A Tribute To My Design Sensei

I wanted to get my new business rolling fast so I designed my own logo in about an hour. As a perennial starter and a struggling finisher, there was so much excitement and things to do that the logo was just another notch on the checklist. I justified my slapdash work as a Minimum Viable Product because Agile methodology allows me to always be starting. It got the job done.

But I knew better: a logo is the face of a business and there are much more talented people who know far more than me, especially in the design sense. That's why when I accepted I needed a better logo I reached out to my Design Sensei, Kaitlin Murray. I witnessed her skills first hand because we used to work back to back. When my mind would wander in the trough of the afternoon, I would spin around, be amazed by whatever layouts/graphics/illustrations she was working on, and then return to my work, chastened by her afternoon work ethic.

Every once in a while I would need a designer and in my hubris I would fake that I could do it myself...and then I'd ask Kaitlin for her professional opinion, which she always gave and taught me something new in the process. This is why I christened her my Design Sensei.

Months after creating my logo-in-an-hour abomination, I of course reached out to my Sensei. Even though it was the busiest time of the year for her and her team, even though my ask was completely unrelated to her work, and even though I probably seriously lowballed her compensation, she led me through a logo design process and taught me logo insights:

• Don't do bobbleheads, the circle on top of a semicircle to represent people. It's tired.
• Arrows, graphs, and momentum can be captured in a million different ways: what makes my brand unique?
• A design might be hard to articulate why it works for you, but it will speak to you when it happens.

Yeah, she's an awesome Design Sensei.

I was new to negotiating a logo design process, so I made her life an unintentional hell. I gave the snarkiest feedback, I contradicted myself, I put her work into the strangest contexts...I even sent a picture of a bowling scorecard because that's what it reminded me of. Really, Dan?! Really. What a blowhard.

Through multiple design rounds, she was patient and called me out on my assumptions in the nicest way. Stakeholder management skills. It's weird to realize that you were being managed.

Eventually, though, the demands of the busiest season at work and my outlandish expectations led to us putting this project on hold. It wasn't working out for either of us. I put my worries about a better logo on ice and focused on the hundreds of other small business projects.

Now's the part of the story where COVID-19 enters, stage left. Kaitlin, along with far too many people, saw her job eliminated and suddenly all those major design projects were no longer her responsibility. You'll have to ask her how she managed to stay upbeat, but I know she's a survivor and not willing to let the world decide her fate for her. I figured that she would find another employer that recognized that she's a rockstar and become someone else's Sensei.

So color me surprised that out of the blue, an email with manna from heaven:

"Hello Sir,

I wanted to come back to this and see where I could take it and I am hoping by putting it within the environment it would live might help. I think this one is the strongest yet!!

Let me know what ya think, 2 pages on this guy.

Kaitlin

I'm no design expert, but this logo is incredible. It captured all my feedback, my hopes, my dreams, and put it into a stylish and memorable format. It instantly spoke to me: this is it. It happened, just like she said it would.

Not only did it work, but she produced a whole brand book for me. Patterns. Social headers. Shareable quotes with a unified brand. All unasked, just provided. I mean, does anyone deserve a Sensei like that?

And it wasn't a flyby: she asked for my feedback on the new work and made a few more tweaks, shared the original files so I could edit them as I needed, and even figured out how to convert from Adobe Illustrator files to my open-source GIMP image editing program. Design Sensei, Tech Whiz, Project Manager. Incredible friend.

I'm proud to announce the new Learn to Scale brand, courtesy Kaitlin Murray. Thank you, Design Sensei.