little chair

I feel like I spend most of my time making things of one kind or another but I rarely write about this process. It's a little like breathing. Once you start to think about drawing breath, you forget how to do it naturally. From there it's just a short skip and a jump to a full-blown panic attack. So I am going to try and write about designing this logo for littlechair without wigging out. It feels especially important because working on this project has been a delight from start to finish. I often get work by word of mouth. Often it means I am familiar with my client before we begin work. In the case of littlechair, a new children's party furniture hire business, I have known its founder Belinda since our school aged children were babies. Even before we struck up a conversation at a local cafe I liked the way she carried herself, though that may have had something to do with her wardrobe. We're both Country Road card holders. When Belinda engaged me to create a logo we talked about what it might look like. She had a very clear sense of what she wanted, something clean. A chair. A balloon. In a way there wasn't much for me to do but just interpret her sensibility as closely as possible. We went to four drafts to get the placement of the balloon right, the string just-so, backwards and forwards on whether the balloon should be outlined, whether aqua was better than apple green. When I'm working with a client who has a sense of confidence and a bit of nous this aspect of design – drilling down to finesse simple elements – it's satisfying labour. Isn't that one of the definitions of happiness? I know when I'm doing it I'm doing the right thing.