Creating my illustrator brand logo.

Everything will now begin with HS.

Dear Reader,

this week I’ve been learning about metadata and how to attach URLs and copyright statements and keywords to the images and all sorts of things that will hopefully make my work more traceable online. I thought it could also be good to have a logo, just my initials perhaps, that I can add to images as a watermark. This is all partly to protect my work from being copied online (yes, I know, it won’t really protect it or stop it from being used to train gen AI but what more can you do?) and also so that if my images get dowloaded or reposted away from my sources then there is a way still to trace it back to me. Exciting or what?

Anyway, I thought I’d make a logo. And it would be really quick and done in half an hour and I could post it here and show you how wonderful it was. And I could use my new phone-holding kit to make a time-lapse video of my designing it. Here it is. Can you spot the flaw in my plan?

Yes, you’re right, it took far longer than I thought and it still isn’t finished.

I drew out my initials until I was happy with them, refined it and drew it out with ye olde tracing methods (no fancy drawing pad needed). But I wasn’t happy with it because it seemed to sharp, too brush-like, suggesting too much that I worked with ink and calligraphy. I liked the shape but wanted something softer, more woolly, but without suggesting that I’m a tailor or knitwear designer.

Out came the yarns to make a decorated version on punched paper. But that was too slow to make, and too fussy around the edges.

What about making the whole set out of yarn? Out came the fabric and embroidery hoop and needles. And it was better, but the timer was up and I needed to down tools. The working day was over and now it was time to bring in washing, feed guinea-pigs, cook dinner and attend to teenagers. I will hopefully finish it this week as I like the result, although I suspect I will need a flatter, graphic vector-like version as well as the fluffy, woolly version.

HS. Stands for Hannah Sanguinetti and also Hand Stitched, Human-made Slowly, or even Hearty Soup. A whole new world of themed newsletter titles is opening up for me! I can tell you already that next week’s exciting episode will be:

Harvesting Sunshine.

Any guesses what it will be about?

Thanks again Michael Munnik for letting me use your lovely music in the background of my videos!

Hannah xx

P.S.

Did you know that I had my first solo exhibition in Trieste at the end of 2024? You didn’t? And you’d love to know more? I have a video tour of my exhibition free to view up on Youtube, you can view it here.

Many thanks to Michael Munnik for allowing me to use his beautiful music in the background of my tour video and also alongside my time-lapse video here, go and listen to his songs on Bandcamp here.