"I just blue myself"...the origin of my logo mark

This morning I logged into Facebook and got one of those "on this day, two years ago" reminders. The picture that showed up was one of my very favorite memories of my dearly-departed Lucille.

Two years ago, I walked back to my desk after a very long work meeting to discover that my dog had turned blue. After a little detective work, I discovered broken bits and pieces of a pen she'd apparently eaten. Nearly half a box of baby wipes later I still had a blue dog, so I took her outside for a "shame" picture. The ink on her fur faded within a week...but I think there's still some faint blue footprints on the carpet at the old Vérité building.

About a month after this incident, I found myself frantically trying to come up with some sort of logo for Nikki Makes Things that I could slap on some business cards for the upcoming Designer Vaca. Branding yourself is hard, and I spent hours trying to come up with something I liked. I don't know exactly what made me decide on my blue dog, maybe it was the desperation or lack of sleep....or maybe it was the fat idiot (a loving nickname we had for Lucille) snoozing at my feet that put the idea in my head. After an hour in Adobe Illustrator I had my new business card design, one that I actually quite liked! 

Since printing those cards two years ago, I've taken my bulldog mark and completely run with it. I've had a lot of positive responses to the mark, I guess there's other crazy bulldog people out there like me! Sometime in the future I'll need to update the look and feel of my brand, hopefully my Lucille will still have a place in it.