ALT-15°

A travel and circadian performance system. Identity direction.

The strapline tracks to lock flush with the wordmark, so the two form one block. The degree sits outside that measure, above the cap line. That lockup is the unit that goes on pack.

Type is Archivo, standing in for Suisse Int'l. The degree is drawn as a true circle rather than set as a glyph, so it holds its shape at 25mm on a sachet.

01

The mark

The view. The gradient of the sky from 38,000 feet, near-black at the zenith, indigo through the middle, a pale band at the horizon. The gradient carries the world; each pack takes a flat solid from a different depth of it, so the darkest tone belongs to the end of the day. No gradients on foil or moulded parts.

ALT-15
LIVE LIFE AT ALTITUDE
#070C18
#0E1D38
#1C3557
#41556E
#8D9AA6
TYPE
Between light and regular, tracked wide. Enough substance to hold at 25mm on a sachet without weighing down the field.
THE GRADIENT
A specific atmospheric condition rather than decoration. It lives on the box, the caddy, digital and environments.
ON PACK
Flat solids only, each pulled from a different depth of the gradient. Straightforward to mould and print.
SITS BESIDE
The gradient is dominant, so a co-brand needs room. On shared surfaces the flat solids are used instead of the gradient.
SCALE TEST, THE DEGREE MUST HOLD
ALT-15
RIGID BOX
ALT-15
CAPSULE POUCH
ALT-15
POD LID · 25MM
POD
ALT-15
Health
POD
ALT-15
Performance
POD
ALT-15
Recovery
08

Typographic hierarchy

Three registers doing three jobs. Headers carry authority: medium weight, caps, tracking opened right up. Timings and doses carry precision: regular weight, tabular numerals so every figure aligns down the column. Explanations carry context in an editorial serif, which is the only soft element and appears once.

This is what makes an in-room card read as a prescription rather than a brochure.

DAY TWO
LONDON TO TOKYO · 9 ZONES EAST · DAY 2 OF 4
07:00Health, on waking, with daylight1 drink
11:00Focus, before a meeting1 drink
15:00Energy, before training1 drink
21:30Sleep Time, as the day ends1 drink

Travelling east shortens the day, and the body shifts at roughly an hour a day in that direction, slower than westward, which is why nine zones would take nine days unaided. Every timing above is on Tokyo clock, not London. Morning light and the first drink are the two strongest signals available, and taken together they move the body clock earlier faster than either does alone.

02

The circadian system

Three times of day. A protocol fails on comprehension before it fails on anything else. Three is what a traveller can remember unaided, and every additional moment costs more than it adds.

Colour carries when. Format carries how. The two signals stay independent, so Health as a drink, a capsule and a tea are all the same colour, because they are all the same moment.

00:0006:0012:0018:0024:00
FIRST LIGHT
ALT-15
Health
Starting the day
FULL DAYLIGHT
ALT-15
Performance
Through the day
DARK
ALT-15
Recovery
As the day ends
ONE ROTATION · 30 SECONDS
ALT-15

The identity moves through the day rather than sitting still. A full rotation runs here in thirty seconds; on a live site it would run far slower, or track the traveller's actual local time. Someone reading a page for a minute sees the light change without noticing why.

A luxury house like Chanel lays the effect over an image. Here it is the same three gradients already established, cross-fading in sequence. The brand demonstrates what the product does instead of illustrating it.

FIRST LIGHT
  • Health powder
  • Health botanical infusion tea
  • Immune Support capsule
FULL DAYLIGHT
  • Energy powder
  • Focus powder
  • Performance botanical infusion tea
  • Performance capsule
DARK
  • Recovery botanical infusion tea
  • Recovery capsule
  • Renew capsule
  • Sleep Time powder
  • Sleep Time capsule

Only three things to learn, however many products there are. A traveller who knows what dark means can pick the right drink, capsule or tea without being taught twice. The range can grow inside a moment without adding anything to remember. Add a fourth moment and it starts needing a card.

The products sit on the cycle, they do not have their own colours. Health is first light because it is taken on waking. Rest is dark because it is taken before sleep. Nothing is assigned, so the range explains itself on a shelf without copy.

Each name says what the product does. Recovery acts on accumulated stress load rather than sleep onset. Renew works on hair, skin and nails, which is cellular renewal and not a gendered concern. Sleep Time is named for when it is taken rather than for a benefit, which is how the whole system is built.

Dark now holds three ideas, not five products. Recovery in two formats for decompression after the day. Renew for overnight repair. Sleep Time in two formats for sleep onset. Three jobs, in the order they happen. Previously there were two sleep products under different names and a decompression product sitting beside them looking like a third option.

Dark carries five products, the others three each. That asymmetry is correct and should stay. Products are assigned to the moment their formulation actually belongs to, rather than created to complete a grid. Renew sits under Dark because skin barrier repair and collagen synthesis peak overnight, which is a real circadian argument rather than a convenient one.

Format is carried by the object, not by colour. A powder sachet, a capsule pouch and a tea envelope are already unmistakably different in the hand. Using colour for format as well would break the one rule that makes this work.

Foil cannot hold a gradient. Each item takes the flat solid sampled from its moment. The gradient lives where it can be reproduced properly, the rigid box, the caddy, print, digital and environments.

Digital can read the actual clock. A site or app takes the slice matching the traveller's local time, or their destination time. For a product about time zones that is the point rather than an effect.

04

The physical system

Four objects, each with a different life. One stays in the room, one is used daily, one travels, one is carried. Together they turn a range of products into something a guest belongs to rather than something they consume.

THE DAILY OBJECT · CO-BRANDED
The bottle

The sachet is what exists. Single-serve printed foil, manufactured, approved and previously sold. It is the format the range ships in today and the one all the specifications and artwork are built against.

The pod is where it goes. The same formulations in a single-serve cartridge that clips onto a standard bottle neck and opens into the water. Single-handed, nothing to tear, stir or spill, which matters on a tray table, in a club, in a car or walking through a terminal. In development, and the intended successor rather than a second line to carry indefinitely.

The pod fits any bottle. A standard neck is the thread on almost every bottle of water sold airside or handed out in a cabin, so a pod from an amenity kit works with whatever is to hand, with nothing to carry.

The ALT-15° bottle is the one you want. Same standard neck, but with the circadian markings running up the side showing the three moments rather than clock hours. It sits in the room, travels with the case, and carries the hotel's mark alongside ALT-15°. The system never depends on it, which is exactly why someone buys one.

STAYS IN THE ROOM
The room

Powders and tea envelopes only. A powder is still a supplement and carries the same allergen and labelling obligations, but it presents as a drink, and hotels have already accepted functional drinks, electrolytes and wellness shots into minibar retail. A capsule looks like medication and sits outside that precedent, which makes it a harder thing for a hotel to sign off. Capsules belong in the case someone buys, not in the room.

TRAVELS · RETAIL
The journey

Soft leather, rolling or zipping closed like a document folder rather than a washbag. Sold with the bottle as the opening set. The internal sections have to flex. Someone who does not take capsules should not be left with an empty compartment, so each section should hold more than one format. It has to look completely at ease in the spa at Claridge's, at Rosewood, or at The OWO.

CARRIED · ALT-15° RESERVE
The membership

Metal, in the register of a black card rather than a loyalty card. It carries membership of ALT-15° Reserve, the concierge tier: protocol access, refill ordering, in-room service, and schedule optimisation managed with the traveller's assistant. Membership rather than purchase, which is the model the hospitality partner already sells.

How the two brands sit together is the partner's decision. Three structures work, and the assets support all of them.

Co-branded. Both marks present, side by side. The partner's name carries the credibility with their own members and guests; ALT-15° carries the system and the science. Most common where a partner wants the proposition to feel considered rather than invented in-house.

Endorsed. ALT-15° leads, with the partner's mark as the endorsement, the way a hotel presents a spa brand it has brought in. Keeps ALT-15° as a distinct thing a guest can buy and take home.

Absorbed. The partner renames it entirely and runs it as their own. Everything transfers, including the identity, so this is available if they would rather own the name outright.

The durable objects, bottle, caddy, case, are where a partner mark sits most naturally, because those are what a guest sees every day and takes home. But that follows from whichever structure they choose rather than deciding it.

05

The app

A few hours of lost sleep combined with business travel measurably reduces cognitive performance, and the executive is the last person to notice, consistently rating themselves far higher than they are actually performing. Decision-making, attention to detail and speed all fall, and they fall silently.

The app exists to put the moments that matter where the capability still is. It times the protocol precisely, what to take and exactly when, on destination clock, adjusted daily as the body catches up. But that is one output of a much larger calculation.

Which flight to take, and which to refuse. What order to visit cities on a multi-stop trip so the schedule works with the body rather than against it. Which hotel, judged on what its rooms and facilities actually do for recovery. And then the decision the whole trip turns on: the hour on which cognitive performance peaks, so the negotiation, the pitch or the board meeting is held when the executive is genuinely capable of it, and the hours to leave empty, because no executive should be making consequential decisions on landing.

Around that: light, sleep, food, caffeine, movement and the protocol timings. Six layers, one clock, sequenced across pre-travel, in-transit and arrival.

Two people use it, for two different things. The assistant uses it before the trip, to decide which flights to take and where in the day to put the meeting that matters. The traveller uses it during the trip, to follow the day that has been built around that meeting. The same calculation, delivered twice.

No sensors, no pairing, no connection to the bottle. The interface takes its colour from where the traveller is in the day, so the screen is the circadian system rather than a display of it.

ALT-15
ASSISTANT · SETTING UP
London to Tokyo
Nine zones east. Depart 11:40, arrive 07:15 local. Eastward adaptation runs at roughly an hour a day, so the body needs nine days unaided. The protocol brings that to four.
THE TRIP
Flights and connectionsentered
What the trip is forboard meeting
Fixed commitments3
ALT-15
ASSISTANT · BOOKING THE TRIP
Peak windows
When cognitive performance peaks, so the meeting the trip exists for is scheduled against it.
Morning light shifts your body clock earlier. Evening light pushes it later.
DAY 2 · WINDOWS
09:00Low, do not scheduleavoid
11:00Risingworkable
12:30Walking meeting, daylightbook
14:30Peak, board meetingbook
16:30Second windowworkable
18:00Falling, no decisionsavoid
ALT-15
TRAVELLER · ON THE DAY
Day 2 · Tokyo
Light, food, movement and the protocol, built around the 14:30 meeting.
TODAY
06:45Daylight, 30 minutes outsidelight
07:00Healthdrink
07:30Protein, no fasting todayfood
10:00Last caffeinelimit
10:30Focusdrink
14:30Board meetingpeak
17:00Movement, 25 minutestrain
19:00Recoverytea
21:30Sleep Timedrink
22:00Screens off, low lightlight
ALT-15
BOTH · TRACKING PROGRESS
Adaptation
How far the body clock is from local time, and how fast it is closing.
ADAPTATION
Day 19 hours out
Day 2 · today6 hours out
Day 33 hours out
Day 4aligned
Aligned in four days rather than nine. The return leg is planned from here, so the trip does not follow you home.

The assistant's screen is the product. Knowing that 14:30 on day two is the only hour worth scheduling a board meeting into, and that nine in the morning is worthless whatever the diary says, is worth more to an executive than any supplement. Everything else in the app exists to widen that window and hold it open.

Light is treated as an instruction. Timed light exposure is the strongest signal the body clock receives, stronger than anything ingested. It sits in the same list as everything else because it does more of the work.

The protocol is one layer of six. Light, sleep, food, caffeine, movement and the products, all timed against the same clock. The app schedules the products precisely, but a system that only did that would be ignoring most of what actually shifts a body clock, and an executive would notice.

ALT-15° Reserve is the same calculation, run by a person. At the concierge tier the output does not arrive as a screen. It goes to the traveller\'s assistant as a schedule: which flights, in what order, which hotel, when to hold the meeting that matters, and when to hold nothing at all.

06

Brand architecture

One name, one tier above it. Everything a traveller can buy carries ALT-15°. The concierge service sits above as ALT-15° Reserve.

Splitting the app or the protocol into separately named products would divide attention and build two brands on one budget. The structure below is the one used by houses that sell access, a parent brand everyone recognises, and a single named tier that signals it.

THE BRAND
ALT-15°
  • The full range, powders, capsules, botanical infusion teas
  • The three-moment protocol
  • The bottle, the caddy, the case
  • The app, which calculates the protocol against a specific journey
THE TIER
ALT-15° Reserve
  • Schedule optimisation, managed with the traveller's assistant
  • Which flights to take, in what order, and when to hold the meeting that matters
  • Refill ordering and in-room service across partner properties
  • The metal card

Reserve carries three meanings at once, something held back and exclusive, the act of reserving travel, and the reserves a trip spends. It is the register luxury already uses for its highest tier, so it needs no explanation.

And it needs no separate registration. Reserve is a descriptive tier indicator, protected by the ALT-15° mark above it, which is cleared in Class 5 across the USPTO, UKIPO, EUIPO and WIPO registers. One mark to own, maintain and enforce.

07

Separation under real conditions

The three flats are only useful if a traveller can pick the right one without reading it. These are approximations on a backlit screen, not proofs, the real test is a printed pod under the actual lights. What they do show is whether Health and Rest converge, which is the failure mode worth watching now that both sit dark.

01 · NEUTRAL DAYLIGHT · 6500K
Reference condition. All four clearly separable.
HEALTH
FOCUS
SLEEP
02 · HOTEL ROOM · 2700K TUNGSTEN
Warm cast pulls every colour towards amber. Blues lose saturation and move closer together; the terracotta gains.
HEALTH
FOCUS
SLEEP
03 · BEDSIDE LAMP · LOW LUMINANCE
The condition that matters most. Rest is taken in a dark room before sleep.
HEALTH
FOCUS
SLEEP
04 · NEAR DARKNESS
Worst case. Colour perception drops away and only relative lightness remains.
HEALTH
FOCUS
SLEEP
05 · MATT PRINT APPROXIMATION
Printed and moulded parts sit duller than screen and carry a directional sheen. Colours flatten by roughly a tone.
HEALTH
FOCUS
SLEEP
06 · IN A CADDY DRAWER · ACTUAL SIZE
Seen edge-on, 25mm across, no names visible.

What to look for. Performance holds in every condition. The question is Health against Rest in rows 03 and 04, where warmth and low light strip out the blue difference and leave only lightness.

If they converge, the correction is to lift Health rather than redesign anything. Pre-dawn light is not black, it already has a grey-blue lift in it, so raising Health a step or two is honest to the moment and does not touch the concept. Rest stays where it is; night should be the darkest thing in the range.

If they hold, the palette is locked. Screen approximations are not proofs, so the last check is a printed sample under a 2700K bulb before anything goes to tooling.

09

Type specification

Everything needed to rebuild this exactly. Values are as drawn on this page.

Primary typeface, Suisse Int'l (Swiss Typefaces). A neo-grotesque in the Helvetica and Univers line, with circular counters and a robust regular weight that holds on screen and in small print. Licensed, roughly £200–400 for two weights.

Stand-in used here, Archivo (Google Fonts, free). Closest open-source match on x-height, counter shape and tracking behaviour. Inter is an alternative. Swapping to Suisse Int'l should be near-invisible.

Secondary, Newsreader for the one editorial serif passage. The licensed pairing would be Suisse Works. Data labels, IBM Plex Mono; the licensed pairing would be Suisse Int'l Mono.

ElementWeightSizeTrackingColour
Wordmark400 Regular70px0.17em#F0F3F6
Degree ring1.9px stroke9px dia2px left#F0F3F6
Strapline400 Regular12.5pxjustified to mark#C9D4DE
Protocol header500 Medium15px0.32em#DFE5EC
Protocol subMono 40010.5px0.16em#63768C
Timings400, tabular15px0.02em#8D9AA6
Protocol body400 Regular15pxnormal#DFE5EC
Dose300, tabular14pxnormal#8B97A5
ExplanationSerif 30016.5px / 1.72normal#A9B4C0
Pack mark400 Regular18px0.15emper pack
Pack variant400 Regular13pxnormal70% opacity
Pack labelMono 40010px0.12em50% opacity

The degree does not scale proportionally. At wordmark size the ring is 9px across with a 1.9px stroke, roughly a fifth. Reduced linearly to pack size the aperture closes and it reads as a solid dot. On pack it is drawn at 5.5px with a 1px stroke instead. The same correction applies in print: below about 8mm the ring must be optically enlarged or it will fill in.

The strapline is tracked, not sized, to fit. It justifies to the width of the wordmark measured from the A to the 5. The degree sits outside that measure, above the cap line.

Numerals are tabular wherever figures appear in a column, so timings and doses align vertically.

10

Origin

The starting point was a Chanel email, an autumn campaign built on a soft pastel sunrise, and a second on light across water, both animated so the light moves. No product in the hero image at all. The atmosphere carries the whole message and the products sit inside the world it creates.

Two things were worth taking. That a house at the very top of luxury uses atmospheric light rather than ornament, so the register is proven rather than risky. And that quiet typography over a strong field reads as more expensive than the reverse.

WHAT A LUXURY HOUSE DOES

Imagery changes by season or campaign. Chanel's autumn sunrise and its summer sea share nothing but the name above them. The light is chosen because it is beautiful, which is a perfectly good reason, but it means each image is unrelated to the last.

WHAT ALT-15° DOES

Imagery changes because the day turns. Every state belongs to one rotation, so any colour can be traced to an hour and the products sit on it rather than beside it. The system is closed, which is what makes it defensible rather than decorative.

The principle was borrowed; the logic is our own. Atmospheric light as the hero is a luxury convention. Tying that light to a twenty-four hour cycle, and putting the products on it at the hour they are taken, is specific to a product about circadian timing. It would make no sense for a fragrance house.