Proudly, I’d like to share a short background story about the origin of the logos I’m using from now on. For myself, I’m continuously witnessing that the most remarkable things in life are taking place in a coincidental environment while sharing it with openness, courage and capacity. That’s why I’m trying to avoid crammed days and encounter the present moment in public with special attention.

On a rainy day in July, I had the pleasure of meeting Natasha, an artistic, creative mind with a beautiful soul, in a very special environment in Colombia which led to a fruitful drafting session for visualizing the maze of self. Reminiscing about these hours now, brings back memories on some project work back in university or school. Working on a project, brainstorming and actually creating something together with other humans is something very beautiful and satisfying. The engineer’s heart beating inside me is trained to seek maximum efficiency in processes and so the initial thought would lead me to an image-generating AI solution. Well in that case I decided to take the slow, inefficient and unpredictable way. In a retrospect, I’d like to share some thoughts about my approach to take the conventional path.

This paragraph is probably going to be the most travel-blog-like thing you’ll ever read from me, but I feel it’s necessary to capture the roots of the artwork. Minca in Colombia is a very special place – it’s just a 20 min drive from the pretty busy and noisy Caribbean coastline, but it instantly let you enter a different world arriving there. Placed in the middle of a jungle in the mountains that small village is embedded in stunning nature radiating peace and raw life. While I stayed in some shady places before, I directly felt secure and welcome. It seems like every place and living being in that village is in direct connection with the lush and pristine nature around. Through several waterfalls a river forms its way through Minca and offers a nourishing home for a multitude of diverse plants and rare animals. Some secluded areas could give you the feeling of stepping into an undisclosed environment. Thinking back, I can’t imagine a better place to let creativity flow. In my everyday life, I’m really struggling in finding time for creative expression during leisure time, although I’m aware of the importance.

merged creativity

I feel special admiration for creative brains. For me, it – exaggeratedly said – seems like totally different ways of thinking collide, try to merge and find a compromise during collaborative creation processes. Mostly, it’s a wonderful opportunity to learn from each other and expand your brain’s approaches for solution findings. In the collaborative process I previously named inefficient, a really special generative mechanism comes into play. I’m convinced that misunderstandings in idea finding are probably the most powerful tool for creation. It appears quite often that a decisive spark grows out an idea which was understood totally wrong. For the most part, we’re aware of our way of associative thinking, our imagination and the personal memories combined. Bridging these objective abilities of different human creates interesting and refreshing diversity. Besides that, such work addresses our social needs of feeling understood and participating in something in community. Unfortunately, we tend to forget to value the experience of doing while being too focused on the output. If you’re taking a donkey, horse or even a helicopter to reach the summit of a mountain, you’ll surely enjoy the view and it triggers also some rewarding feeling, yet it’s incomparable, if you hiked all the way up. In favor, we often end up surprisingly unsatisfied after using the quick and efficient way.

thoughts about the logo

The maze of self isn’t something rigid. It’s radiating, breathing, pulsing – the walls and barriers are like waves varying in their intensity, height, and speed comparable to everyday life situations. It could look simple and totally doable on one day, and crazy confusing, hopelessly leading to a feeling of vain and desperation on the other. The visualization, we created collaboratively, expresses that quite good and differs completely from commonly used images of labyrinth-like forms. Regarding the center, just a few thoughts about my intentions to allow some room for own interpretations. It is purposely visualized in a mysterious, foggy way as it’s probably just a philosophical scenario. Mentioning philosophy here, the detachment of the creatures head from the body is meant to be a metaphor for the interrelation of body and soul. The physical body seems to unify increasingly with the walls of the maze that represent majorly memories in that scenery. While I can’t tell what we’re going to see, it is sure that we’re able to look back on these mentioned memories and the challenges we overcame in reaching that state. In my last anecdote, I want to discuss the shape of the head, which appears as a geometric counterpart to the walls of the maze. Surely, the head or better said the brain itself are kind of creators of that mystery, but is our brain the piece of puzzle finally matching these questions? And if so, in what orientation do we have to arrange that intelligent and final piece of the puzzle?

With special gratitude to Natasha and our little session, I can proudly say that the logos I’m using were generated with 100% human intelligence and creativity. That really gave me trust in conventional ways and caused further reflection on using the quick and efficient way in my daily life. Gracias, Natasha.

concluding thought of the day

I don’t think it’s useful to reserve specific time slots for creativity, because that feels too forced. So I’m still lacking a good idea for how to integrate it into everyday life.

How do you integrate creativity in your day-to-day life, and what effects does it have on you? What did you love to do back in the days and lost its place due to all your commitments? Try to pick up it up again, and give yourself permission to bring it back to life.