06/13/2015
Ten Thousand Joys logo was set in a font called, "Jimbo." It is a modern day (1995) update on a very old classic. Designed by Jim Parkinson, of Oakland, California, whose specialty is type design for retail display and magazine logos. It is an update on the 18th century font called Bodoni, after the Italian designer, Giambatista Bodoni. I chose it for the readability of the thick strokes and a certain playfulness imparted by Parkinson, especially the foot of the upper-case "J" and the lower-case "y". The sun is symbolic of sending out light in all directions and the sun's brightness and energy. The words, Books, Music, and Gifts are set in a sans serif called Myriad Pro. It is as close as one can get commercially to Adobe's proprietary in-house font used for all their ads and documentation. It's extremely legible, readable and has a light-heartedness to it that most sans-serif fonts do not. My feeling was that the informalness of the sans-serif text font was more than complimentary to the more formal serif logo-type. The leaf-shaped bullet points, called "fleurons" or "dingbats" were just for fun! Oh, and that I like and have grown and used many herbs and herbal medicines and extracts over the years. The backing board is an octagon, significant to the Chinese "bagua" in Feng Shui.
