A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data relating to the object to which it is attached. Originally barcodes systematically represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines.
This is how Wikipedia (a valued source, I know) describes a barcode. When I first decided to use the barcode as a logo, it was mostly just an image that I have identified with for a long time – the connection of symbols that mean something else, something hidden and one must have something to decode and make sense of those symbols. The data, in our lives, represents the multi-faceted nature of the human experience; relationships, work, education, health, hobbies, you name it. The variation of lines carry the timeline of our experience, the blueprints of our own lives.
Thinking further into the metaphor, a barcode, despite the definition, is the perfect representation of transformation. Every barcode is different, much in the way every person’s story is different. In many ways, we will never change, some things will always stay the same, but life is unlike a barcode in almost ever other way. In a physical way, looking at the lines, some thin, and some wide, I am reminded of weight regression, how I have been fat, lost weight, gained it back, lost, and gained, and eventually kept it off. In the logo, my name is highlighted, breaking out of the pattern it was defined as, changing an element that is unsuspected for a barcode: color. Barcodes are read by light reflection (the scanner against the black), and what better way to defy predisposition by altering elements that one did not think they could, but is the very core of how something is read. In essence, it’s identity.
This is exactly what my life has been like the last two years. If you have followed even a few of my posts, you know that much of my life was a living stasis in regards to health, fitness, nutrition, and having my eyes open to the world around me. In some ways, I don’t know how I changed my color, but I took something that I was predestined for, and I broke out of it, changing the pattern of everything after it.
So, a barcode. Okay? You get the metaphor, maybe it seems a bit contrived, but look around you, around the world we live in. A world where McDonalds is considered dinner and a world where vacation is sleeping the entire day away. Our society has been barcoded, and unless the individual lines of individuals make changes, the product, the item, and the end result will continue to be the same; a life taken for granted. Not everyone transforms, and I do not feel like I am any better than anyone else because I made changes in my life. The rewards are self-fulfilling and there is never a need to feel superior to others, but I do feel as if living in same pattern is detrimental to who we are as a people on Earth.
You can make changes if you want to. Change your color, change your shape, change your dimension, whatever it takes. No two barcodes are the same, no two journeys are the same, but some are very similar and we can look around the rest of the world for inspiration and change.
I just wanted to give a little insight into the imagery of the logo on the page. The representation is not merely changing the specifications of a fixed plan, but rather shifting the paradigms of how we live life.
