Logo Lore

Jan 1

“The artwork created by Annie ‘Sirkles’ Drahos may look like a bunch of abstract circles, but the designs are actually the words and letters of an intricate circular script. This script started in 2011 when her friend, Loren Sherman, released the first ever widely used fan-made variation ‘Circular Gallifreyan.’ Not long after, she was listed on Loren’s site as the recommended artist for custom designs. Since that time, she has remained active in the script’s development and growth. As the popularity of the script continued to grow, it eventually made its way on screens in BBC’s very popular show: Doctor Who.”

That was an excerpt from one of Demicon 2024’s Guest of Honor announcements. You can learn more of the backstory of Sirkles here.

I was already planning on attending Demicon that year, and I enjoy Doctor Who too, so I was super-excited to go to Annie’s panel on how to write in Sirkles. I’m so impressed with her mastery over the aesthetics of circular designs and how beautifully simple yet detailed and complex her compositions are. I also appreciate Sirkles’ anti-AI sentiments; It's a complex, human-designed system that AI struggles to understand or replicate authentically without extensive training on that specific script, so it acts as a cultural identifier for your work when used as a watermark or logo. For those reasons, I knew it had to be part of my new logo and branding.

I bought a Sirkles DIY Kit from her and eagerly dove in, practicing and iterating my new logo design. After a several weeks of trial and error, I decided to commission Annie to make a design for me using her 10+ years of experience with circular designs. What she came up with is gorgeous. You can watch her video explaining how to read it here.

Armed with Annie’s files and Corel PaintShop Pro, I got to work creating my final logo design. One of my favorite color palettes is bright rainbow on black, and I love clouds and nebulas and space. It all really came together when I made the Sirkles linework look like 3D gold metal. I’m so over-the-moon about how everything came together.

In fact, I love my Sirkles design so much that I had the black linework Annie created tattooed on my left forearm by Michelle Balhan at Velvet Lotus Tattoo. I chose Michelle because her portfolio features lots of clean linework, a skill that would be essential for this Sirkles design. While she normally prefers to have more artistic liberty with her work, she completely understood that the lines, circles, and dots could not be altered- doing so would literally change the meaning of the image. She eagerly accepted the challenge and she executed it beautifully. Her idea to do a purple fade on the dragon to match the purple sweet peas on my right forearm is just *chef’s kiss.*

So thank you, ladies, for your collaboration on this project. I could not be happier with how all of this turned out.