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Identity refresh for Mersa, a 1994-founded Abu Dhabi anchorage operator. Wordmark anchors a maritime crest, the type pairs a serif title voice with utility-grade Inter UI — heritage signaling without leaning on nostalgia.
Below is the actual delivered file — every spread, in document order. Scroll the page to read through.
My grandfather moved pearls in 1954 between Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Bombay. We still run the same triangle — just in 40-foot steel boxes. The brand had to sound like that, not like Hamburg.
These pages are the instructions for carrying thirty years of freight competence without the yellow-on-blue nostalgia. Engineered as precisely as Maersk — but written in the Gulf, in Arabic first.
We move cargo on the Gulf–East Africa–India triangle our family has run since 1954. We operate fourteen trucks, one hundred twenty rotating containers and two shipping-line partners. We are not a museum. We write every manifest in Arabic before it is translated.
Set in Oswald Medium at +0.08em tracking. The O carries a crosshair — a surveyor's reference, a compass, a port. The Arabic lockup sits below, never beside.
Use the primary lockup wherever the brand has room to breathe — 32mm clear on all sides, minimum.
The wordmark occupies ten horizontal units, from the leading edge of the M to the trailing edge of the O. The cap-height is exactly three units — giving the mark its low, horizon-hugging posture.
The crosshair in the O is centred on the third unit from the right. Stroke weight is 10% of the cap-height. Do not redraw.
Minimum clear space is equal to the cap-height of the wordmark on all four sides. This is non-negotiable on steel, paper and screen.
Minimum usable size is 28mm in print, 140px on screen — below that, the crosshair collapses and the mark reads as an O, not a port.
Not navy. Not corporate. A blue with the weight of deep water at dawn, mixed with a trace of ink. It carries every primary surface — steel, paper, pixel — and never apologises.
The palette is not a four-way split. Paper leads every surface; salt carries all type and the mark; oxide is reserved for livery and the moments that earn it; brine handles the technical register.
Treat these ratios as ballast — tip them and the ship lists.
A narrow industrial grotesque with the posture of stencilled container type. We set it in Medium at +0.08em tracking for display, and Regular at +0.12em for structural captions.
IBM Plex Sans carries reading weight across manifests, specs, body copy, navigation. IBM Plex Mono handles references, ports, timestamps. Numerals tabular, always.
Small caps tracked at +0.18em for structural labels.
IBM Plex Sans Arabic is our Arabic complement to Oswald. We use the Medium weight at display sizes, tracked +0.1em, and Regular for running text. Arabic is always written before the English translation.
The Arabic lockup sits below the Latin, not beside — the two scripts breathe on their own.
85 × 55mm, Gmund Bier 320gsm. Blind-debossed mark on the front, paper ground. Reversed back — salt ink with crosshair centred, no text. No rounded corners.
A4, 100gsm uncoated paper. A single-line address in the top-right mono, a 1.5px salt rule beneath the mark. Nothing else.
The envelope is reversed — salt ground, paper wordmark — and used for manifests and sample bills of lading.
Ref: MRS-0421-08
Dear Mr. Patel,
Confirming the 40-foot high-cube booked on the MV Al Dhafra, departing Mina Zayed 04 April, arriving Mumbai 22 April. Bill of lading attached; inspection certificate to follow Monday.
With thanks, and safe passage.
Salt ground, oxide stencils, paper wordmark. 40-foot high-cube livery rule: mark at 22% from the left, crosshair at 50% vertical, four operational stencils along the bottom ten per cent.
Fourteen trucks. One hundred twenty rotating containers. Two shipping-line partners. The Gulf-to-East-Africa-to-India triangle, engineered since 1954.
Book a corridor →Mina Zayed, berth 04. Stencilled oxide on a salt container. No tagline. No opening hours. The port does the rest.
For freight, partnership, or a tour of Berth 04 — we are at Mina Zayed. Office hours Sunday to Thursday, 08:00–17:00.
Tell us about your launch, your market, and your deadline. We'll come back with a plan, not a PowerPoint.
