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For this post, I’ll jump into the story *after* the point at which we selected the butterfly. Perhaps I’ll expound on the full story in a more appropriate format in the future.

From the initial brainstorming sessions, paper – and how it related to any exploration I pursued – played a significant role in how we perceived the results. The delightful nature of origami and other forms of paper art quickly overtook any antagonistic approach towards paper we might have considered.

The outlines of the core shape are an abstraction of an actual origami butterfly. (see LINES in Process.png)

These explorations felt cold and sterile. In order for the butterfly to engage and delight, it would need to feel far more organic, so I began to add curves. My hand-drawn curves lacked consistency and cohesiveness, so I introduced a number of large circles of the same diameter as guides to add subtle curves. I left out the inside vertical lines and the notches on the wings, which felt best left straight. (See CURVES in Process.png and the more complete Circles.png)

Gabe Campodonico (Head of Design) challenged me to introduce an element of dimension. He quickly mocked up the notches almost exactly as they appear today and I had a hard time improving upon them. Even looking at the previous design without them felt strange, as it had all of a sudden become absurdly flat by comparison. (See NOTCHES in Process.png)

The last step saw individual color palettes for each wing bring further dynamics to the shapes. (see COLORS in Process.png)