Creating the logo for a business is challenging. It’s like a visual haiku; it takes brevity, balance, precision, and inspiration to make a tiny thing that represents so much. The process is a fantastic exercise, though. If you don’t yet know what your product is all about, you’re going to find out when you try to distill all its meaning and message into one image. I actually love this kind of thing. At the start, it requires me to use my artistic background in the conceptual phase, then a hard head for business and strategy in the middle phase, ending with creativity again as it all comes together in the visual realization.

Our Isla Palenque logo uses a motif from a photograph we found of an actual piece of Pre-Columbian pottery found in the area decades ago. The swirling pattern evokes waves, wind, whirlpools, yin/yang, any number of things. I hope it resonates with some of the people who see it now, and I know it will have meaning for those who come to the island later. They’ll be surrounded by the same forces of nature as the ancient people who made the pottery. We’ll be sure to use this motif in our decorating and in our archeological presentations so they’ll see that it is deeply grounded in the island’s history. I hope this little thingy, this bit, this logo does its part to bring echoes of the ancient to our resort. And I hope that the island feels like we’re old friends speaking to it in an ancient and familiar language.