A New Symbol For Love

Challenge

The heart is old news! Create a new symbol for love.

Methodology

This was an incredibly difficult challenge for me. I’m a word person, so every time I need to come up with some kind of presentation or project for something, I fall back on words, stories, and sheer goofiness. But this, creating an original image for such a profound subject, was daunting. There’s nothing to hide behind, there’s no room to squirm, there’s no place for explanations.

Where do you even start with something like this? I didn’t know, so I did what I do when I don’t know what I’m doing: I don’t do it. I let it fester and bore a hole in my mind until I wake up screaming in the darkest hours of the night about not coming up with a new image for love. Wait, wait, wait. That’s not how it happened.

I let the concept incubate for a number of days. Didn’t even think about it. Then, when I was finally ready to face my weakness, I meditated on it. Seriously. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and thought about the challenge.

My first thoughts were of images. I tried to knock this puppy out of the park with one swing. It didn’t take too long to figure out that wasn’t going to happen.

Then I stepped back and asked myself: what is love? And for some reason, the Little Prince popped into my mind. Specifically, the scenes with the dog or wolf (it’s been a while). Even if I can’t remember what animal it was, I remember the essence of those scenes: things come together and get closer and closer until they finally merge. Then they move together.

I transfered this thinking to my life, to my girlfriend. We had two separate lives until we met. Then we began seeing more and more of each other until we couldn’t stand being separated anymore. From that point on, we’ve been inextricably linked at the hip. Our lives became one.

Final Product

This is exactly what the image represents. We have two separate lines, red and blue, that are attracted to each other. After that initial attraction, they weave back and forth, oscillating between one another, getting closer and closer until finally coming together to form one line. At that point, when the red and blue lines converge, the line goes purple. They are no longer two lines, two colors, two stories. They are one line, one color, one life, moving in concert, in harmony, and in love to wherever life takes them.

What do you think? Does the image do love justice? How does it rate against the heart?