A year ago I started investigating the idea of measuring happiness. After all happiness is one of the most inherent human pursuit.
It was a culmination of multiple people, circumstances, ideas — that this is what I chose to pursue, I read, talked to many experts, many thought that I was crazy — but all agreed that this was worth pursuing.
I don’t know about you but for me when I start working on an idea, I need an “icon” to hang everything on, a name is important but so is an image. This is the story of the identity of BeingHappy.
A little bit about BeingHappy — BeingHappy is an app that measures happiness, you select a few emotions that you are present to at the moment, and you get a happiness score. Its a blend of scoring emotions, background data (like weather, sleep, exercise..), machine learning and algorithm backed by social psychology and data science. It abstracts intelligence from emotions, and can show you how your happiness is affected by say sleep or weather, or exercise or certain events.
The first iteration of the identity came from fiverr.com, for $5 you can get a logo. At least it gave something to hang my hat on.
In the meantime we now had a small team, trying to prototype, figuring out the algorithm, and doing all the things that “lean methodology” says to do and things that it does not say to do, like, thinking. Like talking to experts, reading about your space, and cross — reading around the space that your startup is.
Eventually the logo / identity did not satisfy me, I would not say the team but my own intellectual, for a lack of a better word curiosity, maybe creativity. So I decided to pay the $400 to get a logo done through 99design. I must say the quality of 99design is going down, sorted through 100's of design submitted and picked another logo/ identity.
I liked it, if you look hard than you can see the smily face. I abhor cutesy references, how ever it did give a sense of a gauge. It did last us for 6 months, specially through the development of the app.
I would keep going back to trying to think of a better design. But the final straw was when I started thinking web presence, and putting the identity in multiple places.
It drove me nuts to think about this logo would represent what we were doing, there is an abstraction — of measuring happiness — and this was not it. It was literal like a mood ring. My fellow founders I am sure think that I am nuts, they were ok with the logo/ identity.
Wondering mind, with the web presence now becoming more pressing — I started looking for things that I like, I had made up my mind that I wanted an abstraction not a figurative identity.
Then I came across the work of Maria Gronlund (@mariagroenlund) — her work was organic and so systemic, and at the same time abstract.
I fell in love with this creation… as I was reading about her, she is very open, and asked people to share with her anything they create inspired by her work.
Now I don’t know illustrator very well, I had never bent a line before. But I was determined and one evening night I spent 7–8 hours creating an identity, which was distinct though inspired by her work. I would say copy, if that is possible — its like saying I copied Van Gough. I must give credit to Jorge Torres — he created and tought me how to create curved structures and shadows.
Here is the identity which I do love, but somehow still did not do it for me, it was great, but still a little uni-dimensional.
I do love it, for me it represents the folding of self and the feathering of the emotional self.
We establish this as an identity but I was still looking — tried to outside the box, and I am sure some friends got irked and some loved the silliness of this:
I liked it, I love pop art, I love Lichtenstien — I could hang all the design, website all on the pop art movement — how ever people got hungry looking at it, some found it fun and some creepy.
Back to the drawing board. I knew that we were close, but not there.
And have been iterating on this — I have reached a place that I am not seeking consensus — but looking for whats missing for me. This iteration closed the loop, representing the cycle of emotions. It represents the fundamental colors of emotions…
And the last iteration happened an hour ago, I was sharing this with my friend Akriti, who had just come back from India. She is amazing and sometimes says incredible things, getting to the heart of it.
She said, turn it the other way, it looks like “Mudra” — That was it, I was done with the identity. Mudra for me represents expressing emotions with your hands and fingers in a divine way. In its a ritualistic and spritual gestures used in traditional dance in India.
A mudra (i/muːˈdrɑː/; Sanskrit mudrā, “seal”, “mark”, or “gesture”; Tibetan: ཕྱག་རྒྱ་ THL chakgya) is a symbolic or ritual gesture in Hinduism and Buddhism.[1] While some mudras involve the entire body, most are performed with the hands and fingers.[2] A mudrā is a spiritual gesture and an energetic seal of authenticity employed in the iconography and spiritual practice of Indian religions.
Here is the final incarnation…
Love to get your thoughts, comments, criticism… but for me it includes my Indian culture, a very organized western culture, which I embrace, it also represents emotions, the cycle and the shades of the emotions…
