A local yoga studio was reinventing themselves and adding features focusing on bellydance instruction. They needed a new identity that reflected their shift in focus and could speak to both demographics equally well. It needed to incorporate the movements that were the center of their practice as well as not alienate anyone by being too indian, or arabic in nature, while suggesting both.

My starting place was with arabic calligraphy, and making a logomark by blending the the symbols, arabic "raqs" and the hindu "om." This was only a starting point however, as arabic calligraphy would not speak to the yoga market.

I went to the other end of the spectrum by using brush strokes to incorporate the symbols abstractly into a dancing figure concept. I found it to look more like something you would see associated with maternity than with dancing, so I returned to the caligraphic strokes from before.

This time, instead of focusing on the symbols, I researched body movements and positions associated with yoga and bellydance, and using those as my inspiration developed many, many abstract caligraphic ideas, from too simple to much too complex...

Finally settling on this treatment, incorporating transparency in the caligraphy strokes to add dimensionality and movement to the mark, and incorporating a rich Indian inspired color scheme.