the idea of scale — useful when there is nothing photogenic to show.

Do

  • Shoot people as portraits — still, looking at the camera, named. A founder is a person, not a mood.
  • Keep one dominant color per image so the signal orange still means something.
  • Prefer real instruments, real rooms, real hands. Texture beats resolution.
  • Leave space in frame for type. Crop for the layout, not for the photograph.
  • Black and white is always allowed. It is the safe answer when an image fights the palette.

Don't

  • No stock scientists laughing at a clipboard. Everyone can tell, and it costs you more credibility than a missing image would.
  • No blue-green DNA render with lens flare. It is the visual equivalent of "innovative solutions".
  • No handshakes, no boardroom-through-glass, no city skyline at dusk.
  • No image where the accent color appears by accident — recolor, crop, or pick another.
  • No text baked into a photograph. It cannot be translated, resized or made accessible.

Applications

HELIXA
Managing Partner
helixa.bio
Card · 3.5 × 2 in
Social · 1:1
HELIXA

Quarterly letter, Q1 2026

A quiet quarter: $7.0M returned from a Palisomer sale, and the Vellumark readout now dated to Q4.

Read the letter
Email · 600px

The rules that actually hold it together

One signal color per view. If two things are orange, neither is important.

Serif for what is said, sans for what is measured. Headlines and quotes in Newsreader; numbers, labels and tables in Inter with tabular figures.

Clear space equals the cap height of the mark. Not a suggestion — it is what stops the logo from being crammed into a corner.

Do not recolor the wordmark outside the three lockups above.

Do not set body text on Deep. It passes contrast on paper and fails on screen at small sizes.

Do not add a fifth color for a one-off chart. Use tints of Ink instead — a palette grows one exception at a time.

Want a system like this for your brand?

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