Sapphire.Set A blaze.
There is a space within design reserved for color theory. In design school at LSU graphic design majors take a required course cataloged as Art 2552: Color Design. It’s a 3 hour class taken twice a week, with an intent to teach color as a functional design element of perception and visual communication. In 2009 my Art 2552 instructor was Paul Dean. D.J. Mist (Paul Dean’s disc jockey name) took the course description, flipped it and mixed it to give us ..*dj scratch sound*..color theory. With his quirky non-conventional teaching style he not only talked about color functionality, but he also gave spirit to colors. He imparted wisdom about hue relationships, symbolism, associations, and philosophy. Every color has a spirit and from Paul’s lessons, these spirits can give life.
The blue hue Sapphire helped to breath life into I Amplify — an alternative approach to challenge, change and self elevation and an identity design project of The Patent Pump.
Identity (noun) 1.the fact of being who or what a person or thing is. Those are Oxford’s words, not my own. Put that definition on an imaginary sticky note and post it on your mental walls.
Identity design is a journey — a mind, body, and soul type of journey.
Isis, founder of I Amplify, came to Patent with a vision. She was looking for a logo to visually identify the vision she had conceived— her baby. Have you ever experienced, “I know there’s a name for it, but I don’t know what to call it?” I call this phenomenon the Gates syndrome. The label is inspired by the Don’t Know What to Call it rap lyrics of Baton Rouge native Kevin Gates. If you took that concept and reversed it, you’d probably land somewhere around “ I know the name, but don’t know how to explain”. This reverse Gates syndrome is the challenge that I Amplify faced. Isis, having already figured out the organization’s name, had come to the identity work-table with a title and accompanying introductory copy. This, for us, is a great kickoff point. It gives a framework to begin the ID (identity design) process. However, as confident as Isis began the process, we would soon go through the journey of ( yes, you guessed it) I know the name, but don’t really know how to explain.
…Stay with me.
As we pulled out words and phrases like “souls on fire”, propel, intimate, switch, magical, energy, magnify, enlightenment and connection they begged us to connect them with embodying imagery. After crafting a moodboard it was time to recommend colors. Here, is where Patent gets to flex all the foundational wisdom taught to me in Art2552; Because honestly, arbitrary color palettes are dumb. It seriously pisses me off when I hear of people picking colors, just because they favor them. That is not okay. Just don’t do it. Colors are spirits, so take care. Patent discerns color direction for identities based off the essence of what has been aligned and extracted through asking questions. Inspired by the imagery associated with I Amplify came blues, silvers, oranges, and golds. Ultimately Patent settled on blue and silver. Why? Because color theory said so. Color theory aligned blue and silver with what I Amplify is and I’m a firm believer in “it is what it is”. Refer to that imaginary sticky note and view the theory below:
Blue = infinity, sadness, harmony, security, self-expression, spirituality, the sky, and among a myriad of other associations it is the Aztec’s symbol of sacrifice.
Silver= moon power, reflection, illumination, wisdom, truth, and the hue is thought to reduce anxiety and create peace.
From that theory came a dark blue and a light blue to communicate accession and silver to communicate manifestation. In gradient all three colors form a climbing upward through the sky’s atmosphere visualization.
Suddenly, after taking the colors applying it to the logo and completing the identity, Isis hit a wall. She had discovered that although she knew her baby’s name, she did not know how to explain who I Amplify was. I Amplify was identified, labeled verbally and visually but she couldn’t articulate who, exactly, this brand was. Often times we hit walls when we give our ideas boundaries. We place them inside preconceived boxes. Dress them up with our own favorite things and smother them with our own personal bullshit, I mean sabotage — thoughts that threaten our vision. Your ideas are, what they are. They are outgrowths of you, they are not you. Give your ideas, much like a real baby, time and space to grow and mature; because eventually they will speak for themselves and clearly show you who they are.
Press the fast forward button…Okay. Now stop. Play. One of the fun parts of designing identities is naming the official colors. Patent decided to name the official I Amplify blue, Sapphire, simply because the chosen hue is pretty much the color of the stone. After mentioning the name to Isis on a call, she stuns me with “ sapphire is also my birthstone”. “Shut up!” I exclaimed in response. You see, this is the “it is what it is” phenomenon. It is something that is hard to articulate, but here’s my attempt:
when something or someone comes into being who they are destined to be, EVERYTHING begins to work together, wether you’re aware or not.
Hashtag catch that.
Identity is who or what you are. Period. In branding, it is the catalyst to the journey awaiting each person your organization comes in contact with. For I Amplify the journey is the expansion between uncertainty and perspective, the balance of question with reflection, and the ability to manifest light in dark spaces. It is a memoir of Isis’s personal passage from sadness to peace and a channel for you if you wander or wonder. This journey, encapsulated by hue is I Amplify Sapphire blue. It’s LIT.
Killed.
—Ash
