Better branding: our hexagon is in fact a cube

Look at our logo for a moment. You see a hexagon. A tidy, slightly nerdy hexagon, the kind of shape that technical writers secretly love because it tiles without gaps and looks like it knows what it's doing.

Now look again, and draw three lines in your head: from the centre to the upper-left corner, from the centre to the upper-right corner, and from the centre straight down. Congratulations. You are no longer looking at a hexagon. You are looking at a cube, seen from one of its corners.

That little optical trick is the whole idea behind our new branding. A cube has three visible faces, and AI TechDoc has three areas. Same family, same body, three sides you can turn towards you.

Why a cube and not a logo zoo

When a small publication grows, it usually grows sideways. A newsletter here, a glossary there, a course idea in a drawer. Before you know it, every part has its own name, its own logo and its own little tone of voice, and readers need a map to understand that it all belongs together.

I decided against the zoo. Everything keeps the family name, AI TechDoc, and only the second word tells you which door you are about to open. No dots, no slashes, no clever spelling that a screen reader would turn into "AI TechDoc dot something". Just words: Knowledge, Learning, Press.

And because the three areas are faces of one cube, they share the same edges. The palette, Georgia, the hexagon, the habit of dating every claim and naming every source: that's the cube. The face only changes the light.

Face one: AI TechDoc Knowledge

This is the face you are looking at right now. AI TechDoc Knowledge is the lasting reference: the glossaries, the norm search, the context cards, the encyclopedia, the EPPO projects, the System Coordination Framework and, yes, this blog, which stays here as my personal space.

Its mark shows the hexagon, a small knowledge graph and an open book. The graph stands for terms that link to each other; the book stands for the patient part of the work: definitions that still make sense next year, sources you can check, review dates that tell you how old a statement is.

Its voice is neutral and definitional. It explains the difference between an emergency stop and emergency switching off, and it leaves the opinions to the other faces. Its accent colour is Ice Blue, the cool light of a reference shelf.

Face two: AI TechDoc Learning

The second face is still turning towards the light. AI TechDoc Learning is where the AI learning path is meant to become real e-learning courses: clear goals, worked examples, exercises and checklists, for technical writers, technical marketers, technical project managers and developers.

Honesty first: the courses are in the making. The learning path on this site holds the initial concepts, and the course buttons ask you to leave a note so that you hear about the launch. Its mark is a stepped path in Cyan, because learning is rarely a lift and usually a staircase.

Its voice will be the coaching one: "you", one goal per lesson, and no talking down to anyone, beginner or expert.

Face three: AI TechDoc Press

The third face is the busy one. AI TechDoc Press is the newsletter on Substack: briefings, trend readings, wrap-ups and the occasional Comment on Comment, where I answer an expert position in public.

The value here is not early commentary, but informed perspective: recaps, analytical framing, fresh angles, and small meta‑analyses — built on what experts have already uncovered. And sometimes I can oncover some new aspects, too. Like I did in this article: EvoOntology vs. iiRDS: understanding two divergent ontology paradigms.

Knowledge and Press are siblings, and you can see it: same hexagon, same graph, but one holds a book and the other a page. If you remember only one thing from this post, remember that difference. The book stays; the page moves on.

And the corner we are looking from

A cube seen from its corner has one point in the middle where all three faces meet. That's the umbrella, AI TechDoc World, and in our plans it gets its own small front door at aitechdoc.world: the three doors, who is behind AI TechDoc, the legal notice and the policies. It's a plan, not a promise with a date, and I'll tell you when the door opens.

Until then, here is a little game for your next meeting: draw a hexagon on the whiteboard, add three lines from the centre and watch your colleagues' faces when it suddenly turns into a box. Then tell them that's how documentation works too. The same content, seen from the right corner, has more dimensions than you thought.