Glyph maker
Make a mark.
This is the system we use to illustrate our own writing, opened up. Primitives only, one solid element, and the solid one is always the subject. Build something and take it with you.
The GIF keeps the motion you chose and pastes into Slack, Keynote or anywhere else that will not play an SVG. Copy code gives you the SVG markup instead, which stays vector and weighs a fraction as much, for dropping straight into a page. Both are self-contained: no stylesheet, no script, no request back to us. Yours to use, commercially or otherwise. No attribution needed, though we would not object to it.
The rules it works to
Primitives only
Circles, squares, lines and arcs. Nothing is ever depicted. A mark that tries to draw the thing it is about stops working the moment the subject changes.
Exactly one solid element
Everything else is a hairline. The solid element is the subject, so there is never a question about where to look, and the mark still reads at 24 pixels.
Named for a relationship
Divided, repeated, enclosed, scattered. Never named for a subject. A new piece of writing asks what relationship its argument has, which is a question with an answer, rather than what it should look like, which is not.
One shared margin
A 120 by 120 frame with the artwork inset to 20. Every mark in the set sits on the same margin, so any two of them can be placed side by side without adjustment.
We use these instead of stock photography across the site. The reasoning, and what it costs to build a system like this properly, is in what a brand identity costs.