Dr. Sam Lam Art

Ikaika Hawaiian Vital Juices Logo designed by Dr Sam Lam

I like how I have created so many logos for businesses of my tenants that never either took off or did not survive in my building.  Call it my generous spirit or my desire to unleash some artistic frustration.  Whatever it is, I have designed too many logos.  I even came up with the name for this company.  I was looking to create a very organic looking piece that represented Hawaii.  The logo is a simplified fish nibbling downward on some algae or something.  It also could be likened to a leaf with a hole bitten in it.  Both motifs are about nature.  The name Ikaika means strength, and I chose it both for its funny sound and the fun of saying it, “Eeeka-Eeka”.  In addition, the meaning of strength was intended to describe something that you would get when you imbibed these all-natural juices, at least that was my intention.  I chose the color of purple for some reason, again no concrete reason but it just seems to evoke what I was trying to create here.

Permaderma Logo designed by Dr Sam Lam

I came up with the name and logo for this short-lived permanent makeup service in my building.  The name came from a contraction of the concept of permanent dermal enhancement, or tattooing.  I decided that the shortened name, Permaderma, was both playful and catchy.  When I created the logo, I used an eyebrow as my starting inspiration (since the makeup artist would be working on one’s eyebrows as one of her principal tasks) and by interlocking the two eyebrows, a ying yang concept is created.  In addition, if you look carefully, you will see the P and the D of the perma and derma in small letters formed by the encircling elements.  I love tone on tone color pairings.  In fact, I have used a lot of tone on tone pairings in the paintings that I have created.  These two shades of magenta in this logo are so similar that they look almost the same but still are very distinct in their color.  If you notice, the pinker and thicker stroke of the portion derma matches the accompanying d-like swoosh of the eyebrow.

Invena Laser Vein Center Logo by Dr. Sam Lam

I created this logo design for the laser vein center upstairs in my building.  I like the name invena because it had several layers of meanings.  In vena in Italian means literally inside the vein, which is rather appropriate but also colloquially means “a bright future”, and I liked the positive connotation.  Finally, when put together obviously invena looks like “invention” or something imaginative, which every artist loves!   The macron placed over the e helps indicate that you pronounce the e as a long e but also it is a cool artistic, stylistic element.  If you look carefully at the logo, the three color arcs signify the “L” for Laser, the “V” for vein, and the “C” for center.  I liked stacking them to make them into a more architecturally interesting piece, almost an asterisk if you will.  I also restrained the color palate to just two shades of blue, which also were chosen for the blue that would appear in a vein.  This is actually one of my favorite logos.

Anti-Aging and Vitality Logo designed by Dr Samuel Lam

I love this logo!  I originally created it in rose and red colors for a previous branch of skin therapy I had dedicated to mesotherapy called MesoYouth.  The shape of the M and the Y can be found in the flowered design. However, when AVC came into my building, I could not stand their original logo, which was the detestable jumping jack man (man with raised arms), as I like to call it that plagues most logo designs out there.  Instead, I replaced the colors to a more gender neutral color that I think works for them since they appeal equally to male and female baby boomers.  I had also fun using the ampersand in contrasting color and size.  I am so glad and proud that AVC decided to go with this logo.  Every time I go upstairs and look at it displayed on the glass, it gives me a deep sense of aesthetic pleasure.