Discovering a Gratitude Logo
Updated: May 15, 2021
It's an interesting experience looking for a logo. How to sum up in one simple shape what is important to me with Mindful Surrey? Last week I felt rather inspired doodling in rehearsals for 'Messiah' that I am about to perform, (only while the men were rehearsing and I was listening, in case my choirmaster is reading!). But the next day, without Handel in the background, my Surrey oak trees and swirly Celtic signs were just not quite right.
Then I came across a symbol for gratitude. I felt myself breathing deeply with a sense of calm. One can so easily get caught up wanting more of anything and for things to be different. And yet one can also always find things to be grateful for. Also, the shape of the circle reminds me how things arise, stay a while and then go, just like our thoughts and feelings. But mostly I chose this sign for its message of gratitude, shining through my website and out into the world.
The GLAD meditation is a simple practice that helps us focus on things we might be grateful for, or have learned, accomplished or found delight in. However gloomy we might be feeling, being able to also see the positives is an ability that we can find easier in time with practice. There are several guided meditations that can help with this, including one called Facing Difficulties meditation, in which we bring awareness to simple pleasant aspects of our experience, to balance what might perhaps feel like a huge amount of unpleasant aspects we're stuck in. You can find this and other recorded meditations on our YouTube mindfulness channel.
One year later...
As much as I liked that logo, to most people it was just a swirl, and from a distance just a blob! So discovering a logo was a project once again. A new hunt was made and I came across the idea of the lotus. I wanted to include leaves to connect it to Surrey, as much of it is so green with wonderful trees and fields. The lotus flower is calming, and is a lovely image for mindfulness as the lotus needs murky, muddy waters from which to grow and thrive. It reminds us that life includes the beauty and the murky, the pleasant and the unpleasant, and of the balance and ease that comes from embracing it all.
The next challenge seems to be to find a perfect font for the website. You might notice the one currently on the logo is different to the one in the pages. And on flyers I tend to use both. The logo font feels soft and sturdy, but not modern enough for the website. I am not sure how much it matters and I have probably wasted too much time seeing Mindful Surrey written in hundreds of different fonts. Today's challenge seems to be to let go of trying to find the perfect images. Perhaps 'good enough for now' is a useful phrase to recall.
