Anatomy of a Logo

I have an assignment to help relaunch a business which includes a logo and beautifying a wordpress site. They will be offering holistic services, including health coaching, and an interesting program to work on one's self. I'll talk more about that in another post when the site's ready to launch.

In the meantime, the business name is Little Stone Bridge Pathworking and I decided that a literal treatment is needed for this logo. And that it needed to be hand-drawn, because I wanted it to look charming, hand-crafted with care, and personal, which embodies some of the emotions and values of the endeavor.

I started by searching stone bridge photos online. I roughed the bridge out with a pencil and then inked it in.

Then I scanned the drawing and manipulated it in Adobe Illustrator.

And then brought it into Photoshop to color it.

It's complex, but I really am pleased with the way this turned out.

It's a New Year

I am a sporadic follower of designer David Seah. He doesn't do New Year's Resolutions; he does Ground Hog's Day Resolutions. I really like the concept (almost as much as I like using semicolons and parenthetical phrases). First, it lets me delay thinking about the new year until after the stress and general craziness of the holidays are over. Second, by this time of the year, we are in "full winter mode" (which typically includes being snowbound or dealing with snow in one way or another) and there is plenty of time to think about things. Third, I've been thinking about what comes next for a month or three. And finally, it's also Imbolc, my favorite holiday of the Wheel of the Year. I'm noticing that the sun is rising when I do and the days are noticeably longer than they were at the winter solstice.

So, it's 2015 now. I have gone back to working for myself, and have resurrected Moon & Star as a design firm. I've decided I want to focus my business on graphic design, interaction design, web design and illustration (both technical illustration and "artistic" illustration). I plan to refine my focus and find my niche over the course of this year. I'm not quite there yet. I also am nowhere near being fully booked with work.

So I am in the process of building my client roster, which means I'm learning how to look for clients, jobs, gigs, what-have-you. I'll be writing about how I'm doing with that as I go along.