Logo

because people ask... the logo used on this site is one I came up with when I was around 11 or 12, as a kid interested in symbols and often drawing/doodling. I adopted it as a sort of personal logo back then for a few years, and then resurrected and redrew it in 2022, for uses such as this site's header logo, or social-media avatars / profile pictures.

I think of it as a simple — yet apparently, rare, see below — combination of a triangle with a visual/structural inversion of a triangle. I see three arms in a 'Y' as triangle turned inside out, also what you get if you rotate each side of a triangle 90 degrees, on center.

In that way it's like the classic yin-yang symbol shown below, except combining a form with an inversion of its form, rather than the same form mirrored and interlocked.

Originally I was just doodling and looking for interesting shapes, not trying to convey a particular meaning. However, I retroactively interpret this symbol as combining the [structurally] 'strong' or stable, enclosing shape of a triangle, with the 'Y' suggesting expansion, direction outwards, and growth. Perhaps also suggesting introversion and extroversion.

I probably was looking at various books of symbols, and also the symbols appearing on Led Zeppelin's untitled 4th LP, from 1971, later referred to as "Led Zeppelin IV". Particularly the 2nd symbol below, which is thought to represent and have been chosen by drummer John Bonham Jones, from classic The Book of Signs by Rudolf Koch, 1930.

this zoomed-in version I made for use at especially small sizes, e.g. as the 'favicon' image for this site, that appears on web browser pages or tabs when you're looking at the site.

It struck me as strange, when I came up this symbol and ever since, that a visual form so simple, made by combining two very common shapes, does not seem to show up elsewhere.

Below is a Google Image Search looking for visually similar images. The only near instance I've ever found is the logo, 2nd below, of DOLD (E. Dold & Söhne GmbH & Co. KG), founded ca.1930, a fairly obscure German maker of industrial switches and relays.