Our meaning-making is influenced by our history and experience, our desires and wishes.The power of imagery is that it allows the beholder to project their meaning-making on to the image and to also allow the image to reveal its meaning in the beholder. It is a symbiotic relationship, each affecting the other.
Having said that, some imagery is universal in its symbolic interpretations.
I am counting on both these: the personal and the universal, to speak to me and my clients through the symbolism of the brand imagery.
I invite you to make what you wish of it.
Here I share how these images spoke through me and to me and became the muse for my new logo.
Waves
The undulating lines of shades of blue in the logo were inspired by waves, topography and the human face. This simple imagery speaks to so many things, allowing me to express who I am, my approach to the work of coaching, and possibly for my clients to recognise themselves in the work of self-development.
The waves represent life with all its cycles, its ups and downs and its paradoxes.
The ocean is our primordial mother, our beginnings, the birthplace of our ancestry.
To know the nature of the ocean is to know the nature of life.
Calm and beautiful.
Turbulent and powerful.
Inviting and frightening.
Rhythmic and yet unpredictable
Life, like the waves, shows up in the coaching process. And together, the coachee and I, honour what comes up, what stays, what leaves and what we want to hold and nurture. We attend to all of them and learn how to swim in the shallow and the deep alike.
Topography
The topographical imagery symbolises the coaching journey to self-discovery.
The word journey might seem overused. But coaching is a journey. We might have a destination or we might discover it along the way. Either way, there might be many different paths to get there. You have to pay attention to the road before you, choose your mode of transport, understand the terrain and chart your path. Sometimes you might have to abandon paths or backtrack, go slow or go fast. And as much as you keep your eyes peeled on to the road in front of you, you might also have to learn to rise above it, and hover and see the topography of your landscape and understand the obstacles and opportunities so that you might revise your strategy based on how you might put your unique gifts to use on the journey.
Faces
A commitment to a coaching process is a commitment to discovering different stories within you, different versions that allow you to become your best version.
We play different roles in our lives personally and professionally, and often we might keep these separate from each other. But when role-demands conflict with each other, we find ourselves caught in its tension and our sense of peace disturbed. A coaching process is an invitation to find harmony and balance with these roles and congruence in the stories. And to show up whole, as you evolve into your best possible version.
The imagery of the faces here is also a signpost to the different identities I embody personally and professionally, including a visual suggestion of the Coach ~ Wayfinder ~ Storyweaver professional personas.
Kintsugi
We are all perfect in our imperfections, and we learn to make gold out of our wounds.
The idea of Kintsugi comes from the Japanese art and practice of mending broken pottery, using gold lacquer to mend the broken pieces.
The rose gold line in the logo speaks to that idea and how this shows up in my practice.
The wounded-healer is an identity that resonates with me very deeply. A wounded healer is a person who has her own wounds. She is also a person who continues to pay attention to how these wounds shape her and continue to work on herself so that she might use these wounds as places of learning. The wounds then become places of gold, of wisdom and compassion.
The wounded-healer does not pretend to be all sorted and ‘fixed’. Some things in life, like grief, cannot be fixed, we just learn to grow with it and around it.
The wounded-healer knows that just like her, her clients also have their own hurts and wounds they carry with them. They have their share of mistakes they have made and shame they might carry. My clients, just like me, might carry doubts, insecurities and fears.
Because we are human.
Human beings are fallible creatures. An unmarked life without hurt, fears, imperfections, is rarely found.
We are whole not because we have not experienced losses or made any mistakes. We are whole because of our losses and lessons. We are whole because we have learned to tend to our hurts and mend our ways.
We are whole because we learn to ride the ups and downs of the waves of life.
We are vessels carrying and caring for our stories of triumphs and tragedies, fears and hopes, lessons and wisdom, joys and grief.
When we work together, my job is to show up, and hold space for you, so that you too can be consciously vulnerable to them and learn the skills and ways to heal and make gold out of your wounds.
The rose gold line in the logo is my way of acknowledging my wounded-healer identity and to pay homage to the same vulnerabilities and strengths in you.
Container
The work of a coach is to create a container of safety, to hold space.
All of the work is encircled in a container, a safe space, a haven for revealing, discovering yourself and for tentatively testing ideas and practices, so that you might be prepared to practice outside, in your life, in your world. The container is an invitation to rest, rejuvenate and reimagine yourself.