It was very interesting digging into the history of Ethiopia. When I first drew the name in the “lottery”, I was a bit apprehensive - all I knew of Ethiopia was what I’d seen on TV in the 70s and 80s:  famine and starvation.  I had no idea I’d find out so many interesting things about this beautiful country!

Being a musician, I immediately started checking out what kind of music and instrumentation was native to the country.  I found a stringed, lute-like instrument called a “begena” that looked interesting.  I tried to incorporate this into a mark, but it just seemed too square to go with the more loose, flowing mark I had envisioned for the logo.

I also messed around with a few other logos, such as one attempt at turning the shape of the country into an “E”, and using letters from the Amharic alphabet which resembled the English spelling of “Ethiopia”. 

The earliest remains of humans/hominids have been found in Ethiopia.  This led me to explore a mark based upon the phrase “The Cradle Of Mankind”.  I attempted to present the outline of the country as a bassinet, with a rough sketch of the yellow star emblem from the Ethiopian flag coming out of it. I wasn’t happy at all with this. 

After the ill-fated “Clip-Art Disaster of ‘13”, which is what I referred to the “Cradle” mark as, I decided to scrap everything and start over – to simplify everything.  I took the emblem of the star with equidistant lines from the Ethiopian flag and quickly sketched it out, giving it a more free, somewhat “playful” feel.  I then hand-wrote the word “Ethiopia”, using the likeness of human eyes, found in much of the artwork from the country, as the “O” and “A”.  While this logo did, in fact prove to be much more fluid and simplified, it may have been too much so, and it just ended up a bit too boring. 

I had wanted to incorporate something to do with religion, as Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian nations in the world, as well as being home to several other religions.  I ended up going back to my research, and focusing on something that had initially caught my eye – St. George’s Church in Lalibela.  This church, one of eleven monolithic rock-hewn churches in the town of Lalibela, is shaped like a cross (as viewed from above).  I did a quick, loose sketch of the top of the church in Photoshop, then vectorized it in Illustrator.  

I then paired the mark with a font I really liked (actually, I used a couple of different 

fonts, as I didn’t care for the “E” on the main font.  I once again made use of the “eye” 

in the text.