The contest holder was a sculptor who was trying to start a side business selling her handmade rustic furniture.

She sent over several pictures of various furniture she had made – coffee tables, nightstands, chairs – and they all had the same thing in common: They used rounded cross sections of trees extensively. That concept got the ideas percolating, and after a few rounds I came up with a mark that took the idea of a tree stump and turned it into an abstract representation of a tree’s rings.

She absolutely loved the concept from the start, and I won hands down.