I’ve been meaning to update my logo for a while. I am no longer in Africa, I am no longer focused on mainly water, and the x in the bubble, while one could argue is still relevant, related to TEDx which is also long gone. It’s part of a whole personality re-sync (to quote tim). I like my old logo, I like the elements in it, it still inspires me. It just needs to grow.
I’ve been asking a few people (payment included) but I think I’m maybe a bit too complicated. This week was the time to start the move to indiebio.pt (not sure if I am just moving all this one’s stuff over or doing a fresh start, I have a year to decide) and it seemed like a good time to focus on the logo as part of that design. Cue AI. The nice thing about AI is it just associates words, it doesn’t judge them. So you can ask for the most absurd stuff, and it would still give you an answer. You may hate it, it’s probably wrong, but when it comes to logo design it still serves as inspiration. And then that can be taken to a graphic designer and then hopefully get an acceptable result. So, here’s some highlights, work in progress, post in draft, the usual disclaimers.
First, we need to work on the brief. This was a team effort with the AI I use for my daily chats, so it has a record of what I am interested in. Through my several applications lately, I’ve also honed in on my interests:
- Building connection across boundaries
- Balancing a feminist ethic of care with critical accountability and
- Pursuing responsive infrastructures at appropriate scales.
Then some keywords:
- Curiosity is obviously huge.
- Transformation in the sense of Carol Gilligan’s association, and Lisa Stampnitzky’s transformation of expertise are big.
- Emergence, which to me links with letting go of control and letting things go where they need to, completes the three. Or, like, growth, movement. Change. Unpredictable.
Biology still features, and maybe a biopunk type of vibe can incorporate this. The peduncle snail, with the curious eyestalk needs to make it in. The digital-physical link, particularly as it relates to community independent of geography is big too. Maybe stuff like topographical contour lines, merged into the arabesque stuff… hmmm.
Then there’s the triple droplet balance thing, the FLOW (for love of water) logo from way back, that I still like (a good thing seeing as the tattoo is on my wrist). Apparently it’s called (or one interpretation, at least) Gankyil. It’s tempting to say the three interest areas and/or the three keywords are each one drop of the gankyil, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think each of these represent a full gankyil, and feeds into each other to build on the movement of the thing, to emerge, or grow, or evolve, if that makes sense. So for example, the feminist ethic of care is one drop, the critical accountability is another drop, and what emerges when you get the balance right … isn’t the third drop. Maybe the balancing act itself is the third drop, the acknowledgement that there is something that is not a compromise between the two (which I sortof feel is what the yin-yang represent, doesn’t have space for growth, or change), and the three in motion creates something transcendent.
I then went to Gemini to make some mock ups. The first several sucked way too bad to even share. The suggested logos were all decidedly masculine, and asking for more feminine gave similar tired stereotypes. Biology and organic gave similar boring plant shoot rubbish.
This one at least got the three drop Gankyil correct, and then I asked to make them slightly different, so that the three drops aren’t all the same. This disappeared in later mock-ups, but I’ll bring them back, maybe playing in Inkscape.
We battled it out for a while and then I had a brainwave. How does the AI interpretation of all this change if we think of the color palette to be more orange? Orange seems to be a popular colour with systems thinkers. This helped.
The AI came back with: introducing orange dramatically shifts the energy and perception of the logo! Orange, particularly in the context of systems thinking, often conveys:
- Vibrancy and Energy: It’s a dynamic, active color.
- Warmth and Approachability: Evokes enthusiasm, creativity, and friendliness.
- Innovation and Vision: Often associated with new ideas, exploration, and foresight.
- Connection and Social Communication: It’s a very human, engaging color.
Still struggling with what I mean with feminine, I remembered the book on arabian geometric patterns I bought on my visit to the Alhambra, and the idea I toy with occasionally to incorporate a laced arm sleeve tattoo into my wrist tattoo, connecting with my self-harm scars, so I’m playing with that for a bit. So far, it’s something, but not near what I want yet. Thinking of that book made me move away from the circle, to a tile that could get tessellated. Asking to keep the concept but make it simpler is just breaking the AI, and asking for 3 rather than 4 symmetry is also hard. So I’m going to have to sit down and play with the designs in the book. Actually, I think a lot of those designs are hexagon based …
Browsing the arabian geometric patterns book, I thought the sort of stained glass window look, with the double lines (where the edges of the glass would be) appealed to me (designs on p22, 87 in particular). Many designs shows the symmetry in red lines, and I liked that as a design element too. There were some examples that I thought looked like dancing lines, where the lines created an illusion of movement (p47, 98) . I was drawn to designs that had some curves in them. The design on page 44 top left made me wonder about flipping the drops around, to “splat” outward, creating more of a movement than a circle.
Flipping the droplets somehow made me think of the biomimicry marketed stir thingie, the PAX lily. Trying to work that into an Inkscape mockup next is bound to lead to disaster, and it’s usually at this point that I realise I am not nor ever will be a designer and it’s best to hand it over.
I was trying to get an outline of the design using a low res pic and then the Inkscape Trace Bitmap tool, and it generated a bit of noise. I guess one could clean this up, but I like it. The logo itself won’t be the whole lattice, but more focused on the splat or something, but the lattice is a nice design element for cover pages or whatnot.
Today I want to look into the symbols, and I remembered about the James Wright poem “Milkweed” again. I stumbled across that a very long time ago. It made it onto my first business cards, back in 2005, it was the prelude to my thesis, and it keeps coming back to me. I don’t know what it means, but this reddit has a beautiful analysis. My AI also did good, saying “James Wright’s poem “Milkweed” explores themes of isolation, loneliness, and the search for connection. The milkweed plant serves as a metaphor for the fragility of life and the human need for companionship. Wright’s poetry often touches on social justice and the struggles of everyday people.. “
The symbols I am thinking of including is the peduncle eyestalk, as mentioned before, which is the logo of a related project about linking data. The “peduncle” is the eyestalk of a snail. It is not the eye (metaphor for information, or data gathering), or the brain (metaphor for the knowledge, or expertise), but the connection between them.
The second symbol was a dandelion seed, something a friend and I agreed to call the hundreds of emails we were sending out when we were (still are) building a consortium and looking for funding. It was getting depressing to send out all these emails, and so we had to think of them as seeds, being sent out into the world without an expectation of a reply. Looking at the milkwood seed though, and linking to the poem, it’s going to have to be a milkweed seed instead now!
The trippy image with the snail and the dandelion is a logo I have been toying with informally for a few months. The feedback so far was that people don’t know what it is, and I think the detail gets lost at low resolution / small sizes. Yup, I’m definitely not a designer.
The third symbol I don’t know. One contender is a stylised orchid, from the logo of the TEDxPrinceAlbert event back in 2012 which was about the subconscious. The title was “Meet me there: Working Beneath, Between and Beyond towards a thriving planet.” Maybe incorporating that into the splat is better than trying to work it in as the third symbol.
Ooh, interestingly, the inside knot is apparently a Trinity Knot, also known as a Triquetra, representing eternity or unity. Not to be controversial but that’s not me. Plurality, and accepting the end of things, that’s more my thing. That’s why I like shit. It’s like death, the closing of the loop. Sure, one can say that the closing of the loop then means the loop starts again and then it’s eternal, but I think we’re way too vulnerable to forget that shitty, deathy connection that’s needed to close the loop. somehow that now makes me think of the semicolon for suicide awareness. ;. What symbols work for the apocalypse? Not in the sense of the ending of all things, but the ending of things as we know it. “apokalyptō,” meaning to uncover or reveal. In its original context, it referred to the unveiling of hidden truths or knowledge. So disclosure, complicating the narrative. Ugh, going down a rabbithole on these sorts of symbols gets annoying fast. Nah. I don’t like the association with religious stuff.
However. Apparently the symbol for the apocalypse is omega – Ω, representing the ultimate or final point. Now it may just be me, but I can see a similarity, with a bit of artistic wiggling, between that Ω and the .. highly deformed? clitoris. Hey, it’s inspiration.
I think the three symbols in the splat should be only very slightly different, so, highly modified. Here’s a first stab at it. I think the lines of the milkweed seed needs to be far less maybe. I dunno. It’s something.
Other stuff … the focus on “movement” or “growth” suddenly reminded me of the MerahMas logo, my little company from back in the day.
As an aside I think I also want a new signature, but I’m drawing a blank on what. I hate my surname so that’s not gonna go in there. The one I use comes from a crush I had in highschool, when I was practising my signature once we were married! Lol, it’s bizarre how that stood the test of time over, what, 30 years by now.
Getting a bit distracted and doing a reverse image search on the FLOW tattoo gave some interesting ideas. There’s enough hits to make it clear the logo needs to be … different than just three drops.
I tried feeding what is on this post back to AI to see if I could get images. The designs sucked, but the clarified design brief was quite nice:
Logo Concept & Design Rationale
1. Core Themes
- Connection across boundaries — spatial, digital-physical, community
- Balance & ethics — “feminist ethic of care with critical accountability”
- Transformation & emergence — growth, change, unpredictability
- Biology / biopunk — the natural world, organic structures
- Movement — the idea of flow, evolving forms, not static
- Topology / structure — topographical lines, tessellation, geometry
Specific design elements: the peduncle snail eyestalk, milkweed seed, topographic / arabesque lines, and a “triple droplet balance thing” (the gankyil).
2. Symbol / Mark Ideas
- Gankyil-inspired triple droplet
- Three interlocking or rotating “drops” (not identical) to evoke the three core ideas (care, accountability, emergence). Each drop isn’t quite the same → so make them slightly asymmetrical or with varied curvature.
- This conveys balance + motion (because the three form a dynamic unity).
- Topographic / tessellated geometry
- Use contour lines or a tessellating tile (hexagonal or arabesque) pattern as a background or integrated within the droplets.
- This gives a sense of systems, structure, and geography/geology.
- Flowing lines / arabesque
- Lines that swirl or undulate to evoke growth and flow. These could be part of the droplet shapes or in the negative space around them.
- Color – Orange + Warm Palette
- Orange “shifts the energy” of the logo to vibrancy, warmth, and approachability.
- Use a warm orange as a primary, combined perhaps with a neutral (deep gray or charcoal) for contrast, maybe a lighter accent.
- Tile / Symmetry But Not Rigid
- Consider moving away from a circle toward a tile that could tessellate.
- A hexagon or a softly rounded geometric tile could be the container for the droplets or lines, but don’t force perfect symmetry — allow for asymmetry or “imperfect symmetry” to reflect emergence / growth.
3. Typography
- Use a sans-serif typeface, clean and modern — to contrast the organic geometry of the icon, but still feel grounded.
- Alternatively, a slightly humanist sans (with gentle curves) could reflect “care” + “responsiveness.”
- Keep text minimal: just indiebio. Maybe the tagline “interfaces, spaces between” Avoid overly decorative fonts that could clash with the icon.
4. Logo Lockup / Layout
Different elements to include in the work:
- Icon above name — droplets / geometry above “indiebio” in a stacked layout.
- Icon to the left — mark on the left, name on the right; good for horizontal use (website header, email signature).
- Symbol-only version — for small uses or favicon: just the three drops or a simplified tessellated tile with droplet shape.
- Monochrome / One-color version — design the logo so it works in solid black or white, or single tone (essential for versatility)
Quick Sketch / Variants (Described)
Here are three variant concepts:
- Variant A (“Balanced Flow”): Three droplets rotating around a center, with soft contour lines inside each; color palette is orange + charcoal; name “indiebio” below in humanist sans.
- Variant B (“Curious Eye”): One or two stylized eyestalk-like curves emanating from a central tile (hexagon), integrated with a droplet; tile has tessellated geometry.
- Variant C (“Tessellated Movement”): A tessellated background shape (hexagon or arabesque tile), with the three droplets embedded in three of the tessellated cells, perhaps with negative space lines flowing through.