Speak Life 101: The Original - Speak Life Shirt

The idea behind the Speak Life brand logo and T-shirt started off with Microsoft Word Art. I honestly thought that I could design the logo on my own with no prior training in graphic arts. I had never even heard about Adobe Acrobat at that time. I worked for hours on Word and I showed my end product to my brother’s girlfriend who was working on her masters in Art History. In the nicest way possible, she told me that I was being ridiculous for using Word Art for my brand. Don't judge me, I was young naive, and cost conscious (not cheap) :-).  Speak Life needed to be official, and it needed to represent me. She suggested that instead of using Word Art, that I use my own lips and hire someone to make the logo look good. And that’s exactly what I did. I bought a bunch of red lipstick (her idea) and a pack of 100 index cards, and went to work. I applied the lipstick to my lips, and kissed the line-less side of the index cards. I must have kissed the sheets of paper over 50 times. And finally I picked out my top 5 looks. I researched some of the t-shirt printers in the bay area and landed on one outfit in San Francisco that had an in-house graphic artist. I drove into "The City" from the south bay and shared her my ideas/vision. Two days later she sent back the logo. It was love at first sight! It was clean, clear, beautiful, and representative of me and my brand, and of course, my lips.

So whenever you see the Speak Life logo, know that those are my lips "Speaking Life."

Speak Life 101 Jewel: Surround yourself with good people who will be honest with you and be open to listening to constructive criticism. Without my brother’s girlfriend, we might still be using Word Art. Thanks Jax!