Baby Steps… Big Decisions

It is amazing how many little decisions you make on a daily basis and don’t even think about the effects they can have.  Decisions like what clothes am I going to wear, should I wear my hair up or down (ok, probably not a real tough decision, since 90% of the time my hair is up in a ponytail-but, hey, it is a decision), deciding whether to workout on the treadmill or recumbent bike, or maybe both?  You get where I’m going with this.  Every step you take during the day you need to make a decision.  Most come and go without a blink of an eye and then there are others that can make or break you.
This is how I feel these past few weeks have been.  Mike and I are deciding our brand logo and our label.  We have a wonderful designer who is doing a great job, but the task is extremely overwhelming.
The process began with a conference call between our designer, Mike and myself.  For some reason, I assumed this would not take long.  I don’t know why, I just thought it would be fast. An hour and a half later, we were still discussing what we were thinking we wanted our label to be like.  My number one conern/demand was that Draco had to be on the label.  He is our inspiration and I wouldn’t even want to embark on this adventure without him coming with us.  When we finally ended our consultation, we forwarded our designer the picture of Draco and the picture of the Dracaena tree we liked.  Then it was time to wait.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it didn’t take long.  two days later, we received an email with four potential front and back labels. Tehre were things we really liked and things that we were like “no way,no how.” But it was difficult, some looked so similar, but under closer review, the font was different or the tree was a little lighter shade.
The minute changes from one picture to another can be mind boggling and can have a major impact on whether or not someone likes our label. We made notes about our feelings of each one of the labels and brand logos and emailed them back to the designer.  A few days later, he had taken our comments and created new labels and logos.  Now we had color changes, we had trees with and without roots. The roots travel into the name or they faded out before contacting the name.  Paso Robles, California-should it be part of the logo or not?  Should the “D” in Dracaena have a little hook or not?  Although these decisions seem to be trivial, it is stressful.  But at the same time it is exciting.  Last night we had another conference call to discuss the latest changes and again it was over an hour long. Emails were being sent while we discussed what we liked and didn’t like.  Thank goodness for technology!  Ideas were thrown out and an email came showing what it would look like.  At the end of the phone call, I felt that we made a giant step towards a final product. This afternoon, I opened my email, and there it was..two emails from our designer.  One with six designs of our brand logo and another with four label designs.  It was so thrilled as I opened the email.  I opened the logo one first.   I scrolled down and loved one of the them right away.  I was giddy! I then opened the one with the labels, and again, found one I really liked.  I called Mike and told him the emails were there and that I absolutely loved one of them, but didn’t tell him which one.  When we both got home tonight, Mike pulled out the printed versions and he declared he too also really liked one logo and one label.  I waited on baited breath as he pointed out which ones he like…. AND….. NOPE, not the same ones!  Talk about a deflation in emotion- UGH!  So back to the drawing board we go trying to find a compromise that we both will love and the public will look at and think to themselves, “cool label and logo.”  Yep, lots and lots of baby steps leading to very big decisions!