Crisp New Company Logo - Consultancy with Japanese Flavour

Nemawashi

I've been living and working outside of the UK for almost ten years - three of which were in Japan. As a result, when I started my own company a month or so ago, I wanted to imbue in it some of what I had learned in Japan. This became Nemawashi.

Nemawashi means (taken straight from Wikipedia)

//Nemawashi (根回し) in Japanese means an informal process of quietly laying the foundation for some proposed change or project, by talking to the people concerned, gathering support and feedback, and so forth. It is considered an important element in any major change, before any formal steps are taken, and successful nemawashi enables changes to be carried out with the consent of all sides.

//Nemawashi literally translates as "going around the roots", from 根 (ne, root) and 回す (mawasu, to go around [something]). Its original meaning was literal: digging around the roots of a tree, to prepare it for a transplant.

//Nemawashi is often cited as an example of a Japanese word which is difficult to translate effectively, because it is tied so closely to Japanese culture itself, although it is often translated as 'laying the groundwork.'

I want my company to be a company that helps others to work effectively together, and to help overcome obstacles - either in relationships or in how things appear on a website - to make business contradictions work harmoniously with each other.

Target audience is primarily medium to large companies who fall into one of two key groups:

- those who are seeking to improve online conversion in their websites, and to learn how they can bring such skills in-house.
- those who are seeking to increase efficiency and group cohesion by either requiring organisational change or balancing and refocusing (esp ideal for when new projects are about to commence) .

They are people who understand that change, when done right, is good, and that their main goal is to learn and to use their new knowledge to the betterment of themselves.

Area:
You have a play space of 313px x 127px - but you don't need to use the height to the full - a bit of white space never hurt anyone. (If you feel that by referencing the site link below you can go for something bigger/different - feel free. I bow to your knowledge.)

Text/Image:
Happy to see text based submissions and text/graphic submissions as well

Limitations: While Nemawashi literally means to go around the roots, trees are not a graphic I want included in the final design.

Site:
Site is still *heavily* underdeveloped - but you can see it here as it stands. http://www.nemawashi.co.uk/ - I've bought a wp business theme that I quite like, so you can see that the prime colours are green and white - so it would be good to see things that compliment with it and also things that can contrast but not jar with it.

Japanese?:
Would be interested in seeing if the logo, as well as having a clear text interpretation, could include the kanji as well (根回し), but if you think that doing this clutters things up some - go without - as I'm looking more for a clear image that hits a person rather than something that requires time to look at to understand.