IONA is the Latinised word for Jonah, the Biblical prophet. The client makes jewelry, which means the mark has to be clean and simple, to work as a metal stamp.
Taking the story of Jonah as inspiration, I created a simple fish design, encompassed within a circle. The downward direction of the fish echoes Jonah's leap of faith into the ocean amid the storm he encounters on his way to Tarshish, while the addition of a cutaway shadow allows the fish to also function as an eye, to give a mythical feel and to represent the omnipresence of God.
Mysterious and slightly foreboding, I like the tension between first sight and first feeling and what follows, when it becomes apparent what the mark is: a fish — one of the most harmless of all creatures
The typography is customised to add a curve to the bar of the A, to reinforce reference to the ocean — the backdrop and site of the drama of the Book of Jonah.