The lab, 07
The keyring
A mark has to work as a thing as well as on a screen. So we made Find a Drive's mark, the fingerpost F, as a keyring tag in Blender, at real size: 50 millimetres tall, in black anodised aluminium, its edges diamond-cut bright. It isn't for sale. It was made to see whether the mark works as a real object.
- Made for
- Find a Drive, our app for finding and planning great drives
- When
- 26 October 2026
- Made with
- Blender and its Cycles renderer, on the graphics card
On your keys
How it's made
- Real size
- Modelled at real size: the tag stands 50 millimetres tall and 3 thick, its edges bevelled by 0.45 millimetres all round.
- Two finishes, one part
- One piece, two materials, chosen surface by surface by the way each faces: the bevelled edges get bright, diamond-cut metal, and everything else black anodising, satin and faintly brushed.
- A split ring, as they're made
- A coil of round steel wire with a radius of 12 millimetres, a little short of two whole turns, as a split ring is, resting in the hole through the ring at the top of the F.
- Hung by hand
- The tag and ring hang from a pivot at the top of the ring, turned 18°, as if hung from something out of frame, so the tag turns a little towards the light.
- Lighting black
- Black is the hardest thing to light. A tall, thin strip light sits where the tag's face mirrors it, so the anodising shows a satin sheen rather than flat black.
- No horizon
- Behind it, a sheet curves down to the floor, as products are photographed, so there's no horizon.
What it taught our own mark
The keyring showed how to make black metal look like black metal: bright, bevelled edges against satin faces, and a light placed where the faces will mirror it. Our own mark is made the same way, in chrome and in black anodised aluminium, and you can turn it round on its own page.
More from the lab
Everything in the lab
01, for ourselves
The D and the I
Our mark: what it hides, how it's built on a square, and the same object in chrome and anodised aluminium.
Read it
02, for Find a Drive
The member card
Find a Drive's membership card, in a colour each member chooses, lit like real car paint by a graphics program of our own: gloss, metallic, pearlescent, chrome and matte.
Read it
Contact
Talk through your project.
Tell us what you'd like to build, or what's getting in the way. A few lines is plenty to start with, and the first conversation is free.