ALTUSX BRAND SYSTEM — REV 1 · UNIT AVX-01
00IDENTITY
ALTUSX

FLIGHT TRAINING SYSTEM — UNIT AVX-01

Altus — Latin, “high.” A learning dashboard for student pilots, branded the way the cockpit communicates: nothing decorative, everything legible at a glance, in the dark, under load. The brand borrows its grammar from flight instruments — hairlines, plates, readouts — and spends color the way a checklist spends attention: only where action is required. It is built to sit inside the SYSTEMS INDEX registry as a working unit, not a logo collection.

MK-01 — “CLIMB ATTITUDE”THE MARK

01THE NAME — ONE UNIT, THREE REGISTERS

Write it Altus X. Show it ALTUS ⁄⁄ X. Stamp it AVX-01.

You offered three candidates. Keep all three — they were never three names, they were one name at three altitudes. Speech, display, and hardware each get the register that fits. This is how aircraft work: a callsign on the radio, a title on the nose, a serial on the data plate.

ALTUS X
PROSE
How it’s said and written in sentences — docs, emails, the app store listing, conversation. Plain capitals, single space, no decoration.
ALTUSX
DISPLAY
The lockup. Splash screens, certificates, marketing, the cover of anything. The ⁄⁄ is a drawn element — two climb vectors at 18° — never typed characters. Use the supplied SVG, never rebuild it.
AVX-01
UNIT
The designation. In-product serial: dashboard header, favicon, data plate, progress atoms, API namespace, file names. Anywhere the wordmark is wider than the slot, AVX-01 is the slot-filler.
The ⁄⁄ is the brand verb — ascent. It appears between ALTUS and X, and alone as a favicon-scale shorthand. It is never a decoration elsewhere.
02THE MARK — CLIMB ATTITUDE

An attitude indicator, frozen mid-climb.

Every pilot reads this shape before they read words: the fixed reference symbol, the horizon, the pitch ladder above it. Here the symbol — the learner — rides two ladder-bars above the horizon. Nose high, climbing, on purpose. That is the entire product thesis drawn as one instrument. Square corners, hairlines, no glass, no glow: an instrument is trusted precisely because it does not flatter you.

  • [A]HEADING TAPEThree ticks at the top edge — the instrument’s own scale. Orientation, not ornament.
  • [B]PITCH LADDERBars above the horizon = degrees of climb. The syllabus, drawn as sky.
  • [C]HORIZONThe standard. One unbroken 2px line; everything is measured against it.
  • [D]REFERENCE SYMBOLThe student: the registry’s square atom + wing bars, in signal orange. It is the only element that ever moves, and it only moves up.
  • [E]PLATE + BRACKETSPanel hardware. Registration brackets at the corners — inherited from the SYSTEMS INDEX crosshair.

CLEARSPACE — ONE ATOM □ ON ALL SIDES

Nothing enters the frame. The orange dashed cell = the atom, the mark’s spacing unit (18px at 480 master size).

MINIMUM SIZES + HARD RULES

72PX
32PX — STRIP LADDER
≤18PX — FAVICON MASTER
  • No rotation of the plate. Instruments do not tilt; the horizon does.
  • No rounding, shadows, gradients, glow. Metal and paper only.
  • The atom never changes color. Orange is the position light of the brand.
  • Never set on photography or texture. Panel or paper, nothing else.
03COLOR — EVERY HEX HAS A JOB

Two functional hues. Everything else is metal and paper.

The palette is inherited from the SYSTEMS INDEX registry so the product reads as a unit of one system. Cockpit logic applies: green is verified and costs you nothing; orange is a demand. If the screen glows orange everywhere, nothing means anything — so Signal is spent only where the student must act next.

PANEL
#0D0D0C
The cockpit at night. Rest state for every surface. Never pure black — #0D0D0C keeps hairlines readable.
MARKINGS
#ECE9E2
Primary information. Wordmark, headings, the horizon. Warm paper, not white — white glares on dark panels.
SECONDARY
#8E8C84
Metadata. Timestamps, prerequisites, captions. Present but never competing with the readout.
SIGNAL
#FF4D00
The live wire. Current module, resume action, the reference atom, unsaved state. One orange element per view, max.
NOMINAL
#97C9AE
Verified. Passed checks, cleared milestones, healthy sync. Phosphor green — a readout, not a celebration.
Functional hues stop at two. Warnings that aren’t actionable don’t exist in this UI; if it’s orange, the student can do something about it right now.
04TYPE — TWO VOICES, NO THIRD

Archivo declares. Plex Mono reports.

Display is Archivo Expanded, 800–860 weight, tracked tight — the sound of nose-art and hangar doors. Everything operational is IBM Plex Mono uppercase — the voice of the checklist. Both are self-hosted; no third face ever appears, not even for numbers.

DISPLAY — ARCHIVO EXPANDED 840 · TRACK −0.03EM · LEADING 0.95Climbout
TITLE — ARCHIVO 700 · TRACK −0.025EM · LEADING 1.05Ground Knowledge — Weather & Crosswind Technique
OPERATIONS — PLEX MONO 400/500 · UPPERCASE · TRACK +0.12EM · NUMERALS ALWAYS TABULAR MODULE 04 OF 12 — CROSSWIND LANDINGS · CURRENT
AIRSPEED ALIVE · DUAL 03:30 HRS LOGGED · SOLO CLEARED
NEXT CHECKRIDE WINDOW — [NEEDS: DATE] · UPLINK NOMINAL
05IN PRODUCT — THE DASHBOARD

What the student actually sees.

Header carries the unit plate and progress atoms — twelve squares for twelve modules, filled green as they verify, current one pulsing orange. States read left to right: done, now, later. One orange thing per view; here it’s the module you should be in.

AVX-01 ALTUSX 5/12 · 042%
03Airspace & Radio ProcedureVERIFIED — 096%VERIFIED
04Crosswind LandingsRESUME — LESSON 2 OF 5 · DUAL 03:30 LOGGEDCURRENT
05Solo ConsolidationREQUIRES — MODULE 04 VERIFIEDLOCKED

HEADER + MODULE TAPE, DARK PANELONE SIGNAL PER VIEW

FIRST SOLO — CLEARED ✓ D+084 · 09:40Z · RWY 27

MILESTONE BANNER — DISPLAY REGISTER RESERVED FOR THISNOMINAL ONCE EARNED

06VOICE — CHECKLIST CADENCE

Challenge. Response. Nothing else.

The product speaks like a good instructor: imperative, terse, impossible to misread at 1,500 feet. No exclamation marks, no emoji, no “Great job!”. Altitude is the metaphor baked into the name; it never needs to wave its arms about it.

SOUNDS LIKE

MODULE 04 — RESUMED. PICKED UP AT LESSON 2. AIRSPEED — ALIVE. THREE LANDINGS LOGGED. STORM SCOPE — CLEAR. ALL CHECKS NOMINAL. CROSS-COUNTRY — PLANNING UNLOCKED.

STATE LINES

EMPTY — NOTHING DUE. GO FLY. OFFLINE — UPLINK LOST. PROGRESS KEPT LOCAL. ERROR — SYNC FAILED ×2. RETRY ON GROUND. MILESTONE — FIRST SOLO CLEARED. D+084.
One idea per line. Numbers over adjectives. If a string needs punctuation to land, rewrite the string.
07PACKAGE — WHAT SHIPS IN /altus

The kit.

Every asset is self-contained SVG with fonts embedded — they render offline, in email, in-app, anywhere. Drop-in, no dependencies.

assets/lockup-dark.svgThe display lockup for dark panels — splash, certificates, cover pages.
assets/lockup-light.svgSame lockup, ink-on-paper, for documents and print.
assets/mark.svgThe climb-attitude instrument, dark plate. App icon master.
assets/mark-light.svgMark for light surfaces; atom stays Signal orange either way.
assets/plate.svgAVX-01 data plate — dashboard header, footer stamp, email signature.
assets/favicon.svgAtom + horizon at 32px. The shorthand that survives tab size.
brand.htmlThis sheet. Rebuild any time with python3 make_brand.py.
tools/index.htmlTRAINING UNITS — ten interactive drills (XWIND → AIRSP). The study layer of the dashboard.
Registry note — AVX-01 is reserved a slot in SYSTEMS INDEX. [NEEDS: ASSIGN SYS-02 OR SYS-03]