Palace’s mark is an optical illusion — a triangle that looks solid but couldn’t be built.

Palace’s logo is the “Tri-Ferg”: three “PALACE” wordmarks, one running along each face of an impossible Penrose triangle — the classic optical illusion of a solid three-sided bar that your eye accepts but that can’t physically exist. It was designed by London graphic artist Fergus “Fergadelic” Purcell (the name is literally Triangle + Fergus), who applied the pre-existing Penrose illusion — first drawn by Oscar Reutersvärd and popularised by mathematician Roger Penrose — to Palace’s three wordmarks. Purcell’s stated aim was an implied 3D form that reads as “epic” and endlessly cycling, conveying constant motion — perfect for a skate brand.

Palace grew out of London skate culture — the Palace Wayward Boys Choir (PWBC) crew and the Southbank scene, with lo-fi videos that defined its voice — and was founded in 2009 by Lev Tanju (some sources say 2010; 2009 is the consensus). A couple of clarifications worth making: the logo is Purcell’s work, not Tanju’s — Tanju gave the brief, Purcell drew the mark; the Penrose triangle wasn’t invented by Palace, it was cleverly applied; and the name has nothing to do with Crystal Palace F.C., coming instead from the “Palace” skate houses. The brand’s biggest collaborations — adidas Originals (from 2014) and a much-loved Polo Ralph Lauren team-up (2018) — extended the same irreverent, very British sensibility.

Palace has no fixed palette — it’s deliberately loud and ever-changing. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Unlike most brands in this series, Palace has no official, fixed palette — and that’s the point. Its identity is intentionally multicolour, holographic and iridescent, shifting every season across acid brights, rave hues and metallics. Treat any hex as illustrative, not canonical; there simply isn’t a single “Palace colour.” The palette above is an abstract homage to that loud, ’90s-rave, VHS-nostalgic energy — magenta, cyan, electric purple — rather than a reproduction of a brand spec. The looseness is a feature: it keeps every drop feeling fresh, hyped and collectible.

The lesson is that a fixed palette isn’t mandatory when the logo is strong enough. Palace can throw any colour at a garment because the Tri-Ferg carries the recognisability — the shape is so distinctive that the brand is legible in neon, chrome or tie-dye. For designers, it’s a reminder that brand consistency can live in form (a logo, a silhouette) rather than colour, which frees you to play. If your core mark is genuinely ownable, you can treat colour as seasonal expression instead of a rulebook — exactly the flexibility that keeps a hype brand feeling alive. Just know the trade-off: it only works when the mark itself is unmistakable.

The wordmark is heavy, condensed and oblique — built to lock into a triangle.

The “PALACE” wordmark is a heavy, slightly condensed, oblique (italic) sans-serif — type-spotters place it closest to a Neue Helvetica Condensed Black/Extra Black Oblique, though there’s no official attribution, so treat that as an approximation rather than the confirmed brand font. The weight and the forward lean matter: bold condensed letters pack tightly along each edge of the Penrose triangle, and the oblique slant adds the sense of speed and motion that suits skateboarding. It’s type engineered for a very specific job — to tessellate into an impossible shape — which is why the wordmark and the logo feel inseparable. One clever, ownable lockup does all the work.

Palace turned an optical trick into one of streetwear’s smartest marks.

Palace’s genius is building a logo out of a self-referential illusion. The Tri-Ferg is memorable, instantly recognisable and endlessly remixable — it scales to any size, works in any colourway, and its impossible geometry gives it a hypnotic, “look again” quality that rewards attention. Paired with the brand’s irreverent British humour, VHS-era nostalgia and skate-first credibility, it created an identity that felt authentic to the culture while being graphically far sharper than most skate logos. It’s the rare mark that’s both a genuine piece of design history (the Penrose triangle) and a piece of contemporary hype.

For designers, Palace is a lesson in applying an existing visual idea in a fresh, ownable way. Purcell didn’t invent the Penrose triangle — he recognised that wrapping the brand’s own wordmark around an impossible object would create something distinctive, dynamic and impossible to forget. The takeaways: you don’t always need a brand-new concept; a clever application of a known idea (an illusion, a classic motif) can be more powerful than something novel but forgettable; make the logo do the heavy lifting so the rest of the system (here, colour) can stay loose and playful; and let the mark carry motion and personality that match the brand’s world. Palace proved that a triangle which can’t exist can still become one of the most recognisable logos in streetwear.

Keep Palace’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.