My girlfriend's father is a blacksmith. He had no touchmark to stamp his finished creations (mostly knives and tools) in order to "sign" them, so I took it upon myself to design him a logo. We had a touch mark stamp made for him and we recently received it. I am very happy with the results
His favorite poem is "The Village Blacksmith" by Longfellow which begins with the stanza:
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
He also has a Chestnut tree outside of his smithy in North Carolina, so I took inspiration from that and set to work, making a number of small quick sketches using acorns, chestnut leaves, and his initials "T.C."
I then refined and combined the strongest ideas and some typography into a simple, icon-like vector logo using adobe illustrator. I couldn't get too complex because this needed to be able to fit on the blade of a knife and be stamped into metal after-all!
We then sent off this file to a blacksmith supply company to do their magic and a few weeks later, a touch mark stamp arrived in the mail. Dad is all ready to sign his work!
I'm very happy with the end result and so is my girlfriend's dad. It's always a good thing when you can impress the parent of the one you love 😉