The Quest to Find "Gratitude" in Design

Some designs come easy and some don’t.

I like to send gifts when I mail things. For the launch of Studio Härmonē, I wanted to send out vinyl stickers and a notepad to go along with the introduction booklet and business card. I wanted to start with "gratitude".

The Designer vs. The Client

I thought I had it in the bag, using an illustration of a butterfly that I created as part of my brand. I was simply going to make it into a sticker and put it in the design for the notepad. Easy breezy.

This turned out to be an example of an illustrator creating a design for themselves rather than for the client, a common challenge for artists. In this case, my client was Studio Härmonē, and the audience was our target market. Just because I loved the butterfly and would love to have it as a sticker didn’t mean it was right for its intended audience.

Turns out, after following due process and bouncing the design off other entrepreneurs, I was wrong. While the butterfly is nice, it didn’t speak to the audience as I thought it might. I bounced some ideas off of them, including a bear and a tree. Hands down, the tree won.

My marketing materials were printed at Jukebox, a print shop in the city that does excellent work. Their attention to detail and the care they put into their craft work for me. This intro package is a literal touch point with potential clients, so the contents needed to be of superb quality. As such, I ordered a sample pack of their business cards and stickers. When I brought the sample packs to my meeting with fellow entrepreneurs, they all wanted to take home a sticker. What surprised me was that they gravitated towards the cute stickers.

Back to the Drawing Board: The Cedar

Back to the drawing board I went. I have made many paintings and drawings of trees. Some readers may even have one or two of my tree paintings hanging on their walls. Creating a tree sticker should have been a no-brainer. Again, I was wrong because now my intellect and the “shoulds” were involved. What I had intended to be a simple gift became a two-month-long project.

I started with a Western Red Cedar. This tree is sacred and gives everything of itself. It is also a quintessential symbol of the West Coast. Since I was feeling a little hurky-jerky about it, I started with research. Having spent much time making art of cedars, I already knew the botanical details of the tree, but I wanted to focus on shape. Cedars grow in their own unique way, while following the overall form of the species. I also researched and sought inspiration from creatures made from botanical sources.

I drew some initial sketches of trees, focusing on movement and flow. Naturally, one of my sketches turned into a two-headed tree, which led to the exploration of an Ent (LOTR) like creature. This was then scrapped, and a tree with a large face came into being. It felt right, so I dove in. Before doing any finalization, I shared the sketch with others, sure it would be a hit because they liked the cute stickers. Alas, I was wrong again. A humbling process to be sure.

The Rabbit Hole of Symbols

I set trees and creatures to the side and focused my gaze on symbols of "gratitude". Research is a good friend of mine, we spend many hours together. I explored symbols of "gratitude" across cultures and across time. I settled on a symbol that spoke to me in its intended purpose and its design, and then sought to understand its origin story. 

This symbol included a spiral at the centre. Being an artist, I am aware of the value of the golden ratio. I wanted this spiral to follow that principle. This led my beautiful ADHD brain down a side quest of exploring the history of the golden ratio, which then led me to the Fibonacci sequence. I spent hours there, reading the history and trying to understand the math of it all. Fascinating stuff, but not relevant to the sticker.

Back to the West Coast Vibe

Once I had a good draft of the gratitude symbol, I explored what else I could do to make this sticker a true gift from my new design firm to my potential clients. I could naturally see a wave in the centre of the symbol, so I riffed off that, drawing in the wave and adding a cedar tree to the left. This had a West Coast vibe to me with the ocean and the cedar. I kept working the design until I had the shapes and the texture nailed.

I proudly sent it to my mother, who is both a successful businesswoman and an artist. I was positive she would love it, and she did. She liked the design and the flow, but she didn’t see the tree. I had to explain it. That killed the design for me. If I have to explain where the tree was, the design wasn’t good. It was too abstract for my clients. I had missed the mark AGAIN. Oy vey.

Being the tenacious person I am, I plowed forward. I set the tree to the side but kept the gratitude symbol. I explored quotes. I landed on a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” While this was well-intentioned, and I spent hours fitting the text inside the symbol, it landed flat. I played with adding some whimsy with mushrooms, trees, butterflies and flowers. This brought me full circle back to the tree. I landed on a general design of the cedar on the left of the symbol, but my creative well was dry. I set the project aside and worked on other things.

Finding Harmony and Gratitude in Design

Procreate, the digital art platform I use, came out with a massive update. With it came a whole host of new brushes. This was like a visit to the art supply store that led me to playing with all of them, discovering texture and blending. Awesome update, kudos to Procreate.

I was inspired again, the creative well was refilled. I went back to the sticker design and “painted.” Eight hours later, I was in love with the design. It wasn’t cute. There were no butterflies or mushrooms. There were no words, waves or faces. There was some abstraction in the symbol and the textures. It was a painting, and it felt great. The feedback I received was soft, curious, and surprised.

I was done! I felt satisfied and relieved. That design did not come easy. It became a journey, a quest. The end result felt honest. It felt like one of the tree paintings I had gifted to those I love.

It felt like a true gift of "gratitude".

I started by writing, "Some designs come easy, and some don’t." This sticker was a clear example of the latter. The core lesson learned is that even small, seemingly simple projects, due process and audience testing are crucial in design. My personal aesthetic wasn’t important; the design had to resonate with the intended audience. This internal quest allows us to refine our strategic process. This commitment to honesty, intentionality, research, and collaboration is exactly what we bring to every client project.