A Mark of Trust

One of my closest friends, Jordan Flynn, owns and operates Mod + Jo, a wildly successful jewelry and accessory brand. She started the company nearly a decade ago while living abroad, handcrafting each piece to order. When she returned to the U.S., she grew her online business and eventually opened her first brick-and-mortar location in Dallas. I remember our conversations during that time—her trepidation, sheer excitement, and, above all, her confidence in the business she had bootstrapped entirely on her own. I was there for the soft opening of her store, and I still remember feeling deeply inspired and proud.

A year ago, Jordan approached me with an urgent request to design a logomark. I was both excited and nervous. Excited, because it had been over a year since I’d done creative branding work, and I was itching to get back into it. Nervous, because I didn’t want to let her down. She had previously worked with another designer on this project, but the results didn’t meet her expectations. I felt a deep responsibility to understand her vision and create something elevated, sophisticated, and timeless—just like her jewelry.

The project itself was simple, but the timeline was tight. Jordan needed a secondary logo to complement her existing handwritten wordmark. It had to scale down small enough to be identifiable on her jewelry while remaining cohesive with her branding. Her inspirations were Reformation and Loewe, both of which utilize ambigram logomarks that are scalable and instantly recognizable. The turnaround? Three weeks.

To begin, I immersed myself in Mod + Jo’s world. I spent time exploring her website to reacquaint myself with the brand, this time through the lens of a designer, not just a friend. This shift in perspective helped me focus on understanding her offerings and aesthetic deeply. Next, I pulled inspiration from brands like Reformation and Loewe, studying how they use secondary marks. But amidst the abundance of ideas online, I found it easy to get lost in a sea of sameness. So, I turned to something more personal—my notebook.

I started with a word cloud inspired by Mod + Jo’s brand identity and began sketching with a pencil. The rush of inspiration was exhilarating—I had missed this feeling. After an intensive brainstorming session, I came up with eight concepts I felt strongly about, even though I’d initially committed to delivering three to five. (Under-promise, over-deliver, right?) While I typically avoid sharing rough hand-drawn sketches with clients, the time constraints called for efficiency. I showed Jordan my initial sketches to ensure we were aligned before vectorizing anything.

Jordan’s excitement matched mine as she selected three top concepts for refinement. From there, I created mockups and iterated on her favorite, a design I nicknamed "The Quilt" because of its pattern-like quality. After two rounds of revisions, we landed on the final design. To complete the project, I created a concise, one-page brand style guide that showcased the new logomark.