OM - Evolution of a Logo

Owen Martucci has been my artist name for a long time- over 20 years. In fact, I don’t think I have ever used Kevin Wengler as an artist name or signature entirely. Owen is my middle name and Martucci is most likely the original spelling of my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. She was a very talented artist and cook, so I attribute my love for art and creativity to her.

In high school, I started using my nick name ‘Chewy’ as my signature on paintings. It was silly looking. I tried to make it look like graffiti and it didn’t look good but I thought it was original so I did that a few times. It was in the Army, circa 1998, that I first signed a painting with the letter O.

Since I traveled so much and worked in sketchbooks, signing my art didn’t make much sense most of the time. I didn’t paint on canvas that much and I rarely finished anything that I had started it seems like. Other paintings I gave away without signing and some even got sacrificed at a communal burn at Burning Man in 2002. It wasn’t until I reached a point in 2006, in Huaraz Peru, where I wanted to create simple ink mandala drawings and have a consistent reproducible logo-signature-design that I could add the year to also. From that point on, my signature was in limbo because if I didn’t always have a nice easy to use block printing setup with the correct year, then I would resign myself to painting my signature rapidly without much care for precision or consistency.

Fast forward to 2019 and I was starting a new mental health burn out that I’m still recovering from. I promptly stopped my project management job in Software As A Service (SaaS) and I jumped into my art. I had a plan and I wasn’t going to make any more excuses. I needed to take the time to figure out a graphics program and learn enough so I could work up a prototype. I chose the open source GIMP program. But before that I had actually started to design directly on a printing block that didn’t turn out very well. But that initial design inspired what I finished in GIMP. Then I sent the design to a friend in Peru who is an educated and experienced graphic designer, and I had him perfect the lines so that I could feel sure I had a product I could use for different purposes.

I then took the design and came up with a completed logo and background that I use on my website, social media and business cards. Additionally, with the basic template I can easily change the year in NASA font which I can then print out and use as my latest signature template on paintings. I’m so happy I took the time to do this work. I feel so confident in my ability to market my art with a consistent design which I can transfer to so many things, digital and physical.