I met Whitney Fessler at a big convention here in Flagstaff. As newly transplanted residents we started comparing our experiences with starting our respective businesses. The thing that stood out to me about Whitney was that she was extremely passionate about acupuncture. The love she has for her craft was a breath of fresh air.
Soon after the convention, Whitney contracted us to work on her new logo. During the discovery phase we uncovered some themes that would help us in crafting the new logo. The first theme was that, frankly, needles are scary. People who aren't already familiar with acupuncture can be intimidated by it. We needed to make sure that we appealed to the positive effects of acupuncture, and do so in a very soft way. The second theme was that Whitney really wanted to pay tribute to the eastern roots of acupuncture. We spoke briefly about the Yin and Yang symbol and how the concept behind it was amazing, unfortunately the traditional visual was overused and cliche.
The Yin Yang symbol idea kept popping up. I knew that extricating a traditional Yin Yang symbol from it's cliched existence was a fools errand. So I forced the thought out of my mind until, while researching acupuncture, I stumbled upon the I Ching Trigrams (more info). The Yin Yang symbol as used by the I Ching is beautiful, balanced and powerful. Perfect! We now had a wonderful nod to the eastern roots of acupuncture. Next we had to figure out how to make the brand soft assuage and entice the uninitiated.
The I Ching Trigram Yin Yang symbol.
We wanted to contrast the strength of the Yin Yang symbol with a softness. Rooted in the act of healing is a sense of kindness and caring -- It can be a very spiritual process, especially when it comes to eastern medicines like acupuncture. It's also very organic and grounded in nature. Danielle and I quickly became obsessed with the idea of watercolor. The organic, peaceful and spiritual qualities of watercolors could help us undercut the anxiety someone might feel in choosing acupuncture as their healing path.
We put them together and this is the final logo:
