Product design + brand identity

Parallax: two lines of sight on every object out to the Moon

Parallax is a space domain awareness company. Its satellites and ground stations watch the space between Earth and the Moon, and where two lines of sight cross on an object is a fix. We built it from scratch: the name and the mark, the Witness satellite in Blender, the Custody console and its phone app, and the launch. The console runs live on this page.

Project: An Alterra Studio project: we built the company's brand, product and launch from scratch
Stage: Space domain awareness, pre-launch
Services: Naming, the fix mark, the Custody console in five beats, the phone app, the Witness satellite in Blender, interactive explainers, posters, OOH, a crew shell, animated board
Tools: Blender, HTML and canvas, Playwright, Nano Banana

01The brief

Every object between Earth and the Moon

Our buyers run watch floors and trust numbers, but every space-defense site shows mood footage, so nobody can tell what we actually do.

Parallax tracks objects all the way out to the Moon, past where most tracking stops. Twenty-four small optical satellites called Witness, two ground laser stations and the watch-floor software Custody work as one sensor. We built the company from scratch: the name, the mark, the satellite in Blender, the console on desktop and phone, and the launch.

40,000

objects are tracked by space surveillance networks, about 11,000 of them active payloads.

Source: ESA Space Environment Report, 2025

400+

lunar missions planned by space agencies and companies in the next two decades.

Source: ESA, 2024

1,728x

the volume inside geosynchronous orbit: that is how much room cislunar space covers.

Source: The War Zone, 2021

We scored ten funded defense and space homepages. They average 13.2 out of 24, and none mentions anything past GEO. Here is what they share, and what Parallax leaves out.

8 of 10: A black or navy first screen
8 of 10: A full-screen mood video with a slogan laid over it
5 of 10: One bright accent colour on the main button
4 of 10: Superlatives in the headline
3 of 10: A 3D globe or satellite render as the first screen

02Two lines of sight

Drag the second sensor

One sensor sees a bearing, not a place. A second sensor far away sees the same object from another angle, and where the two lines of sight cross is a fix.

That one idea gave Parallax its name, its logo and its product. Drag the Witness around the object. The closer the angle gets to 90 degrees, the smaller the error.

LTO-4471 · lunar transfer

Out of custody

412km

uncertainty along the track

Parallax angle: 1.2°
Lines of sight: 2
Custody limit: 10 km

Angle between the lines of sight

03In orbit

The fix, in orbit

PX-07 and Station South see the same spent stage from two places. Scroll to draw their lines of sight.

The scene is our own Blender render. The lines are drawn in code from the positions the render exports for every frame, so they stay locked to the satellite and the stage.

PX-07 Witness over the night side of Earth at dawn, with a spent rocket stage beyond it near the limb, rendered in Blender

01One satellite sees the object's direction, not its distance.
02A station on the ground sees it from a second, very different angle.
03Where the two lines cross is where the stage is. That is a fix.
04Each new sighting adds a dot to its track.

04Custody

The watch floor, from alert to handoff

Custody is the console a watch floor runs on. One screen, one state word, one number: how far off the object could be.

This is the console itself, running in the page. Scroll and it plays its five beats, from the alert to the handoff. On a phone you get the duty officer's app instead.

The Custody console at the fix: two lines of sight cross on LTO-4471, back in custody at 0.8 km

The Custody phone app at the fix: In custody, 0.8 km

All 41 objects are tracked. New sightings come in quietly.

The Custody console on the alert: LTO-4471 out of custody, its uncertainty along the track, a residual plot and Get a fix

Past GEO we lose custody for hours, and the catalogue still shows the old position as if it were current.

When an observation misses the predicted track, the object drops out of custody at once. The state word turns red-orange, the doubt along the track becomes the number, and one button follows: Get a fix.

The Custody console at the fix: two lines of sight cross on LTO-4471 and it is back in custody

One sensor gives me a bearing, not a position. I can't send a maneuver warning on a guess.

Custody tasks one Witness and one ground station that see the object from far apart. The screen shows the angle between their views, the time to the fix and the uncertainty falling to under a kilometre.

Hold to get a fix

01On watch: all 41 objects tracked.

The alert reaches the duty officer's lock screen. Holding one button tasks the two sensors. Tap to play, or pick a screen.

05Witness

PX-1 Witness, the satellite

Witness is a small telescope satellite we modelled and lit in Blender. Drag the satellite to turn it.

Its body is machined gunmetal, lit by the sun and by blue light off the Earth. Seven laser reflectors on top let the ground stations measure its distance.

PX-1 Witness rendered in Blender: a gunmetal hex bus, a telescope behind a deep baffle and two solar wings of three panels each

TelescopeSeven rings inside the tube keep sunlight off the lens.
Laser reflectorsSeven laser mirrors on the top face, for ranging from the ground.
Star trackersTwo star cameras keep track of where the telescope points.
PowerTwo solar wings of three panels each, turned toward the sun.

A macro of the Witness telescope: warm sun on the machined baffle vanes, blue earthshine on the sleeve — The baffle, up close.

The Moon at the terminator with a small Witness satellite crossing its disc — A Witness against the Moon.

Dawn over the night side of Earth: PX-07 Witness in the foreground, a spent stage near the limb, the sun flaring at the edge — The key art: PX-07 at dawn over the night side.

06Identity

Two chevrons and the gap between them

The mark is the fix: two chevrons pointing at one gap, the place where the lines meet.

It reads at 16 px and holds up as a light on a poster. The type comes from the console: Tomorrow for words and for the one number that matters, and Spline Sans Mono for data.

64, 32 and 16 px

Tomorrow Light, for the one number

412km

Weight 300

Tomorrow, for words and the state word

In custody

Object LTO-4471 is found again by two lines of sight. A report goes to the satellite's owner and allied teams.

Spline Sans Mono, for numbers only

02:14:16ZRA 215.530°Dec −8.687°delta-v 14.8 m/s

07Colour

Six colours, each taken from a real object

Each strip is a real object, as wide as its colour's share of a screen. Red-orange only marks lines of sight, tracks and fixes.

Tap a strip to open it and copy its colour code.

08Applications

Three posters, a billboard and a crew jacket

The same two red lines, off the screen.

Poster: two lines of sight meet on a spent stage over the night side of Earth, the words Two lines of sight, one fix set along them — The fix.

Poster: the Witness torn by a data glitch, two lines of sight reacquiring it, Never lose an object. — Never lose an object.

Poster: the Moon inside dotted orbits, One dot, one observation. — The track.

A wall billboard at night carrying the Parallax artwork: Earth's limb, the Witness, the fix and the lockup — A billboard at night.

The back of the crew shell: two red lines of sight meet at the mark, the track dotted across the shoulders — The crew jacket, Station South.

09The board

The identity board, as a 10-second film

Seven pieces of the brand in one 10-second loop.

It loops for LinkedIn and X.

10Credits

Credits and how it was made

Brand, product and launch, made by the Alterra Studio team.

The satellite, the Moon and the Earth are modelled and lit in Blender from NASA imagery. The console and the phone are HTML, and they run live on this page. The billboard, the jacket and two colour strips use generated photos as a base.

Who did what

Strategy: The buyer, the competitor audit, the name and the core idea
Identity: The logo, the wordmark, six colours and two typefaces
Product design: The watch-floor console, the phone app and this page's interactive pieces
3D and motion: PX-1 Witness, the Moon and Earth in Blender, the orbit and the turntable, and the animated board
Launch: Three posters, a billboard, a crew shell and an X profile
Tools: Blender for 3D, HTML for the product, Nano Banana for two photo bases

The offer

What we'd ship

For a real defense or space company, this is Brand + Product design.

Brand: Name check, logo, colours and type
Product: The watch-floor console and its phone app, screen by screen
3D: A photoreal 3D satellite for the website, the pitch deck and the launch video
Launch: The landing page, the launch film, posters, OOH, merch and the X profile

After this

What's next

Build the landing page with the fix on the first screen, at desktop and phone width.
Put Custody in front of operators, and time how long an alert takes to become a fix.