One of my dear friends is a fabulous artist. Farooq Karim makes the most magical pieces from paper. He hand cuts thousands of individual pieces of paper then combines them into individual flowerettes. Then he arranges hundreds of the small flowers into a larger dynamic blossom. All his pieces are the (fill in the blank) Blossom.
I have several pieces of his work in my personal collection and many more in the Kimray Visual Arts Collection.
So, when Farooq asked me to help him create a brand to represent himself I was excited to get to work on something so personal for someone I respect so much.
At first I tried to incorporate Farooq’s art into the concept. I had done other work with Farooq and had used the forms from some of the art pieces in other designs. I also had digitized and cleaned up his very unique signature:
However, the more I tried to work with the familiar forms, the more it didn’t feel right. I started to realize that the brand needed to represent Farooq, not just in the art form he was currently producing. Farooq is an artist in a much wider way. He practices the art of generosity of human experience. Farooq is a true renaissance man. He is profoundly kind and generous. I can’t imagine there is anyone who knows him who does not like and respect him. So, he needed a mark that was him, not just a single component of him.
I started playing with his name, his signature, his initials, and before long the brand emerged:
