It matched with me

Back when I had a vinyl sticker business for kitchens, I used to go to the print shop all the time. With some leftover vinyl on hand, the guy at the shop asked if I wanted to print something at a suuuper low cost, so I threw in a little lightning bolt I'd had kicking around for a while, one that was supposed to become a poster and then never became anything, wasn't part of a plan or a system, I didn't even know yet what it might turn into.

Looking for the bolt stickers, I found the crown ones instead.

Let's rewind. Before all that, I went through two very different logo phases, even though one grew out of the other: first there was the silhouette of a paper boat, under the idea of going out to explore, and then, one day, out popped a crown, my way of declaring myself the boss of my own damn universe, which I used for about ten years in my personal projects while I worked regular jobs and my artistic side leaked out, kind of shy, into social media, printed stuff, and a website nobody looked at. The crown kept mutating just because, out of boredom, through plain iteration, as a reflection of my (back then) passion for lettering and illustration, because "my artistic self" was a fantasy shaped like a side project. Between 2011 and 2018, all of that kept shifting constantly, without me steering it much at all.

But that vinyl lightning bolt I mentioned started spreading on its own in 2019, almost without me trying. By 2024, in my work circles, all it took was spotting something with a bolt on it to know I was around. People started asking me for bolts in other colors, products with the bolt on them.

When it came time to define my new professional life this year, buried in a thousand tasks, was the task of defining my personal brand. And what happened was, I couldn't just grab that hot potato and decide on the spot like I thought I would. I didn't know why, but I couldn't make the call that easily. This wasn't like dipping a finger into a shallow puddle and pulling it out barely wet, this was a deeper, darker well, and it had little to do with a visual decision: that depth meant working from the inside, so my brand could rise up from there, from my own intentions and identity. I understood that this process meant building something I could see myself in, from the inside out, never the other way around. Something I could show off proudly. Something that was part of who I am right now and reflected me as I actually am. Conceptually, I was after two peas in a pod.

That's when I got serious and decided to commit. The crown felt like an old couch worn into the shape of my own body: I already had it, and it was plenty comfortable. Plus, I saw the upside of reusing the printed stuff and the thirty thousand fabric labels I'd had made years ago when I wanted to sell t-shirts.

Jumping to something new meant leaving those old decisions behind, and boom: fresh start. Besides, the lightning bolt had already done its part: even though it was still untested, it already represented me. Well. I left the crown behind and went all in on the bolt. It was hard, but I had that tingling feeling you get when you're completely sure about something.

Today, that bolt works with any background I put it on, it looks good in color or in black and white, it's striking, sober and disruptive at the same time. It's versatile and it's me. Because I can sit down with you to eat a hot dog curbside, and I can also be the exact opposite of that version. The bolt doesn't pick one. It holds all of them at once, and that's why it works: I didn't design it to represent me, it matched with me. And when a brand truly matches, it stops feeling designed. It starts feeling like you.

J.