Holding Space
LOGO DESIGN
What the Final Mark Is Doing
The mark combines a fluid wave with concentric ripple circles, contained within a triangle, with the wordmark in a flowing script graduated across a warm-to-cool full-spectrum palette.
The triangle is deliberate. In somatic work, the practitioner provides the container. The wave and the ripples are what happen safely inside it. The form is literally doing the conceptual work: this is what it looks like when sensation moves through a body that finally feels held. Not suppressed. Not shut down. Moving.
The concentric circles reference vibration, which is directly tied to how Somatic Experiencing works. Tami uses toning exercises, including a practice called “voo-ing,” with her clients and even her dog. The rings spreading outward from the center are a visual record of that. Physics, not woo.
The gradient palette moves from warm coral and orange through magenta, violet, and into cool teal and blue. It references the prism and rainbow imagery Tami named directly in her brand interview. Separate colors coming together into one continuous spectrum. That is the entire Holding Space community story told in color.
The script wordmark is warm and human. “Holding” larger and above. “Space” smaller and nested below. The visual hierarchy reinforces the meaning: the holding comes first. The space is what it creates.
Brief
Who Tami Is
Tami Espe is a Somatic Experiencing practitioner. Her practice is called Holding Space. She works with people whose nervous systems have been working overtime for years, often for reasons the world told them weren’t valid. Her clients include neurodivergent individuals, people in recovery, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and helpers who pour out constantly and rarely get poured into. What connects them isn’t a demographic. It’s a shared internal experience: the felt sense of never quite being safe enough to exhale.
Tami’s version of “holding space” carries real weight because she has lived the hard version of this story herself. Her path through homelessness, sobriety, and learning Somatic Experiencing inside transitional housing is what makes her work trustworthy rather than trendy. Her superpower isn’t technique. It’s safety.
The Core Design Challenge
The brief asked us to build a visual identity for a practice that creates genuine safety for people whose nervous systems have been on high alert. The mark needed to feel warm without being soft, structured without being clinical, and full of life without leaning into wellness clichés. It also needed to hold the complexity of a community that is plural and diverse while communicating belonging and convergence.
Where the Logo Came From
Everything in this mark traces back to Tami’s own words and imagery. In her brand interview she said: “What I’m seeing is an umbrella with rainbow colors, and those colors are pulling different groups under it. They’d be separate colors and then they’re coming together. Like a prism. I love prisms.”
She also described herself as “water all over the place” and connected to being a Pisces. She sent a photograph of a vinca flower she found growing through cold cement after getting sober. These weren’t mood board references. They were lived images from her actual story.
The visual themes we developed the work from: prisms and light, water and waves, convergence and belonging, vibration as a physical sensation (not “good vibes”), color as community.
Client Testimonial
“Barbara is very intuitive with her creativity. I was very surprised at how the questions she asked bubbled up the answers I gave her and in turn the logo that was created from all of the above.“
Tami Espe
