What changed. These are logo variations rather than material studies. Every mark here is drawn geometry: outlines pulled from the actual typeface, symbols built from coordinates. Nothing was generated as an image.
Licensing. Only Cabinet Grotesk and Switzer are licensed and self-hosted today. The other five faces are macOS system fonts, fine for deciding a direction and not licensed for web embedding. Whichever wins has to be bought before it ships.
Normalisation. Faces have different cap heights and units per em, from 1000 to Impact's 2048. Every face is scaled to one common cap height so the six are actually comparable rather than just differently sized.
Same two constructions in six faces, every face normalised to one cap height so the comparison is fair. Exponent on the left, chip on the right.
The incumbent. A character grotesque with a slightly narrow M and a tight vertex, which is what stops it reading as Helvetica. Already paid for and already on the site.
Risk. A display face is doing an identity job here. The quirks that make it interesting at hero size are the first things to blur at 24px.
The network standard. Every American broadcaster set its identity in this or something wearing its clothes, so it reads as infrastructure rather than as a design choice.
Risk. The neutrality that reads as infrastructure also reads as nothing in particular. A growth partner with a Helvetica wordmark owns no letterform, and the mark cannot be defended as theirs.
Geometric, confident, and period-correct: HM3 cut its first infomercial in 1986 and this is the voice of that decade of television without being a costume.
Risk. The wide round O-forms make it the widest lockup here, and Futura's thin joints break up faster than a grotesque under video compression.
High-contrast serif. This is the slot the design spec wanted Zodiak for. It buys editorial authority and forty years of standing, which is exactly the heritage half of the brief.
Risk. Hairline serifs are the worst possible answer to a 24px favicon and to broadcast overlay. It would need a separate low-contrast cut drawn for small sizes.
Condensed and loud. This is direct-response television talking in its own voice, and it is the only face here that sounds like a price card.
Risk. That voice also carries a meme caption and a discount retailer. Attention is won and the premium read the site is built to earn is lost.
Geometric humanist. The DTC register: clean, modern, at home next to an Amazon listing and a Shopify checkout, which is the half of the business that actually sells.
Risk. Nothing in these letterforms refers to television in any way. Picking this face bets the identity on the DTC half and leaves the broadcast heritage to live in the copy.
One typeface, six colourways, both constructions. Geometry is identical in every panel; only ground, ink and accent move.
#c9cdd2The locked palette. Cool, expensive, and it keeps the accent as a tone rather than a colour.
Risk. Platinum is so close to the paper tone that on any light ground it collapses. It only works as half of a pair.
#f2f2f0No accent at all. This is the version that survives a fax, a stamp, a single embroidery thread and a knockout over footage.
Risk. The 3 loses every bit of separation, so on the Tally construction the chip and the letters read as one continuous slab.
#6e757eThe print-first case, with the accent moved to the deep platinum so it survives on a light ground.
Risk. The deep grey reads as a flat grey rather than as metal, so the mark loses the cool sheen that makes the dark version feel expensive.
#e0342aThe on-air light. This is the one accent colour that means something specific in a television building rather than being decoration.
Risk. Round one rejected red as too saturated and too primary. That judgement covered a full accent system, whereas this is red on one element only, so it deserves a re-test before it is ruled out again.
#7d94adA cooler, bluer accent than platinum. Reads technical and equipment-like rather than jewellery-like, which suits a shop judged on performance.
Risk. This is the first option here that reads as an actual colour, so the mark starts to look like a tech company and drifts away from broadcast.
#c8281eRed on a light ground. Editorial, print-native, and the loudest option in the set.
Risk. Black plus red on off-white is the most common newspaper and discount-retail palette there is, so it risks reading as a sale flyer.
Six symbol marks, each shown alone, in a horizontal lockup with the wordmark, on paper, and in one ink. A symbol has to work at 16px and with the accent switched off.
The strongest reduction of the set. One solid shape, no hairline, so it is identical at hero size and at 16px, and it doubles as the on-screen bug the reel needs.
Risk. A boxed numeral reads as a channel number, so the HM-cubed meaning is traded away.
Simplest mark here and the one that survives smallest. It says live television in one shape with no letterform to break.
Risk. A record button and a power indicator look exactly like this. The mark carries no HM3 in it at all, so it can never stand alone without the wordmark.
Argues from the equipment rather than the name. Rotationally symmetrical, so it holds any size or crop, and it is the most ownable drawing in the set.
Risk. Photography comes through louder than television, and three stroke weights inside a circle close up below about 28px, so the mark needs its own small-size cut.
The only symbol that carries the actual meaning: HM cubed, three faces, three M-words. It is geometric, it holds at any size, and it explains itself once told.
Risk. One ink kills it outright: with the accent switched off all three faces become one tone and the cube collapses into a plain hexagon, which the panel on the right shows. Isometric cubes are also the house style of every blockchain and developer-tools company of the last decade, so the form is owned by nobody and says nothing about television.
Counts to three without a numeral and reads as a level meter, which lands on the thing they sell: dollars per minute of air.
Risk. Three bars is one rounded corner away from a menu button and one gradient away from a growth chart. It is the least distinctive mark here.
Broadcast-native without being nostalgic: the corner ticks are the monitor safe area. Keeps the 3 legible and gives the mark a square footprint.
Risk. Corner brackets are also the universal crop and scan-target motif, and the two thin arms are the first thing to vanish when the mark is small or knocked out of busy footage.