We're not always looking for ideas, sometimes ideas are looking for us. Sometimes they violently break through the windows of your mind when you least expect it and sweep through you with unstoppable gusto. Attempting to resist can be futile. No use trying to shutter them windows when the winds of inspiration are too strong.

The thought of revamping my logo wasn't something that ever crossed my mind. I've had the same one for over a dozen years and it seemed to serve me well, but last night for reasons completely unbeknownst to me a new mark made itself known in my mind's eye and I immediately scrawled it into my current vomitbook.

Aside from the obvious eye, the logo is also comprised of 3 letterforms (as was the previous one), G, J and the Arabic letter ج. The G being the first letter in Ganzeer of course, as the ج is in جنزير (Ganzeer in Arabic). The thing about the letter ج though is that it is only pronounced a hard G in Egypt and pronounced J in literally every other Arabic dialect. Which means جنزير will often be pronounced Janzeer when I'm in touch with other Arabic speakers, so the logo is able to represent all possible phonetics in one single symbol. It's as complex as it is simple.

The eye may be a cliche, but fact of the matter is everything I do—be it art, design, or writing—stems from one unshakable trait: observation. Keen, unwavering observation. Without which I doubt I'd ever have anything worthwhile to say. In any medium, really.

I've always been a fan of the kind of symbols you can't help but want to scrawl on your desk when you're a kid. The pentagram is an obvious one, the swastika before we know what it means or where it came from, the eye of Horus, Fido Dido's head, and so on. I think this new logo has something of that quality, more so than the previous one for sure.

I may tinker with proportions and style sometime down the line, but for now I'll try it on raw, see how well it fits.

#journal #work