Designing original motifs

1Your own design, not a copy

A small business printing tote bags in Musanze, a school designing a badge for its debate club, or a cooperative choosing a label for its honey all need a motif that belongs to them. Copying a famous logo or another artist's design is unfair to the person who made it, and in business it can be against the law. The good news is that original motifs are not hard to make: every one of them begins with careful looking at something real, then passes through a few simple design steps.

2From observation to motif

1. Observe. Draw a real object from life: a leaf, a seed pod, a coffee branch, a guinea-fowl feather, a drum, the horns of a cow. Make two or three drawings from different angles.
2. Simplify. Keep the silhouette, the outline that makes the object recognisable, and leave out small details such as tiny veins, spots and texture.
3. Stylise. Make the shape more regular: straighten or smooth the curves, make matching parts equal, make lines the same thickness, and repeat parts evenly (the same number of veins on each side, for example).
4. Geometrise or abstract (optional). Replace curves with straight lines and basic shapes, or push the design so far that it becomes pure shape.
5. Fit the format. Fit the motif into the shape of your stamp: a square, a circle or a triangle. Let the motif touch or nearly touch the edges so it fills the space.

3Ways to build symmetry

• Fold and trace (mirror symmetry): fold a paper in half, draw half the motif against the fold, then trace the other half through the paper against a window. The two halves match exactly.
• Quarter turns (rotational symmetry): draw one corner of the motif in a square divided into four; trace it, then turn the tracing a quarter turn at a time to fill the other three quarters.
• Radial symmetry: fold a paper circle into eight, draw on one segment, and repeat it round the centre like the spokes of a wheel, or like the pattern on the lid of an agaseke basket seen from above.

4Check that it will print

• Dark and light: colour the motif in solid black with a marker. Roughly equal amounts of black and white usually give the strongest print.
• Thickness: no printing line thinner than about 3 mm; thinner lines break off when carved.
• Gaps: no white gap narrower than about 2 mm; narrow gaps fill with ink.
• Reversal: a stamp prints a mirror image. Any letters or numbers, and any motif that must face a certain way, have to be drawn backwards on the stamp. Symmetrical motifs print the same either way.
• Originality: could anyone mistake it for someone else's logo? If so, change it.

Worked example: a motif from a coffee branch

Umutoni's stamp will be a 5 cm square, and she wants a motif for a coffee cooperative's paper bags.

1. Observe: she draws a real coffee branch: shiny oval leaves with wavy edges and clusters of round cherries.
2. Simplify: she keeps two leaves and three cherries and drops the wavy edges and the leaf veins.
3. Stylise: the leaves become two equal almond shapes, mirrored left and right; the cherries become three equal circles in a triangle between them. One straight line down the middle of each leaf is the only vein.
4. Check the measurements: in a 5 cm square, each circle is 1.2 cm across and the gaps between them are 3 mm, above the 2 mm minimum. The vein lines are cut as white lines 3 mm wide.
5. Letters: she adds her initial, U. Because U is symmetrical from side to side, it prints the right way round even without reversing. If her initial were K, she would have to carve it backwards.

5Make it: three motifs, one choice

1. Choose one natural source and draw it from life at least twice.
2. Take it through the four stages (observe, simplify, stylise, geometric) to produce three different motifs, each in a 5 cm square.
3. Colour each in solid black marker and check the thickness, gaps and reversal rules.
4. Trace your best motif four times in a row on a strip of paper to see how it looks when repeated. Then trace it four times in a square, turning it a quarter turn each time.
5. Choose your final motif and write two sentences explaining why it is the strongest.

Practice