The M'Om Design Story

The intent of the design is to marry the word “Mom” with the sacred “Om” symbol. The shared essence of both — expressing quiet strength and loving resilience through synonymous sounds — lends itself naturally to bringing the two together. A Mindful-MashUp, if you will.

Beginning with a photo of a window grate covering found in traditional Nepalese architecture, taken by TentTom in 1972 in Patan, Nepal, the design morphs into a geometric abstraction in the form of a repeat pattern, applied as an overlay onto the Om symbol. It is then adorned with lotus flowers inspired by ink sketches made by TentTom over 50 years ago — and finally interpreted through a lens of modern design aesthetics. Each step of the process was a careful, iterative exploration using Photoshop, Procreate, and pen and paper.

Step 1: Making the Pattern

The photo above is the inspiration for the M’Om Design (and the entire TentTom Shop site) — with the first step being to create an abstraction from a singular photo (my proof of concept). I cropped and manipulated the original photograph, using Procreate to digitally hand-drawing missing elements of the wood carvings in the photo made hundreds of years ago — then went through an iterative process of to refine and craft a base form that could be used almost like a paintbrush to create various abstract patterns.

Various pattern explorations

Step 2: The Om Symbol

Once the pattern was created, I applied it as a fill on the Om symbol, positioning the pattern in a way that complements and cradles the form. After establishing the positioning of the pattern within the form, I wanted to add a sense of depth and texture to make the symbol feel alive. Using Procreate, I added shadows and a polished sheen with a slight matte finish around the outer edges, giving the symbol a dimensional quality that feels simultaneously ancient and modern.

The Om symbol was drawn in Procreate, with the form and shadows/depth being applied, then the pattern was positioned within the final form and the shadow layer was applied on top.

Step 3: Drawing the Flowers

The lotus flower has been used in traditional Eastern design for centuries — long before HBO knew about it. 😁 In the hundreds of sketches my father made for rugs, tents, and textiles, the lotus appears again and again.

I used his 50-year-old drawings as my base inspiration, then sourced modern references through stock image sites and various LLMs to generate different styles. Below is a sample of all the source materials I referenced. The AI-generated ones are rather obvious. While many are striking and beautiful, there’s a sterility to most AI-generated images. It’s amazing how quickly the human eye has adapted to discerning which images are hand-crafted versus machine-generated. (Dr. Fi Fi Ling would be proud.)

I created a composite from various sources, honing in on one composition and color palette that I liked — though the tone of the composite images felt much too playful for the aesthetic I was trying to achieve. Once I had a rough composition, I went through a lengthy process of experimenting with different flowers, color palettes, and styles until I arrived at something that felt right.

A sampling of references from various stock image sites and LLM image generators. While AI can spin up some beautiful images, they mostly lack a sense of authenticity. Each LLM has somewhat of a recognizable style, making images from LLMs such as Midjourney or Adobe's Firefly immediately discernible as AI generated images from those specific LLMs. However, it is an extremely useful took to workout composition and color pallets. What would have traditionally taken hours in photoshop, or in an analog form of actual cutting and pasting to create a mood board, or a reference catalog can be done in minutes. 

The moral of the story is, use AI as a tool to elevate your workflow, not as a crutch to produce lazy, in-authentic creative output.

Step 4: Putting It All Together

Once I was happy enough with the flowers — I could have drawn them forever — I went back into Photoshop and wrapped the flowers around both M’s. From there, I made one final round of lighting and detail refinements in Procreate before finalizing the design.