World Octopus Day

Bet you didn’t know that…

Today is World Octopus Day, a good reason for a blog entry. Did you know that an octopus has three hearts and can lay up to 100,000 eggs in one go? In English, the plural is octopuses, the greek plural is octopedes. Octopi, whilst commonly used is actually incorrect. These and lots more interesting facts can be found in this lovely information graphic produced by the US National Aquarium www.aqua.org.

You may be wondering what all this stuff about octopuses and design is about? What is the relevance, and how did the name Soft Octopus come about? Well, it’s a short story and there is no relevance at all really.

When I set up Soft Octopus Design Studio I needed a name. I wanted something that was informal, whimsical and suggested the multi-faceted aspect of what I do; design, branding, copy writing, image editing, even film, music and social media. I pondered for a few weeks and nothing came, I realised I was over thinking it and nothing ever seems right at first, so I gave up looking and got on with celebrating Christmas instead.

One of the gifts I bought that Christmas was a book called Craftivity. It was all about how to make toys from odd bits of material. Before I wrapped it, I glanced through it and found the pattern for making a soft octopus. It seemed as good as anything else I’d considered and now it seems perfect. Most things take a while to grow into, whether it be a new logo, name, colour change or even layout of a room. Like octopuses, we are creatures of habit and are prone to resisting change. Unlike an octopus, we can’t crawl through a hole the size of a ten pence piece though.

  • Blog
  • October 9, 2013

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