Not in this edition
This page was added to the site later.
The Firm
The 1966 identity
The firm’s mark was drawn in 1966 and has not been changed since, except once, in 1998, which the firm regrets.
The mark
The mark shows two fields of equal strength, overlapping, with the overlap cancelled. It was drawn for the firm in 1966 by a small design office on Lexington Avenue, whose partners had been asked for something that would mean nothing to anyone who did not need to know what it meant. Clients have since read it as two heads, a pair of spectacles, an eclipse and a cufflink.
The name
The name is set in capitals, with wide letterspacing, in a gothic of the American kind: RUNCITER ASSOCIATES, never “Runciter & Associates”, never “RA”, and never with a slogan beside it. The firm’s motto, Our protection is your protection, appears in italic text type, at the foot of a document and not at its head.
In 1966 the name was set in Franklin Gothic from metal type and the text in Caslon.
On this website the same roles are played by Libre Franklin and Spectral.The manual also prescribes British spelling in everything the firm writes, from engagement letters to invoices: organisation, licence, colour, authorised. Its designers never explained the choice, and the firm has never revisited it.
Colour and paper
| The colour | Runciter claret, used for the mark and for nothing large |
|---|---|
| Text | Black, on uncoated stock |
| Paper | Grey-white wove, 100 gsm for letters, 300 gsm for cards |
| Rules | One thin, one thick, one thin, beneath the name on every letterhead |
| Envelopes | Plain, with no return address on the outside |
The deviation of 1998
For the firm’s first website, a consultant proposed giving the mark a drop shadow “to suggest depth”, and setting the name in navy blue, in an italic typeface with a swash. The firm agreed. It was the only time the standards manual was set aside, and the firm does not think a firm in the business of discretion should look as if it were trying to get anyone’s attention.
The shadowed mark was withdrawn in 2003 and the 1966 standards restored. The firm keeps a copy of each earlier edition of this website on file, as it keeps everything.