How to read this. Every mark is drawn as inline SVG outlines taken from the site's own self-hosted fonts, so nothing here depends on a font loading. Each option is shown on both grounds, in two-tone and in one ink, at hero size and at 24px, with its favicon reduction beside it at true size and at ×3.
Type. Cabinet Grotesk 900 for the letterforms, tracking −0.035em to match the
wordmark already in Hero.astro. Option 02 uses Switzer 600, option 06 uses Switzer 300.
Zodiak is not in sites/hm3/public/fonts, so nothing here uses it.
Colour. Ink #0a0a0c, paper #f2f2f0. The accent is
#c9cdd2 on dark and #6e757e on light. Pale platinum on paper falls to
roughly 1.1:1 and disappears, so the accent has to be a pair of values keyed to the ground.
Nothing warm appears anywhere in the set.
One ink. The right-hand pair of each row is the mark with the accent collapsed into the text colour. That is the fax, stamp, embroidery and single-plate case. Anything that only reads in the two-tone version is not finished.
Sets the 3 as a real mathematical exponent, so the mark says HM-cubed and the superscript carries the three M-words instead of decorating them. Cheapest to produce, cleanest to license, and it is already what the site ships today.
Risk. The exponent is the whole idea and it is the first thing to die. At 24px the raised 3 is under 6px tall and closes up; there is no icon hiding inside it, so the favicon has to drop the 3 and the meaning goes with it. A raised numeral also reads as a footnote marker to anyone not told otherwise.
Replaces the numeral with the evidence: MULTI / MEDIA / MARKETING justified to one block in the exponent slot. The reader counts to three without being told, and the full name is in the mark, which the other five need a second line to do.
Risk. It only works at lockup width. Below roughly 200px the three lines turn to grey hatching, and the reduction has to abstract them into three bars, which every phone in the world already reads as a menu button. It is also the widest of the six by a long way, so it fights a narrow nav bar and any square placement.
Reverses the 3 out of a cap-height chip, the way a network drops a bug in the corner of frame. One solid shape, one ink, no hairlines, so it is the only option of the six that reduces to a true square icon with nothing removed. It also gives them the on-screen bug the reel needs.
Risk. A boxed numeral reads as a channel number. The cubed meaning goes with it, and sitting a growth partner behind a station ident is a real positioning bet. The chip also needs the deep platinum on light grounds; the pale accent on paper is close to invisible.
Merges the H's right stem into the M's left stem, one join, no redrawing. Produces a silhouette nobody else owns and a monogram compact enough to hold a square, which the untouched HM is far too wide to do.
Risk. The join costs legibility in a way hero size hides. Read fast, the spliced form reads as one unfamiliar glyph rather than two letters, and at 24px the counters fill and it goes to a black slab. It also still hangs the 3 in the exponent slot, so it inherits every small-size problem option 01 has.
Puts the 3 inside a countdown leader, the last number before picture. It is the only option that argues from the medium rather than from the name, it holds a circular icon at any size, and it hands them a ready-made pre-roll frame. The registration marks stop short of the centre on purpose: a full crosshair turns the disc into a rifle scope.
Risk. Academy leader is a 1930s cue. It says film heritage to people who already assume a forty-year-old shop is old, which is the exact read the hero copy works to avoid. It is also the busiest mark here: three stroke weights inside a disc, all of which close up by about 32px, so the small size needs its own thicker drawing rather than a scale of this one.
Keeps the 3 at full cap height and separates it by weight instead of position, hairline Switzer against Cabinet 900. The 3 stays legible at sizes where a superscript is already gone, and the contrast reads as air rather than as a footnote.
Risk. Two families inside three characters can read as a mistake rather than a decision. The hairline holds at 24px on screen, which the column below shows, but it is the thinnest thing in the system and so the first thing to go in print, under video compression, and in any icon. Dropping it leaves a plain HM with no identity in it.
1.3 Tally. It is the only one of the six that loses nothing on the way down. Hero, 24px, one ink, knocked out of footage, embroidered on a jacket: the chip is a single solid shape with no hairline and no raised element, so every reduction is the same drawing rather than a redraw. It also solves a problem the others do not touch. HM3 puts its own footage on the page, and a network bug in the corner of frame is the chip already.
The cost is real and worth saying plainly: a boxed numeral reads as a channel number, so the HM-cubed reading is traded away. That trade is defensible. The cubed idea is a line in the About copy, not something a prospect decodes off a logo in the first second, and the mark it buys is broadcast rather than boutique, which is the brief.
Fallback: 1.1 Exponent. It is what the site ships now, it is correct, and it costs nothing to keep. If it stays, it needs a separate icon drawn for it. The 24px column above is the browser tab.