Materia Medica Medicinary Logo
This was probably my most challenging design to date, but it ended up turning out really cool.
“Materia Medica Medicinary” – Got a simple brief to help a local Portland wellness company finally realize an expansion into a Chinese Herbalist Medicinary. The name was actually still TBD at the start, but they knew they liked Chinese brush painting imagery, and they wanted the logo to include a medicinal flower called the “Indigo – Qing Dai”.
First, it became clear that I needed to learn the anatomy of the “Qing Dai” flower. The problem was, that actually wasn’t it’s name! It’s a nickname that’s used primarily for herbalism, and because of that, reference imagery of this flower was extremely limited. This was either the rarest flower ever, or something wasn’t adding up… It took a bit more sleuthing than I expected, but eventually I was able to discover the reference was a “Cusia” flower. Strobilanthes or Baphicacanthus to be exact. Bingo.
I threw myself at this flower, learning to draw it from different views, and finding reference imagery from the most iconic angles and details. After some iterations we found a couple “hero poses” to move forward with and we could really start playing around with different looks.
The color scheme? Indigo of course, its the namesake of the logo! That’s when the next issue presented itself. Indigo – is it blue or is it purple? There are so-many-different shades of “indigo” in both of those varieties. Luckily the initial reference image from the Client was the key, and we landed on a shade of indigo purple.
Then we stumbled upon a rich bit of inspiration within Chinese stamp seals. Loads of texture, with hand-carved artistry producing rich line-work with clearly defined positive and negative spaces. This was the way forward. Alongside a full-width logo, we now would be adding a “shorthand” stamp logo to the mix as well.
An abstract and repeating “M” was to accompany the flower as a stand-alone stamp of the medicinary’s initials, as well as serving as the image in the full logo.
Being my first real excursion into a Chinese style of art, I was pretty happy with where this one landed! This little “Qing Dai” flower stamp will serve as a symbol patients can trust for excellent quality and care.
