Happy New Lunar Year!
Who doesn’t want to know what’s in the future? What we should we be avoiding or embracing.
We have just started a new lunar year on the Chinese calendar, and this year is my year, the year of the Rat, some say it’s lucky, some say not! I am said to be industrious and thrifty, diligent and positive, prone to enshrine and collect. This last point is definitely true, you should see my paper stock samples or holiday pebble collection!
I’ve always been interested in the mystical world of fortune telling, runes, horoscopes (Taurus), Tarot (the Fool is perhaps my favourite card), I Ching (42), palmistry – even tossing a coin. This probably stems from my Gran who could read tea leaves, it was hugely exciting to have a grown-up cup of tea and Granny would find a bird or something equally marvellous on the inside of my cup. Even talking to the divine, God, and praying for a good outcome – health, happiness for even wealth, to some is divination.
My thinking is that these are all tools to help us confirm our ‘gut’ feelings, our intuition.
An aside on being round
And looking forward, trying to see around the next corner, beyond the curve, is where my logo design comes from. I’ve had the same logo since 1999 (so yes, it was mine before WordPress used it as a timer as someone once remarked, suggesting that I had copied it!), I’ve fiddled with the font, but the symbol remains. For me, the circle underlies everything, our eyes are the intersection between the inside and the outside. We live in the round – family huddles, seasons, on the round – our planet, the universe (that may be a different shape – who knows for sure). Our world turns, we roll on. The circle inside the circle creates agitation and forward movement. Pythagoras called the circle “monad,” the most perfect of creative forms, without beginning or end, without sides or corners. In a story told by Vasari, the artist Giotto once drew a perfect circle for Pope Benedict XI to prove his drawing skill. The round, the circle encompasses, it is always complete, it bounces and travels. For me it is the perfect shape.
In business we forecast, use Belbin, in daily life – we check our horoscope. Because despite the new science of seeing into the shadows, we cannot see around corners.
Seth Godin on luck
Luck on demand, alas, [is] not an option. Luck over time is inevitable, though. If you show up with good work and generous action, again and again, sooner or later something that appears to others to be luck will appear.
Thoughts on logo shape – when designing for logos on a budget, one of the questions I pose is for my client is to think about what ‘shape’ their business is, by considering is it; open and welcoming; strong and dependable; forthright and focused – what shapes spring to mind for you?
“Life is probably round” Van Gogh
An original illustration by angie, inspired by The Stranglers Rattus norvegicus album cover, Lanterns image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay